Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life

“to remove hard-heartedness from within us and to supplant it with … compassion and true lovingkindness.”20 Ideally, giving and caring will be inextricably intertwined—and mutually reinforcing.

we need to be impartial in our commitment to partiality: If it is okay for me to feed my child before I feed yours, it is equally okay for you to feed yours before mine. If I am entitled to my partial loves and commitments, then so too are you.

Judaism is not a religion for the individual seeker alone; it is a vision for how human beings ought to live together in pursuit of the right and the good.

the role of the parent is to teach and help the child to cope with unpredictable circumstances and events.”

There is no more effective way to prepare children for lives animated by love than to provide them with a loving childhood.

In Jewish thought, love and obligation go hand in hand. Much of what parents do for their children stems not from love or obligation but from love and obligation. Love and obligation are so intertwined that love itself is sometimes an obligation.

it is a mitzvah for family love to flow outward.

For Luria, in other words, tzimtzum yields divine absence; for the sages, in contrast, it yields intensified presence.

Partiality to loved ones is justified because it is an essential ingredient in one of the highest of human goods.”