One of the scribes came near and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
(Mark 12:28-34, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
I recently read Shai Held’s Judaism Is About Love, and it reminded me of this scene from the Gospel of Mark.
Jesus was talking with a group of his peers about their shared Jewish faith. He wasn’t laying down any new laws; he wasn’t trying to set up a new religion. He was reminding his audience about principles that had been baked into the Torah, into God’s covenant with Israel, at the very beginning: Love God, and love your neighbor.
We cannot separate these two commands.
“We can’t love God and hate God’s creatures,” Rabbi Held explains. “If we want to love God, we have to love those whom God loves—and makes.” And our neighbors, in that sense, include those outside our core communities.
Christians also make a big deal of loving God and neighbor, but—running with the idea that “there is no other commandment greater than these”—many argue that love makes the laws unnecessary. (Except, of course, for the laws that prohibit things they can’t abide.) They also take some inspiration from Paul, who famously wrote to the Romans that “love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Fulfilling the law, however, does not necessarily mean replacing it. So I think that we can learn a lot from Rabbi Held’s understanding of Judaism, and its expression in the form of Torah, as “a vision for how human beings ought to live together in pursuit of the right and the good,” starting with the idea that Torah is not so much an imposition but an exhortation.
“The purpose of Torah is to bring love and kindness into the world,” he tells us. “At the heart of the Jewish religion is a God of love and kindness who summons God’s people to live lives of love and kindness.”
Jewish law doesn’t force people to do “good” just to make God happy. Instead, it calls on people to recognize good and actively choose it, to become full participants in the covenant with God. And not just participants, but partners—as Jesus would tell the disciples later, “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”
Quakers—the Religious Society of Friends—have traditionally held that verse close to their hearts.
I need to tread carefully, so as not to blur the lines between talking about Jewish faith in a Jewish context as Rabbi Held does, talking about Jesus’s Jewish faith in first-century Palestine, and talking about the Christian faith that grew out of the encounters the apostles had with Jesus and that later converts had with the apostles. We should not, cannot, reduce Judaism to a proto-Christianity, or Christianity to an offshoot of Judaism.
We should also remember that, while Quakerism as a whole remains close to its Christian roots, over the last century many Friends have embraced a more universalist faith. Even those who doubt Jesus’s divinity, however, or consider it irrelevant to their condition, will acknowledge he had some solid ideas, “there is no other commandment greater than these” chief among them.
Finally, we need to distinguish between taking lessons from Jewish theology and appropriating Jewish practice for our own ends. If you grew up in the Jewish faith and encountered the Quakers later in life, following Torah may or may not make sense for your spiritual journey. For others, though, I’m distinctly not saying that embracing Torah alone, setting the rest of Judaism aside, would make us “better” Friends.
Still, we can and should live our lives guided by the principles that shape Jewish law—not just in doing the right thing, over and over again, but in meaning it. Doing so cheerfully, not grudgingly. Helping our neighbors in times of want and distress not to meet a deity’s expectations, but because we genuinely want them to thrive as we thrive.
“To live a spiritual life is to seek to grow in love and kindness,” Rabbi Held advises. I can’t imagine any Friend taking issue with that goal. We know the power of living in alignment with a loving, kind Spirit—and we have faith that when our actions offer clear testimony to that alignment, we don’t just bring ourselves closer to the kingdom of God. We make it easier for our neighbors to see the possibility of that world as well—and we welcome them to join in its abundance.
This Friend speaks my mind!
Thank you, Ron, for this article. I am a big fan of Shai Held’s perspective on Torah, and I, too, highly recommend his book, Judaism is About Love. Raised as a Lutheran, and a very religious one at that, I was not taught the uniqueness of the Torah’s message about love. I thought that entire message came from Jesus. Now, putting love in the context of Judaism, and knowing that Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews before John and Paul differentiated Christianity and the Romans politicized it, I find it comforting to remember the theology of One God and Love is integrated in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I find the split between the two religions difficult and polarizing. Jesus lifted simple themes from the Torah to teach communities of Jews and was not trying to start a new religion.