Ve'ahavta — The Command to Love
The Torah commands love of God with one's whole being, love of neighbor as oneself, and even love of the stranger — establishing love not merely as an emotion but as a commandment and an obligation.
The Ve'ahavta ('And you shall love') continues directly from the Shema: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might' (Deuteronomy 6:5). This is the first of the Torah's love commandments. The second, 'Love your neighbor as yourself' (Leviticus 19:18), is what Rabbi Akiva called 'the great principle of the Torah.' The third is perhaps most remarkable: 'Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt' (Leviticus 19:34) — commanding emotional solidarity with the outsider based on lived memory of vulnerability. The Talmud notes that the Torah repeats the commandment to love the stranger 36 times — more than any other mitzvah — emphasizing that genuine Jewish ethics must extend beyond the community boundary. Philosophers and ethicists have found in these three commandments a comprehensive framework: love of God (the vertical dimension), love of neighbor (horizontal, within community), and love of the stranger (horizontal, across boundaries).
Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
Emmanuel Levinas's entire philosophy of ethics — grounded in the face of the Other that makes an absolute demand on me — is a philosophical elaboration of the Torah's commands to love the neighbor and the stranger, extended into secular philosophical language.
Torah