Judaism: A Religion of Love

Nearly 20 years ago my book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, was published. The essential theme of that book was that the combination of the Jewish creedal Shema, along with a text to love your neighbors from the book of Leviticus, Expressed the heart of Jesus Kingdom vision when it came to following the law of Moses. There is, of course, nothing in the Jesus Creed that is not found already deep in the Torah. It seems reasonable that Jesus joined others perhaps Hillel, in finding a shortened core that expressed the heart of the Jewish way of life.

So I am more than pleased to see a new book by Shai Held called Judaism is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life. While many might contend Held has pushed one theme to the center and that there are others – like Torah observance, justice, covenant faithfulness, obedience, I would only want to join hands with Held to say That’s how Jesus saw things, too. Not that Jesus didn’t have his differences, for conflict seems to appear on nearly every page of the Gospels. But it’s not like calling people to love separated Jesus from the Pharisees or the scribes. Jesus’s Jesus Creed then was distinctive but far from unique. Please join me in reading Held. Here are a few highlights from his Introduction:

“Judaism is about love. The Jewish tradition tells the story of a God of love who creates us in love and enjoins us, in turn, to live lives of love. We are commanded to love God, the neighbor, the stranger – and all of humanity – and we are told that the highest achievement of which we are capable is to live with compassion. This is considered nothing less than walking in God's own ways.”

Held opines that too many in his tradition have “strangely – and tragically – have accepted, and in some cases even embrace, [the] legacy of Christian anti-Judaism” that Christianity is about love while Judaism is about justice or Torah. Once one ties law to the opposite of grace, Christianity and Judaism become polar opposites. The problem, which is as ignored in Christianity as his opinion about some within Judaism, is that Christianity’s supposed essential concentration on love comes straight from the Old Testament. You can’t get more Old Testament-ish than the Shema of Deuteronomy 6, and you can’t find a more paradigmatic theory of law observance than Leviticus, in particular, chapter nineteen!

Love, Held contends, is both an emotion and an action, and it cannot be seen as only an action in Judaism. Judaism, he argues, cannot be defined over against Christianity. That is, by defining it by not being Christianity. That is, if Christianity is about love, then Judaism is not about love. The same applies to grace: it is as Old Testament-ish and Jewish as it gets. Yes, themes about grace – as John Barclay in Paul and the Gift has shown – may be more prominent in one than the other, but both teach a very similar theology of grace.

He enters into spaces of comparison when pointing at the Christian understanding of human nature – fallen, Augustinian, etc – vs. the Jewish understanding – capable front, left, right, center, and back of choosing the good. Not that Judaism is, as he says it, “Pollyannaish.” Humans are capable of choosing the good. He calls this its “possibilism.”

Held contends in Judaism love is central and frames justice, compassion, grace, and kindness. All of this is rooted in God’s nature for “God wants to love and be loved. God wants relationships, and for that, God has to create a world that is other than God and human beings within it who are also other than God.” Love comes first. He does not define love. He frames it as “a disposition to feel certain things and act in certain ways.” (I think he can do better than that, and I think he will in this book.)

The Torah calls humans in the cosmic drama to love the neighbor, to love the stranger, to love God, to love the stranger, and thus to “walk in God’s ways.” That is, because God loves the above four, love is God’s way of life.

Judaism knows of cold-turkey obedience and observance, but Judaism wants all actions to spring from love. “Jewish ethics ask for deeds of love done from love.” Rituals in Judaism, too, are to have the right heart as well. Christians need to hear this. Over and over. Thus, “you have a spiritual life is to seek to grow in love and kindness – and to persevere even when love as a perfect integration of emotion and action seems daunting or out of reach.”

How do Christianity and Judaism differ? He poses these: in its view of human nature, in the non dichotomy between law and love, in the Christian emphasis on universalism and Judaism's emphasis upon particularism (“family, friends, and community”), and in Christianity's emphasis on loving our enemies. My own reading of Jewish authors would point as well at the Christian doctrine of forgiveness, and I’m thinking here of Elie Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower. But my experience does not reveal to me that Christians are always all that forgiving.

Please join me in exploring this book. I’m not sure how many Substacks will consider this book, but I suspect we’ll be at it for a couple months.