Let us work only with the first sentence today.
''Love the Law, and respect it; love all creatures, and respect them. ''
What is "the Law?'' Unfortunately Torah gets improperly translated into the English word Law. We hear of Moses the ''Law Giver,'' and his bas relief is chiseled on the edifice of the USA's Supreme Court. I have seen many translations of Jewish Texts where the word "rabbi'' is translated into the word ''lawyer.'' Torah in Hebrew means ''instruction.'' In the Traditional Rabbinic sense Torah means both the written Torah given at Sinai to Moses, and the Oral Torah also given to Moses at Sinai but not revealed to the masses until the rabbis taught it, starting with the Babylonian captivity circa 586 BCE. These instructions, which include the text we are presently studying, are a way of life. Judaism is not just a religion.
We are taught so many things about Torah and why we need not only to study it, but love it and respect it. We are taught that the world is sustained by three things, Torah, deeds of loving kindness, and prayer ( Talmud Bavli Tractate Pirkei Avot 1:3). We are taught that ''The world only exists because of the breath of children learning Torah in school. '' (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 119b). The Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 88b says that Torah preceded God's creating the universe and that God used Torah as His blueprint.
When we find ancient Torahs, like those in the 1500 year old Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, or the 2500 year old Jewish community of the Malabar Coast of India, or the 2000 year old Dead Sea Scrolls of the Jewish sect of the Essenes , not one letter varies in the Torah's manual transcription. In Talmud Bavli Tractate Eruvin 13a we read of Rabbi Yishmael cautioning his student Meir (who becomes the great rabbi Meir), when he is writing a new Torah scroll. "My son, be careful of in your work, for your work is heavenly. If you delete even one letter or add even one letter, you may destroy the whole world!''
We are also taught the Torah is a Tree of Life (Aitz Chaim) to those who grasp onto it firmly, (Prov.3:18). Where is this Tree of Life first mentioned? We first see it in Genesis 2:9. There are two special trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Both were in the middle of Gan Eden. And the fruit of the second tree was forbidden to Adam.
We all know the story. Eve ate from the Tree of Good and Evil, as did Adam, and in Talmudic terms their pure angelic-like existence, became human. They now had a yetzer tov and a yetzer ha ra (a good and an evil inclination). Our Midrash tells us that it was God's eventual intention to have Adam and Eve eat from this tree, but only first after they ate from the Tree of Life, i.e. learned the correct way to live via the ethical and spiritual teachings of the Torah so that they could listen to their yetzer tov and ignore their yetzer ha ra.
Hence by understanding what a gift we have in Torah, its instructions to us, so that we can live life happy, joyous and free, it becomes impossible not to love it and respect it, as well as its Giver.
And what a segue this gives us into the second part of the first sentence of verse 6:1: "Love all creatures and respect them.'' I can hear it now: "Rabbi Segal, for four years you have been trying to get me to love my neighbor, you remember, the one who mows his lawn at 6 AM every Sunday. And now you want me to love his dog, who howls at the moon every night until 2 AM ?!''
What we are being taught is the value of all life. We Jews are not to be like Jains and cover our mouths when we walk so that we don't accidentally swallow a fly, or walk with a broom sweeping the sidewalk in front of us, so we don't accidentally step on an ant. This is fine for Jains and Judaism respects the paths of all religions. But Judaism teaches a healthy respect for life and love for all life. We are to live by Torah, not die by it.
The Torah has many passages devoted to the fair treatment of animals. We cannot have two animals of different strength pull the same wagon. If we do, we force the smaller animal to keep up with the larger, and harm it. (Deut.22:10).