Modern Lessons From Rabbi Hillel
From NPR
A few months ago, I was talking with Christian friends about their faith and mine, Judaism, in particular the notion that Christianity entails clear, sweeping principles, while Judaism is a complex of laws.
Well, I mentioned something that a great Jewish sage, Rabbi Hillel, said not long before the time of Jesus. A man asked Rabbi Hillel to teach him the entire Torah, the five books of Moses, while standing on one foot. And Hillel did. What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That’s the whole Torah, he said. All the rest is commentary. Now go and study.
Well, in that conversation, two things struck me. First, my Christian friends knew nothing of Hillel, except that he’s the namesake of the campus organization for Jewish college students. And secondly, I didn’t know much more about him than they did.
Well, it turned out that Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, who has written many books about Judaism, had a new book coming out about Hillel called “Hillel: If Not Now, When?” It’s just about to be published, and Joseph Telushkin joins us from New York. Welcome to the program.
Rabbi JOSEPH TELUSHKIN (Author, “Hillel: If Not Now, When?”): Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: And first, when did Hillel live, and how significant a figure is he in Judaism?
Rabbi TELUSHKIN: Hillel was a tremendously significant figure in Judaism. He is, perhaps – along with Rabbi Akiva, the most famous sage of the Talmud, which is the major Jewish book after the Bible. He lived at the end of the first century, before the Common Era, and is assumed to have lived till about 10 of the Common Era.
SIEGEL: Perhaps even overlapping with Jesus of Nazareth in that kind of…
Rabbi TELUSHKIN: I think that it’s very likely that the young Jesus, who seems to have come from a religious, Jewish home – or certainly a committed Jewish household – would have been familiar with some of Hillel’s teachings.
