Oral Law with Hospitality

“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him” (Leviticus 19:33).

I chose this mitzvah because I feel a more personal connection with this than the rest in Leviticus 19. I interpret this as speaking about hospitality, and how one must treat people that come to visit them. I can connect with this one so well because I feel that it is very important to be kind to people, especially when they need help, which could have been a big reason that hospitality was so vital in biblical times. In your everyday life, I believe hospitality means sharing with others and welcoming them not only into your home as is a more traditional sense, but also into your friend groups and family. As a Jew in the modern world, this mitzvah comes into play a lot. Religion as a whole, not just Judaism, is created largely to help the less fortunate, which is why hospitality is such a big mitzvah to have as a Jewish guideline.

I chose this picture of my tevet on the last morning of Gadna as representation for the mitzvah I chose. I think this is a good representation because the feelings in this picture accurately match the feelings that should ideally arise from hospitality. When we all got to Gadna, we were very worried and the whole thing was exhausting. Some of us had a few friends in the tevet, but most of us had our close friends in other tevets. By the last morning when this picture was taken, we were tired, but we were all a lot closer and really happy. I think that if you are hospitable towards others, you will be happy too.