Rabbi Akiva — The Great Principle of Torah
Rabbi Akiva declared 'Love your neighbor as yourself' to be the great principle of the Torah — the root from which all ethical obligations grow.
Rabbi Akiva declared: 'Love your neighbor as yourself — this is the great principle (klal gadol) of the Torah' (Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 9:4). By calling it a klal gadol (great general principle), Akiva placed it in a category of foundational axioms from which specific laws are derived — everything else in the Torah is a specification or application of this principle. Akiva's biography gives weight to this teaching: he began as an illiterate shepherd and became the greatest rabbinic scholar of his generation; he was martyred by the Romans with the Shema on his lips; and he said of the commandment of love that 'its purpose is that a person not say: since I am despised (by God), let my friend be despised with me' — meaning the commandment guards against the resentful leveling-down of the one who suffers. His student Ben Azzai suggested an even more fundamental principle: 'This is the book of the generations of Adam' (Genesis 5:1) — the divine origin of all humans as the root of all ethical obligation.
Love your neighbor as yourself — this is the great principle of the Torah.
Rabbi Akiva's declaration — 'Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18): this is the great principle of the Torah (zeh klal gadol baTorah)' — is recorded in the Sifra and the Jerusalem Talmud (Nedarim 9:4), where Ben Azzai counters that 'This is the book of the generations of Adam' (Genesis 5:1) is a greater principle, grounding human dignity in shared descent so no one may say 'my neighbor is beneath me.'
Jerusalem Talmud