The Golden Rule. You know Jesus wasn’t the only one to commend the Golden Rule in his teachings. Hillel the Elder – a leading Rabbi of his Age – who was an old man when Jesus was just a boy – was once approached by a non-Jew and asked, “What is the defining essence, the kernel of the Jewish faith ?” Now the learned & wise man could have responded eloquently and long on the deep mysteries of Jewish thought and law. Hillel could have insisted that it would be an utter insult to reduce so profound a system of faith into one brief statement.
Indeed Hillel’s contemporary, the Great Rabbi Shammai, was infamously known for furiously driving away a man who asked a similar question with a stick.
However seeing the man really wanted to know, Hillel responded to the man’s question thoughtfully, saying,
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour: this is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary; now go and study !”
