Mitzvah Kotel Images
A heathen demanded of the sage Hillel that he teach him the Law while standing before him on one foot. Hillel responed, "That which is harmful to you, do not do to your fellow," thus expressing the commandment to "love our fellow man as you love yourself," and summing up the entire Torah.
In the town of Tzfat, Israel, is a cemetery of some of Jewish mysticism’s luminaries including the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria, who transformed Judaism forever some five hundred years ago. On his grave is written the words he repeated each morning to himself, ואהבת לרעיך כמוך, v’ahavta l’reicha kamocha.
How can we be commanded or even expected to love everyone else as we love ourselves? It is said that the true tzaddik understands that we are each made in G-d's image and that the existence of even the most wicked human being is in accordance with G-d's will. It is our goal, and in our G-d-given capacity to self-sacrifice in the interest of others, as every life is valuable and unique. One must risk his or her life to save another, as an act of piety, as an act of love, as an act of justice.
By attaching moral value to each individual, without any distinction between the self and the other, through doing acts of kindness, respect, compassion and empathy,and by putting others before oneself one fulfills this mitzvah. The image chosen is of the brothers Yakov and Eisav, atop the map of Israel. We believe we are in the final days before the coming of Moshiach, The Messiah, when the brothers will unite, and as written in Isaiah, "the wolf will lay down with the lamb."