Love v. Retaliation

The commandment to love your fellow man as you love yourself is framed in a very interesting way, i.e. in the context of plans for retaliation.

"You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow (Jew) as yourself."

The sages teach that the context is one where you've been asked to pay another a kindness; in the first instance, i.e. taking revenge, you are asked to do a favor by someone who explicitly has refused to do one for you. Tit for tat, quid pro quo, you say no. Why should you help someone who doesn't help you? In the second, namely, bearing a grudge, you do do the other person a favor, but rub it in, saying, "I've helped you, even though you refused to help me!"

It seems odd that it would be in this context that we are taught of brotherly love, compassion, giving, tolerance and kindness.

After all, not every day are we asked for favors and loving your fellow man would seem to be a constant, something we strive for, open our hearts to, and try to assimilate into how we lead our lives.

Loving our fellow man for one means that we have to love ourselves, something that can also be difficult to attain. When push comes to shove, we are supposed to love ourselves more than our fellow man; when left in a desert with one flask of water, enough only for one to survive, the ethical and halachic imperative is to use it for ourselves.

But, that notwithstanding, it would seem that the same way Rabbi Akiva said that he had striven his whole life to love God with all of his heart and only succeeded in doing so when he had to give his life for the sake of God's oneness and faith in His name, likewise, the imperative that we are faced with is cultivating that love and generosity so that when faced with a challenge or difficult decision, we still see the other as having supreme importance as we preserve our own best interest by being sensitized to other's needs.

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