What does “love your neighbor as yourself” mean in the Torah?

“Love your neighbor as yourself” is Leviticus 19:18, and Rabbi Akiva called it “a great principle of the Torah” (Sifra, Kedoshim). Rashi, reading the verse in context, notes it sits between two prohibitions — do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge — so love isn’t just a feeling but an active refusal to let injury calcify into resentment. Revenge, Rashi explains, is refusing to lend someone a tool because they once refused to lend you one; a grudge is lending it anyway while silently keeping score. The command to love follows because withholding either still leaves the relationship poisoned. Maimonides (Rambam) generalizes the verse further: you should want for your neighbor what you want for yourself — materially, physically, and in reputation — the same way you’d want it for your own family. Most classical and modern scholars read “neighbor” (rea) as, in its plain sense, a fellow member of the covenant community, though Jewish tradition has long wrestled with how far the circle extends, and figures from Hillel onward pushed it outward. What makes the verse radical isn’t the sentiment — most cultures value kindness — but that Torah legislates it as a mitzvah, a binding obligation, not a suggestion. It’s less “feel affection” and more “act as if their stake in the outcome is your own.”