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medieval Christianity (the “chivalrous 
knight”) and Islam.
The fourth, which he calls 
simply morality, he traces to Leviticus 
and Deuteronomy. He defines it simply 
as “the ethic of love,” and represents 
what made the West morally unique:
“The biblical ‘love of one’s neighbor’ 
is a very special form of love, a unique 
development of the Judaic religion and 
unlike any to be encountered outside 
it. It is a supremely altruistic love, for 
to love one’s neighbor as oneself means 
always to put oneself in his place and to 
act on his behalf as one would naturally 
and selfishly act on one’s own.” 
To be sure, Buddhism also makes 
space for the idea of love, though it is 
differently inflected, more impersonal 
and unrelated to a relationship with 
God.
What is radical about this idea is 
that, first, the Torah insists, against 
virtually the whole of the ancient world, 
that the elements that constitute reality 
are neither hostile nor indifferent 
to humankind. We are here because 
Someone wanted us to be, One who 
cares about us, watches over us and 
seeks our wellbeing.
Second, the love with which God 
created the universe is not just Divine. 
It is to serve as the model for us in our 
humanity. We are bidden to love the 
neighbor and the stranger, to engage in 
acts of kindness and compassion, and 
to build a society based on love. 
Here is how our parshah puts it: “For 
the Lord your God is God of gods and 
Lord of lords, the great, mighty and 
awesome God who shows no partiality 
and accepts no bribes. He defends the 
cause of the fatherless and the widow, 
and loves the stranger, giving him 
food and clothing. So you must love 
the stranger, for you yourselves were 
strangers in the land of Egypt.” Deut. 
10:18-19

GOD WANTS US TO 
LOVE AND FORGIVE
In short: God created the world in love 

and forgiveness and asks us to love and 
forgive others. I believe that to be the 
most profound moral idea in human 
history.
There is, however, an obvious 
question. Why is it that love, which 
plays so great a part in the book 
of Deuteronomy, is so much less in 
evidence in the earlier books of Shemot, 
Vayikra (with the exception of Lev. 19) 
and Bamidbar?
The best way of answering that ques-
tion is to ask another. Why is it that 
forgiveness plays no part — at least on 
the surface of the narrative — in the 
book of Bereishit? God does not forgive 
Adam and Eve or Cain (though he mit-
igates their punishment). Forgiveness 
does not figure in the stories of the 
Flood, the Tower of Babel or the 
destruction of Sodom and the cities of 
the plain (Abraham’s plea is that the 
cities be spared if they contain 50 or 
10 righteous people; this is not a plea 
for forgiveness). Divine forgiveness 
makes its first appearance in the book 
of Exodus after Moses’ successful plea 
in the wake of the Golden Calf, and is 
then institutionalized in the form of 
Yom Kippur (Lev. 16), but not before. 
Why so?
The simple, radical, answer is: God 
does not forgive human beings until 
human beings learn to forgive one 
another. Genesis ends with Joseph for-
giving his brothers. Only thereafter 
does God forgive human beings.
Turning to love: Genesis contains 
many references to it. Abraham loves 
Isaac. Isaac loves Esau. Rebecca loves 
Jacob. Jacob loves Rachel. He also loves 
Joseph. There is interpersonal love in 
plentiful supply. But almost all the loves 
of Genesis turn out to be divisive. They 
lead to tension between Jacob and Esau, 
between Rachel and Leah, and between 
Joseph and his brothers. Implicit in 
Genesis is a profound observation 
missed by most moralists and theolo-
gians. Love in and of itself — real love, 
personal and passionate, the kind of 
love that suffuses much of the prophet-

ic literature as well as Shir HaShirim, 
the greatest love song in Tanach, as 
opposed to the detached, generalized 
love called agape that we associate with 
ancient Greece — is not sufficient as a 
basis for society. It can divide as well as 
unite.
Hence, it does not figure as a major 
motif until we reach the integrat-
ed social-moral-political vision of 
Deuteronomy, which combines love and 
justice. Tzedek — justice — turns out to 
be another key word of Deuteronomy, 
appearing 18 times. It appears only four 
times in Shemot, not at all in Bamidbar, 
and in Vayikra only in chapter 19, the 
only chapter that also contains the word 
“love.”
In other words, in Judaism love and 
justice go hand in hand. Again this is 
noted by Simon May: “[W]hat we must 
note here, for it is fundamental to the 
history of Western love, is the remark-
able and radical justice that underlies 
the love commandment of Leviticus. 
Not a cold justice in which due deserts 
are mechanically handed out, but the 
justice that brings the other, as an indi-
vidual with needs and interests, into a 
relationship of respect. All our neigh-
bors are to be recognized as equal to 
ourselves before the law of love. Justice 
and love therefore become inseparable.” 
Love without justice leads to rivalry, 
and eventually to hate. Justice without 
love is devoid of the humanizing forc-
es of compassion and mercy. We need 
both. This unique ethical vision — the 
love of God for humans and of humans 
for God, translated into an ethic of love 
toward both neighbor and stranger — is 
the foundation of Western civilization 
and its abiding glory.
It is born here in the book of 
Deuteronomy, the book of law-as-love 
and love-as-law. 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020) was a 

global religious leader, philosopher, the author of 

more than 25 books and moral voice for our time. His 

series of essays on the weekly Torah portion, enti-

tled “Covenant & Conversation” will continue to be 

shared and distributed around the world. 

