Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life

Discrimination based on origins is thus not just reprehensible, it’s also incoherent.

When it comes to love, we are neither the starting nor the ending point: we are loved by others in no small degree so that we can love others in turn.

arguments for the superiority of some over others fail both because we are descended from the same father (Adam) and because we were created by the same Father (God).

Connecting the Hebrew word for “image” (tzelem, as in tzelem Elohim, the image of God) with the word for “shadow” (tzel), Rabbi Yeruham Levovitz teaches that a human being is God’s very shadow. Since a shadow cannot appear without a presence that casts it, when we see a human being, it is as if we were beholding the divine presence (shekhinah) itse

The world being created for me isn’t a statement of how much I’m entitled to, but rather a declaration of how much is asked and expected of me.

In other words, the command to love the stranger “is not an act of universalization but rather a response to a particular condition of vulnerability.”

teaches that each of us is obligated to believe that the world was created for our sake because there is some distinct way that each of us is called upon to serve. The world being created for me isn’t a statement of how much I’m entitled to, but rather a declaration of how much is asked and expected of me.

“healthy, loving, and supportive families are crucial to nurture compassionate, ethical persons and create sane and just societies.”

The gift of life is grace—the existence of the world is not something that anyone earned. God’s love for us is grace—it is not something we earn but something we strive to live up to. And the revelation of Torah is grace—it is a divine gift given to us through no merit of our own.

human love and companionship are a blessing, not a concession to weakness. We are social animals all the way down, meant to live in relationship with others.