Love of another Jew

In Derech Mitzvosecha Rabbi Menachem Mendel discusses the commandment to love one's fellow and not to hate him/her^[5] and questions the story in the Talmud concerning Hillel the Elder and the convert. Hillel instructed a non-Jew wishing to convert "what to you is hateful do not do to your friend, this is the (root of) the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and learn."^[6]

For Rabbi Menachem Mendel, the idea of loving one's fellow should only be considered the root of all commandments that relate to human interactions, "between man and his friend" (bein adam l'chaveiro), but not to those that are "between man and God" (bein adam l'makom).

Rabbi Menachem Mendel resolves this question by introducing the Kabbalistic idea that the souls of the Jewish people compose a "single body"; each individual represents a particular limb.^[7] Based on this concept, every Jew is obligated to love his or her fellow though the other may have some deficiency, just as the individual often overlooks his or her own faults due to the natural love one has for one's self. When this kind of "self love" is extended to each other person, it achieves a very strong unity of spirit.

According to Rabbi Menachem Mendel, this unity is representative of the unity between God and the Jewish people and is the root of all the commandments, for aside from the specifics of the individual commandment, each serve the additional function of uniting the Jews with God. Thus each commandment may be said to be the "commentary" of the commandment to love one's fellow.^[8]

English edition

An English edition of Derech Mitzvosecha was translated by Rabbi Eliyahu Touger and published in 2004 by the Chabad publishing house Sichos in English. The English edition translates selected chapters from Rabbi Schneersohn's work.^[10]

Appendices

The Kehot editions include a number of appendices in the work, including Kitzur Tanya, a summary of the Tanya, the classic Chabad work by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi.