[Avodah] Love your fellow as yourself

[Michael Elzufon]

Date: Thu, 03 May 2007 15:32:01 +0000
From: "Daniel Israel" <dmi1 at hushmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Love your fellow as yourself

On Thu, 03 May 2007 15:17:37 +0000 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> 
wrote:
>Tangent: It could be that he was asking for an explanation of the
>whole Torah of a single principle, not "while standing on one 
>foot". This would explain why Hillel doesn't follow his own advice 
about 
>not wasting time answering people who are trying to be silly; the 
>question wasn't silly. I believe this is in the Gra, but as I 
didn't find 
>it, I may have my sources confused.

See the Kli Yakar on that pasuk, which seems to indicate that the 
real question was, as a ger who would not have had a Torah 
upbringing to accustom himself to mitzva obseravance is there one 
principle he could keep in mind because kol haTorah kulah might be 
too much to hold onto in all practical situations.  This, of 
course, opens up the question of why Shammai did not respond 
positively.

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu

This is off the top of my head, but I believe it was the Maharsha who explained that he was asking for a basic principle.  Shammai pulled out his building stick to indicate that this was the wrong way to look at the Torah; it was not a tree, with all of the mitzvoth branching off a single trunk, but, rather, a building which required a broad foundation.