Ten Commandments - 8/10 - You shall not steal
Channel: Raymond Brouwers
Date: 2012-08-19

The words of the ten commandments are clear, but is the tribe of Israel living up to the rules their God gave them?

Holocaust Survivor Hajo Meyer (German-Dutch physicist)

Video nr. 8. You shall not steal.

Hajo Meyer (born in 1924) is a German-Dutch physicist and Jewish political activist.

Born in Bielefeld, in 1938 Meyer fled from Nazi Germany to the Netherlands alone, without his parents. He went into hiding in 1943, but was arrested after a year and spent ten months in Auschwitz. His parents, who were deported from Germany, did not survive.

After the war, Meyer returned to the Netherlands, and studied theoretical physics. He started working for Philips and eventually became director of the Philips Physics Laboratory (NatLab). After his retirement he took courses in England and worked as a builder of new violins and violas.

In recent years Meyer has been politically active, including as director of A Different Jewish Voice. He also wrote the book Het einde van het Jodendom (The End of Judaism) in 2003, which accuses Israel of abusing the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Palestinians. He is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. He participated in the 2011 "Never Again - For Anyone" tour. Meyer also claimed that Zionism predates fascism, that Zionists and fascists had a history of cooperation, and that Israel wants to create anti-Semitism in the world to encourage more Jews to migrate to Israel. He has spoken in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

THE GOLDEN RULE: 

The Golden Rule originates in a well-known Torah verse (Hebrew: "ואהבת לרעך כמוך"):

    You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
    —Leviticus 19:18

This Torah verse represents one of several versions of the Golden Rule, which itself appears in various forms, positive and negative. It is the earliest written version of that concept in a positive form.

At the turn of the eras, the Jewish rabbis were discussing the scope of the meaning of Leviticus 19:18 and 19:34 extensively:

    The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the LORD am your God.
    —Leviticus 19:34

Commentators summed up foreigners (= Samaritans), proselytes (= 'strangers who resides with you') (Rabbi Akiba, bQuid 75b) or Jews (Rabbi Gamaliel, yKet 3,1; 27a) to the scope of the meaning.

The Sage Hillel formulated a negative form of the golden rule. When asked to sum up the entire Torah concisely, he answered:

    "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn it."
    —Talmud, Shabbat 31a, the "Great Principle"

The Jewish sage and martyr Rabbi Akiba, following Hillel the Elder (c.110 BCE, died 10 CE), had singled out the Golden Rule (Leviticus 19:18) as a basic principle of the Torah meaning, that the principle of love must have its foundation in Genesis verse 1, which teaches that all men are the offspring of Adam who was made in the image of God (Sifra, Ḳedoshim, iv.; Yer. Ned. ix. 41c; Genesis Rabba 24). According to Jewish rabbinic literature, the first man Adam represents the unity of mankind. This is echoed in the modern preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it is also taught, that Adam is last in order according to the evolutionary character of God's creation:

"Why was only a single specimen of man created first? To teach us that he who destroys a single soul destroys a whole world and that he who saves a single soul saves a whole world;[65] furthermore, so no race or class may claim a nobler ancestry, saying, 'Our father was born first'; and, finally, to give testimony to the greatness of the Lord, who caused the wonderful diversity of mankind to emanate from one type. And why was Adam created last of all beings? To teach him humility; for if he be overbearing, let him remember that the little fly preceded him in the order of creation."