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Chapter 32
And behold, through keeping the things mentioned above, so that his body be despised and loathsome in his eyes, and only his joy be the joy of the soul alone, this is a straight and easy way to come to the keeping of the mitzvah (a commanded deed), “And you shall love your companion as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), for every soul of Israel, from the great to the small. For since his body is loathsome and abhorrent to him, and as for the nefesh (the lowest level of the soul) and the spirit, who knows their greatness and their worth in their root and their source in the living Elohim? Since also they all match one another, and one Father belongs to all of them. And therefore all Israel are called brothers in actual fact, from the side of the root of their soul in the one Hashem (God), only that the bodies are divided. And therefore, as for those who make their body the main thing and their soul secondary, true love and brotherhood cannot be between them, but only the love that depends on a thing alone.
And this is what Hillel the Elder said about the keeping of this mitzvah: “This is the whole of the entire Torah, and the rest is its explanation,” and so on (Shabbat 31a). For the foundation and the root of the whole Torah is to raise and to lift the soul above the body, higher and higher, up to the principal and the root of all worlds, and also to draw the light of Ein Sof (the Endless), blessed is He, into the assembly of Israel, as will be explained further on, that is, into the source of the souls of all Israel, so that it be one in one, specifically, and not when there is division, God spare us, in the souls. For the Holy One, blessed be He, does not rest in a blemished place. And as it is said (the blessing “Set peace” at the end of the standing prayer): “Bless us, our Father, all of us as one, in the light of Your face,” and as was explained in another place at length.
And as for what is written in the Gemara (Pesahim 113b), that one who sees in his fellow that he has sinned, it is a mitzvah to hate him, and also to tell his teacher that he should hate him, this means his fellow in Torah and mitzvot, and he has already fulfilled toward him the mitzvah “Reprove, you shall reprove your companion” (Leviticus 19:17), a people that is with you in the Torah and in the mitzvot (Bava Metzia 59a; Shevuot 30a), and even so he did not turn back from his sin, as is written in the book Haredim. But one who is not his fellow, and is not near to him, of this Hillel the Elder said (Mishnah Avot 1:12): Be of the disciples of Aaron, a lover of peace, and so on, loving the creatures and drawing them near to the Torah. That is to say that even those who are far from the Torah of Hashem and from His service, and who for this reason are called by the name “creatures” merely, one needs to draw them with cords of ropes of love, and with all this, perhaps he will be able to bring them near to the Torah and to the service of Hashem. And if not, he has not lost the reward of the mitzvah of the love of companions.
And also those who are near to him, whom he reproved, and they did not turn back from their iniquities, whom it is a mitzvah to hate, it is a mitzvah to love them also, and both are truth: hatred from the side of the evil that is in them, and love from the side of the aspect of the good hidden in them, which is a spark of Godhood within them that gives life to their nefesh elokit (the soul from God). And also to awaken mercy in his heart upon it, for it is in the aspect of exile inside the evil of the sitra achra (the other side) that prevails over it in every rasha (a wicked person). And the mercy cancels the hatred and awakens the love, as is known from what is written (Isaiah 29:22): “To Jacob, who redeemed Abraham.” [And David the king, peace be upon him, did not say (Psalms 139:22) “With a total hatred I hated them,” and the rest, except about the sectarians and the heretics, who have no portion in the God of Israel, as it is found in the Gemara at the beginning of chapter 16 of Shabbat (Shabbat 116a).]
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