[Avodah] Rosh Hashanah 32b There's Hope For Everyone

[Michael Makovi]

> So that might be a good reason to view the pasuk, v'ahavta l'rayecha
> komocho, as "your neighbor" extending beyond a Jew.
> ri

My personal approach is one of the following:

a) The Torah was given to be kept in davka Eretz Yisrael; to keep it
in chutz is simply practice for the real thing in EY. Therefore, it
would make sense if the Torah's legislation is truly concerned with EY
only, both hashkafically and in terms of halachic feasibility. (Rabbi
Moshe Shmuel Glasner in haTzionut b'Ohr haEmuna, and Rabbi Eliezer
Berkovits in one of his writings, both say that the Torah is not
concerned with Shabbat observance being feasible in chutz; it is a
chiyuv, but it is your own problem, not God's or the Torah's, if it
isn't feasible.) Perhaps then, the Torah legislated ahava only for the
Jewish neighbor and for the gentile ger toshav neighbor; where in EY
is there a non-ger-toshav gentile neighbor? So in chutz, when we meet
such a gentile but find no chiyuv for loving him, it is simply because
he is not part of the Torah's EY scope. It is simply a technicality, a
loophole.

b) The Gemara says v'ahavta l'rayacha kamocha = Jewish neighbor, but
perhaps this is a drash and not a kabbalah. Rabbi Hertz in his chumash
takes the pasuk to refer to Jew and gentile alike, and (Rabbi?)
Abraham Cohen in Everyman's Talmud makes a vague statement that
whether the pasuk means Jews only or gentiles too is an open question;
he makes a reference to various (non-beit-midrash) literature and says
that in any case the Gemara drashes that it means only a gentile. If
we follow Drashot haRan, Sefer haChinuch, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner,
etc., that a drash from Chazal doesn't mean the drash is objectively
correct, then we can suppose, hypothetically and with no effect on
halacha l'maaseh, that we are to love gentiles too. This would
certainly fit better, IMHO, with what we know about all humanity being
God's children, etc. (queue Ben Azzai). Of course, all the same,
perhaps this pasuk's interpretation is in fact a Sinaitic kabbalah - I
don't know; tzarich iyun.

I suspect both of these will meet with intense opposition and controversy.

Mikha'el Makovi