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This week’s combined reading contains Seventy-six commandments and some are polar opposites. For instance; the twenty-two forbidden sexual unions (Araiyot) versus the ultimate positive human union: “Love your neighbor as yourself”.

But as opposite as these two are, they commonly touch on the essence of Judaism: Holiness and Torah.

Abstinence from Araiyot is essential to ‘holiness’ (Rashi Vayikra 19:1) and “Brotherly Love” is essential to Torah (ibid 19:18).

The Baal Shem Tov explained it like this: The Jewish people are like one person (Shmot 4:22) [“One man with one heart” (Rashi on Shmot 19:2)]. Forbidden ‘love’ destroys this unity, and proper love strengthens it.

Only through proper love “as ourselves” can we become a healthy unit; a functioning ‘chosen people’ bringing blessing and meaning to the world.

But how is such love possible? To love each person as ourselves sounds like a ridiculous thing to expect because, in fact, they are not ourselves… they are ‘others’.

To explain, here is a story.

Rabbi Mendel Futerfass was a Chabad Chassid that was put into Siberia for his Jewish activities in Stalin’s USSR.

For over five years he suffered terribly, and was always in the shadow of death. But afterwards he said that those were the most meaningful and best years of his life because he constantly had to keep in a positive frame of mind. And one of the ways he did it was by learning something from everything he heard or saw.

“There is a known saying in Chabad in the name of Rav Zusia of Anipoli that it’s possible to learn seven lessons from a thief on how to serve G-d” (hard work, positive attitude, etc.). “Well, it’s obvious that Rav Zusia had never sat in Siberia,” Rav Mendel once said to me, “because if he did, he would know that there you can learn THOUSANDS of things from a thief.”

For instance, one of the prisoners in Rav Mendel’s camp was an old Cossack imprisoned because of his loyalty to the Czar. Although the Cossacks were usually rabid anti-Semites, ‘misery loves company’. One long cold Siberian winter night, when they were sitting in the barracks (the guards were afraid to let them work outside in the dark) he opened his heart to Rav Mendel and began reminiscing about….his horse.

When this Cossack spoke his eyes became moist and his voice filled with emotion.

“Aaahhh!!! A Cossack horse!!! There is nothing in creation like a Cossack horse!!!! A regular horse in Russia cost one month’s wages – five rubles. A workhorse cost up to ten. But a Cossack horse cost five hundred, six hundred rubles!! Because the Cossack horse was different than all other horses, incomparably different! A Cossack’s horse had a different heart.

“Not only was it was stronger, faster, and braver than anything alive but it would do anything for its master; jump into fire, over trees and even houses.

But most of all, it had a different heart.

I will explain,” Continued the Cossack, pausing and drawing deeply on a cigarette.

“How did they catch a Cossack horse? Do you know? Well I will tell you, this is a story!”

“The Cossacks were experts at this; at catching horses. There was a special group that would wander the mountains and fields on horseback looking for herds of them.

This was very important because a Cossack without a horse is like a person without legs, like a cripple, do you understand?

Then, when they found a large herd, say of a thousand, two thousand horses. They would shoot their guns and get them all running in the to a predetermined spot on the nearest river. It was a set up. There were Cossacks waiting on the other side. Like I say, they were great experts, and sometimes they would run for days until they got there, but when they did they would start screaming and shooting their guns in the air and force the herd into the widest, deepest part of the river. You see, horses can swim, and so they had to get over, through the current to the other side, or die.

Now, on the other side was waiting another group of Cossacks. The whole thing was planned from the beginning, and they would watch to see what the horses did.

There were always three types of horses; there were the regular horses that would make it to the other side and run away to live their lives. Then there were older horses that would get to the middle but ran out of power, couldn’t get across and would drown. And there were the young horses, that had the stamina so they didn’t get tired, but didn’t have the strength to cross over, so they just floundered in the middle of the river.”

His voice became serious, and he sat a bit straighter.

“But sometimes… Not always, but sometimes, there was a fourth type; maybe only one or two at the most, that were sort of crazy horses.

They would make it across, but instead of running away like the normal horses, they would turn around, look back into the river to see if there were horses in trouble and then jump BACK in to save them.”

There were tears in his eyes now, he was leaning forward with arms outstretched as though grasping for the past.

“They would swim to the young horses, grab them with their teeth by their mane and start dragging them in. They just couldn’t stand to see their fellow horses in danger.

This was a Cossack’s horse!!!”

The Cossacks would throw some paint on these special horses and chase them for days until they caught them. Then it would take several months of hard work to train them. But the main thing was the heart; it was a horse with a heart.

Rav Mendel said that he immediately got the point.

The Cossack’s horse is a Chassid.

A Chassid has to be ‘crazy’ and risk everything for his fellow Jew; he can’t stand to see his brother in danger of drowning. He can’t bear to just live for himself; learn Torah and do the commandments just in order to cross the river of life and get into heaven.

A Chassid has a different heart. He wants to give. And this is the secret of “brotherly love” that the Baal Shem Tov strived to teach.

Now let us explain how distance (Araiyot) is also essential to Judaism:

Once a man was sitting in a restaurant gluttonously eating fish; stuffing it in his mouth with both hands and licking his fingers clean between each mouthful. His rabbi happened to enter the restaurant approached him and tried to calm him down, but to no avail. he just kept stuffing his mouth and said,

“I can’t stop!!! I wait all week for today, it’s fish day here and I just love fish, I really love ‘em!”

Hearing this the rabbi took a step back and said, “My friend you are a liar!!”

“A liar?” said the startled glutton as he stopped for a moment and wiped off his mouth with a handful of napkins. “How do you figure that? I mean, what? You think I don’t love fish??”

“You certainly do not!” he replied. “If you loved fish, you would let the fish eat YOU! You love yourself, that’s why you eat the fish.”

Araiyot are really an expression of false love. Doing everything to receive good …. including using others. We must distance ourselves from such selfish love.

True love means seeing the unique goodness in others and giving to them.

This is the real meaning of all the man-and-wife allusions in Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) and later in the Zohar; namely how Gd genuinely loves and gives to us and how we can genuinely love and ‘give’ to Him.

These books are all referring to what will be in the days of Moshiach.

Moshiach will teach all mankind to feel Gd’s love and return that love. Then the world will be filled with true love; the love of G-d, the love the Torah and Brotherly love and selfishness will be non-existent.

And not much is missing: After thousands of years of Jewish suffering it could be that all that is lacking is just one more good deed, word or even THOUGHT to bring ….

Moshiach NOW!!

Rabbi Tuvia Bolton
Yeshiva Ohr Tmimim
Kfar Chabad, Israel

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