Gentile asked two of the best-known Pharisaic teachers in the first century, Shammai and Hillel, to teach him the whole of the Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai drove him away with a stick, because, he said, the Torah cannot be crystallized. But Hillel responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, while the rest is commentary thereon; go and learn it” (b. Sabbat 31a).
