Holy Ones: Love Your Neighbour as Yourself

In the synagogue the Torah is read aloud in a fixed annual cycle of fifty-four weekly portions (parashiyot), one each Shabbat morning, with certain adjacent portions doubled in ordinary years so the sequence fits the calendar. Each portion is named for a distinctive word near its opening and is paired with a haftarah, a reading from the Prophets. The cycle closes and restarts on Simchat Torah. Kedoshim ('Holy Ones', Leviticus 19:1-20:27) contains the Holiness Code, opening 'you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.' Amid laws of justice, honesty, care for the poor and the stranger stands the command 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself' (19:18), called by the sage Rabbi Akiva a great principle of the Torah.

Rabbi Akiva's designation of 'love your neighbour as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18) as a great principle of the Torah is recorded in the Jerusalem Talmud and stands alongside a rival formulation attributed to his contemporary Ben Azzai, who instead pointed to the verse on humanity's creation in the divine image (Genesis 5:1) as an even more fundamental principle, since it grounds ethical obligation in universal human dignity rather than only in relations between covenant members.