42 | AUGUST 3 • 2023 

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omething implicit in the 
Torah from the very beginning 
becomes explicit in the book 
of Devarim. God is the God of love. 
More than we love Him, He loves us. 
Here, for instance, is the beginning 
of this week’s parshah: 
“If you pay attention to 
these laws and are careful 
to follow them, then the 
Lord your God will keep 
His covenant of love [et 
ha-brit ve-et ha-chessed] 
with you, as He swore 
to your ancestors. He 
will love you and bless you and increase 
your numbers.” Deut. 7:12-13
Again in the parshah we read: “To 
the Lord your God belong the heavens, 
even the highest heavens, the earth 
and everything in it. Yet the Lord set 
His affection on your ancestors 
and loved them, and He chose you, 
their descendants, above all the nations 
— as it is today.” Deut. 10:14-15
And here is a verse from last week’s: 
“Because He loved your ancestors and 
chose their descendants after them, 
He brought you out of Egypt by His 
Presence and His great strength.” Deut. 
4:37

The book of Deuteronomy is 
saturated with the language of love. 
The root a-h-v appears in Shemot 
twice, in Vayikra twice (both in Lev. 
19), in Bamibar not at all, but in 
Sefer Devarim 23 times. Devarim is a 
book about societal beatitude and the 
transformative power of love.
Nothing could be more misleading 
and invidious than the Christian 
contrast between Christianity as a 
religion of love and forgiveness and 
Judaism as a religion of law and 
retribution. As I pointed out in my 
earlier Covenant & Conversation for 
Vayigash, forgiveness is born (as David 
Konstan notes in Before Forgiveness) 
in Judaism. Interpersonal forgiveness 
begins when Joseph forgives his 
brothers for selling him into slavery. 
Divine forgiveness starts with the 
institution of Yom Kippur as the 
supreme day of Divine pardon following 
the sin of the Golden Calf.
Similarly with love: when the New 
Testament speaks of love, it does so by 
direct quotation from Leviticus (“You 
shall love your neighbor as yourself”) 
and Deuteronomy (“You shall love the 
Lord your God with all your heart, 
all your soul and all your might”). As 

philosopher Simon May puts it in his 
splendid book, Love: A History: “The 
widespread belief that the Hebrew Bible 
is all about vengeance and ‘an eye for 
an eye,’ while the Gospels supposedly 
invent love as an unconditional and 
universal value, must therefore count 
as one of the most extraordinary 
misunderstandings in all of Western 
history. For the Hebrew Bible is 
the source not just of the two love 
commandments but of a larger moral 
vision inspired by wonder for love’s 
power.” His judgment is unequivocal: 
“If love in the Western world has a 
founding text, that text is Hebrew.” 

VISIONS OF THE ETHICAL LIFE
More than this: In Ethical Life: The 
Past and Present of Ethical Cultures, 
philosopher Harry Redner distinguishes 
four basic visions of the ethical life 
in the history of civilizations. One he 
calls civic ethics, the ethics of ancient 
Greece and Rome. Second is the ethic 
of duty, which he identifies with 
Confucianism, Krishnaism and late 
Stoicism. Third is the ethic of honor, a 
distinctive combination of courtly and 
military decorum to be found among 
Persians, Arabs and Turks as well as in 

The
Morality
of Love

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH