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They asked Jesus and Rabbi Akiva—on different occasions (they lived almost a hundred years apart)—what their favorite verse was in the entire Bible. And wouldn’t you know it, both of them picked the exact same one: V’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha (“Love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus 19:18).
Now there is a fairly famous anecdote in the Talmud (Baba Metzia 62b) which describes the following situation: You and this other chap are out for a stroll in the desert. While you are both busy admiring the various lizard species and rock formations in your vicinity, he suddenly exclaims: “#@$%&! I forgot my friggin’ canteen!”
You quickly assess your options. There is only enough water in your canteen for one human being to make it back to civilization alive (and no, you do not have your cellphone). So you could split the water—and you’d both perish. You could give your flask altruistically to your fellow traveler, and die a hideous death under the merciless, take-no-prisoners, desert sun. Or you could keep the canteen for yourself, and abandon him to the same fate (this is a slightly tougher decision than what shoes to wear to work in the morning). What do you do?
Two opinions, two legal rulings, are recorded in the Talmud regarding this matter. One of them comes straight from the mouth of the aforementioned Rabbi Akiva. The other one emanates from an individual with a very strange name, who is never mentioned anywhere else in rabbinic literature: Ben-Petura. Now, I don’t want to go into all the speculative etymology (Ben-Petura—Ben-Pintura—Ben-Pindura: The always fickle letter “nun” creeps in and we have the common, somewhat derogatory Talmudic appellation for Jesus), but it is at least possible that the second jurisprudent whose expertise is consulted in this passage is none other than the Christian Savior himself.We’ll never know for sure whether this is so, and it doesn’t really matter for our purposes today. I am only interested in utilizing this dichotomy of views as a paradigm, and the two men who espouse them as archetypes. So let’s assume, for the moment, that Ben-Petura is in fact Jesus; if he isn’t, he’s sure read a lot of the Nazarene’s sermons, as we shall see.
Let’s go back to the desert. The scorching rays of the noonday sun are cauterizing your corpuscles, your throat is so dry you could bake a matza in it, and you have quite a decision to make. Fast. Ben-Petura–Jesus advises you as follows: Share the water, and die together, because you are no better than your friend. Rabbi Akiva rules differently: You take the flask.
Now this is fascinating because, if you will recall, both Jesus and Akiva chose “Love your neighbor as yourself” as their all-time favorite Tora verse. Well, what in the name of Jehosaphat is going on here? I understand Jesus’ position: It is entirely consistent with genuinely loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself, which certainly appears to be exactly what the biblical commandment requires. Jesus’ verdict makes perfect sense in this light.
But Rabbi Akiva? What was he thinking? Did he forget that he had once put the same verse way up high on a pedestal as “the premier principle of the Tora”? His judgment—keep the canteen, share none of its contents, leave your buddy to expire miserably in the desert like a dog—seems to contradict everything that that hallowed Pentateuchal principle of mutual, equal love demands.
What we have here is a clear-cut case of diametrically opposed interpretations of scriptural intention (a common enough phenomenon in our sources). Jesus understands the Levitical injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself” just exactly the way it sounds (pshuto k’mashma’o, as we say in the holy tongue). We would know this even without the whole speculative business about his possible Ben-Petura alias. Because you see, the entire New Testament is simply riddled with examples which leave not a shadow of a doubt that the ideal in Jesus’—and eventually Christianity’s—eyes is at least to strive to love all human beings equally.
One day Jesus was in the middle of preaching to the multitudes—as was his wont—when all of a sudden (every Jewish child’s nightmare) his mom showed up:
Then one said unto him: “Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.” But he answered and said unto him that told him: “Who is my mother? And who are my brethren?” And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said: “Behold my mother and my brethren.” (Matthew 12:46-49)
This and more: Jesus wished there to be no misunderstanding regarding this matter:
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. (Matthew 10:34-35)
And in case it has yet to sink in:
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethrens, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
We have not quoted verses out of context here. Christianity is a system concerned with belief, with faith, and as such it recognizes no separate national entities, no tribal affiliations, not even, in the final analysis, the significance of blood kinship. It is, at least theoretically, the world’s largest equal-opportunity employer, viewing as it does all human beings as similarly deserving (more accurately: Similarly undeserving) potential recipients of salvation. Christianity is a thoroughly universalist—and at the same time a thoroughly individualist—religious creed, and Jesus of Nazareth was without a doubt the foremost prophet of universal love (although nowhere near the only one).
Okay, that’s settled. Now, let’s get married. Uh-huh, right this minute—you and me. I’m your beau of the ball, we’ve been having the most awesome time getting to know each other for months, and I just can’t possibly wait another second. It’s time to propose. Down I go on one knee. I look dreamily up into your eyes. I reach deftly into the pocket of my Giorgio Armani blazer and pull out a rock the size of a canteloupe. I take your two hands in mine, and, gently caressing them, I coo: “My darling, I love you. I love you so much. I love you as much as I love… as much as I love… as much as I love that other woman, the one walking down the street over there. See her? Oh, and that one, too, riding her bike past the newspaper stand. I love you exactly as much as I love all my previous girlfriends, as well, and I love you as much as all the girls who weren’t ever my girlfriends. I love you as much as I love everybody else on this planet, and for that matter, I love you as much as I love the animals, too, and the weeds, and the plankton and—Oh God! What’s that searing, indescribable pain in my groin? Hey, where are you going, my daaaaarliiiiing?”
No one gets turned on by “universal” love. It doesn’t get you up in the morning, it doesn’t give you goose-bumps or make you feel all warm and tingly inside, it doesn’t send you traipsing through copses picking wildflowers and singing songs about birds, it doesn’t provoke heroism, or sacrifice, or creativity, or loyalty, or anything. In short, “universal love” isn’t love at all.
Because love means preference. The kind of love that means anything, the kind of love we all really want and need and live for, the kind of love that is worth anything to anyone—that is worth everything to everyone—is love that by its very nature, by its very definition, distinguishes and prefers. Show me a guy who tells you that he loves your kids as much as he loves his own, and I’ll show you someone who should never and under no circumstances be your babysitter. Stay away from such people. Head for the hills. He who aspires to love everybody the same has no idea what love means, indeed, is really advocating—and may be entirely unaware of this—the removal of all love worthy of the name from the planet Earth.
