Love Your Neighbor

This week's Torah portion contains the oft-recited verse, "V'ahavta l'reacha camocha" ("Love your neighbor as yourself"). Not bad as far as Leviticus goes! During tefillah with our kindergarteners I asked them who their neighbor was? As usual hands went straight up and I started calling on children:

"The person who lives next door to me."
"The person on my street."
"Mr. Raymond my neighbor."

But it wasn't long before they arrived at a deeper understanding of the concept of "neighbor":

"The person sitting next to me."
"Someone who is close to your heart."

And then most profound:

"God, because God is all around us."

I was reminded of our recent 7th grade trip to Washington DC. Sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall spread out before us, we read the words spoken by Rabbi Joachim Prinz who spoke these words in his speech at the March on Washington in 1963:

"In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody's neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man's dignity and integrity."

I'm no longer surprised (and haven't been for some time now) that I probably (dare I say definitely) learn more from the children I teach than they learn from me. To what can the matter be compared? To the following parable told by the Maggid of Dubno, an 18th century rabbi and teacher (retold by Rabbi David Wolpe in his book Floating Takes Faith):

"Once a father traveled for miles with his son to reach a castle. Whenever they encountered a river or mountain, the father lifted his son on his shoulders and carried him. Finally they came to the castle, but its gate was shut, and there were only narrow windows along the sides. The father said, “my son, up until now I have carried you. Now the only way we can reach our destination is if you will climb through the windows and open the gate for me from within."

It occurs to me that if "neighbor" is indeed a moral concept, so too are "father" and "son."