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similarly taught that loving your neighbor as yourself is the Torah’s opportunity to free one’s indentured servant, remit loans, return
cardinal principle (Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 89:4). properties to their original owners, and share the produce of the
fields with others less fortunate. All these measures were designed
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson,
asked what the subtle difference was between Hillel’s declaration to ensure a certain socioeconomic equality was maintained and the
that loving your neighbor as yourself is all the Torah and Rabbi nation remained united by a common purpose.
Akiba’s declaration that loving your neighbor as yourself is the Of course, for a whole nation to undergo such an economic upheaval
Torah’s cardinal principle. He explains that their subtly different every seven years is no simple matter. A wholesale remittance of debts
language stems from a dispute regarding the question of whether and freeing of indentured servants would certainly shake up society.
Israel or the Torah is closer to God. Hillel – basing himself on the Furthermore, it is one thing to refrain from working one day a week
Midrashic opinion that states that when God decided to create the and quite another to refrain from plowing, sowing, and reaping one’s
world “the thought of Israel arose first” (Bereishit Rabbah 1:4) – crops for an entire year, especially in an agrarian society as Israel
declares that loving your neighbor as you love yourself is comparable was in ancient times. (Imagine if the Israeli high-tech industry
to observing all the Torah because Israel is closer to God. So by loving were to shut down for just a year!) Despite God’s promise to His
your neighbor, you are, in effect, fulfilling the entire purpose of the people that if they kept and sanctified the Sabbatical year He would
Torah – to draw nearer to God. Rabbi Akiba, basing himself on an guarantee their safety and ensure that there would be a bumper
understanding later recorded in the Zohar (3:73a) – “three bonds crop in the sixth year that would be enough for three years, on the
are bonded together: Israel to Torah and Torah to God” – declares whole, the entire nation never fully kept the Sabbatical laws. For
that loving your neighbor is merely a cardinal principle. According this transgression the Jews unfortunately paid the price prophesied
to Rabbi Akiba, a Jew must ultimately attach him or herself to the in the next portion:
Torah in order to draw closer to God.
And I will scatter you among the nations … Then shall
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh describes a similar dichotomy when the land enjoy her Shabbats, as long as it is desolate and
he discusses whether the Jewish people exist in order to fulfill the you are in your enemies land, then shall the land rest and
Torah or whether the Torah was created in order to serve the Jewish enjoy her Shabbats. As long as it lies desolate it shall rest,
people’s spiritual needs. In a profound insight, in his book Sha’arei because it did not rest in your Shabbats when you dwelt
Ahavah Veratzon (p. 73), Rabbi Ginsburgh explains how both these upon it. (Leviticus 26:33-34)
viewpoints are true depending on the circumstances and one’s
perspective. This prophecy came to fruition following the destruction of the

Whether loving your neighbor is all the Torah or its cardinal First Temple, when the Jews were exiled to Babylonia. According
principle, clearly its appearance in Kedoshim reflects the very nature to Jeremiah, they spent seventy years in exile as a penalty for the
of holiness in Judaism. Holiness is not gained through isolation or seventy Shemittah years they had not fully observed. Only after the
by separating one’s self from society; rather, holiness is achieved land received its rest did the Jews come back to rebuild the Second
through a concerted individual effort expressed within a communal Temple.
setting. As we have discussed, Divine time flows in a series of cycles. When
we understand these, we can enter Divine time. From the creation
of the world in six days and the culminating Shabbat when “God
rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done,”

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