LOVE

-In the Bible In the Bible, "love" has, like the word "love" in most languages, many and various shades of meaning. HEBREW WORDS FOR "LOVE." It is represented by Hebrew words which range from sensuous, and often evil, desire or passionate love between man and woman (II Sam. 13:4; Jer. 2:33), through family affection, up to theological conceptions of God's love for Israel, and of Israel's love for God. In most of the passages, "to accept, adopt, or recognize," could profitably be substituted for "to love," and "to reject, disown," or "repudiate," for "to hate." The root most commonly used is ʾahav. Another verb riḥam and the noun raḥamim point to the family feeling through their connection with reḥem, the mother's womb; they express the compassion presupposing the suffering, distress, or weakness of the other party. The root ḥafeẓ means "wish for" or "delight in," but is also used, with a person as object, in the sense of "feel inclined." A similar meaning is attached to raẓah, "to be pleased with," and "accept." The root ḥashaq involves instead the sense of personal attachment. As for the verb ḥanan and the noun ḥen, both express the idea of concrete favor, rather than warm affection. Finally, the often-used word ḥesed means "loyalty," but sometimes designates the "real love" (Gen. 20:13; 47:29; I Sam. 20:8; II Sam. 9:1; Jer. 2:2; Ruth 2:20), which is evinced in acts of devotion and friendship, and is conditioned by the fact that there are two parties connected with each other by ties of family, tribe, nationality, treaty, covenant, etc. LOVE AS A SPONTANEOUS RELATIONSHIP The word "love" is first of all used to denote the father's or mother's love (Gen.22:2; 25:28; 37:3; 44:20; Prov. 13:24; Ruth 4:15), the love between young people intending to marry (Gen. 29:18, 20; I Sam. 18:20), or between husband and wife (Gen. 24:67; 29:30, 32; Judg. 14:16; 16:15; I Sam. 1:5; Prov. 5:19; Eccles. 9:9; II Chron. 11:21). This use is largely attested in the Song of Songs, whose unique obvious theme is love between man and woman, celebrated in glowing colors and passionate words (e.g., 1:3, 4, 7; 2:5; 3:1, 2, 3, 4; 5:8). "Love" designates also the specifically sexual desire for a woman (II Sam. 13:1, 4, 15). The verb ʾahev denoted also affection and esteem. It is used in this sense for David and Jonathan, to express natural friendship (I Sam. 18:1, 3; 20:17; II Sam. 1:26; cf. I Sam. 16:21); for a servant, to denote his attachment to his master's family (Ex. 21:5); and for the people, to signify their enthusiastic sympathy for David (I Sam. 18:16, 22, 28). The participle ʾohev means "friend" at least 17 times out of the 62 occurring in the Bible. On the other hand, Isaac, for instance, is said to "love" game as Rebekah knew to prepare it (Gen. 27:4, 9, 14). The verb ʾahev seems to express there a preference, as in several other texts (Gen. 25:28; 37:3, 4; Deut. 21:15; I Sam. 1:5). The rendering of reʿa in Leviticus 19:18 ("Love your reʿa as yourself"), and similar passages, by "neighbor" is hallowed by tradition; but "fellow citizen" would be more enlightening, since the reference here to one's fellow Israelite is obvious from its identification by parallelism with "kinsmen" (benei ammekha) in Leviticus 19:18 and the fact that an additional verse, verse 34, was needed in order to include the metic (ger, but see Love of Neighbor, below). Common sense tells that the "love" that these verses require the Israelite to extend to his fellow citizen and to the metic residing in Israel is consideration, or, as Jewish tradition realistically defines it, not treating them in a manner in which one would resent being treated (so the interpretation of Pseudo-Jonathan, Lev. 19:18, 34, in accordance with the famous saying attributed in Shab. 31a to Hillel but in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica, 8:7, 8, to Philo, and also to be found in Arist. 207; Tob. 4:15; Test. Patr., Iss. 5:2; Test. Patr., Dan 5:3). THE RECIPROCAL LOVE OF GOD AND PEOPLE In the Bible, the object of the divine love is generally the people of Israel. The two passages where Jerusalem is presented as the object of God's love (Ps. 78:68; 87:2) are only variants of that fundamental aspect. The relation of God to His people is conceived as a union marked by love on one side and demanding a corresponding love on the other. This reciprocal love of God and the people is expressed in categories of familial or social unity: father-son relationship, marriage analogy, or covenantal love. The doctrine of God's love for Israel, and the imperative necessity of Israel's love for God are rarely found in the first four books of the Bible, but they constitute the basic principles of the Deuteronomic teaching. The Lord's love for Israel is there viewed as the result of His election, manifested in the covenant and sanctioned by it. This clearly appears in Deuteronomy 7:7–8, where the divine love for Israel is mentioned paralleling the oath sworn by God in the rite of the covenant-making, and is ultimately justified by God's free choice. His free and personal love to Israel is manifested above all in the deliverance from Egypt. This primal love of the Lord for Israel (Deut. 4:37; 7:13; 10:15; 23:6) is the basis for the obligation of Israel's love in return (Deut. 6:5; 7:9; 10:12; 11:1, 13, 22; 13:4; 19:9; 30:6, 16, 20). Love in Deuteronomy is therefore a love that   God can command: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5; cf. 10:12; 11:1; 30:6). It is also a love intimately related to fear and reverence (Deut. 4:10; 5:29; 6:24; 8:6; 10:12; 14:23; 17:19; 31:13). Above all, it is a love which must be expressed in obedience to the requirements of the law. For to love God is to be loyal (davaq) to Him (Deut. 4:4; 10:20; 11:22; 13:5; 30:20), to walk in His ways (Deut. 10:12; 11:22; 19:9; 30:16), to keep His commandments (Deut. 10:13; 11:1, 22; 19:9), to fulfill them (Deut. 11:22; 19:9), to heed them or His voice (Deut. 11:13; 13:5), and to serve Him (Deut. 6:13; 10:12; 11:13; 13:5). It is, in brief, a love defined by and pledged in the covenant. If the people appear to be unworthy of the divine love because of its ingratitude or infidelity, the love will change into wrath. W.L. Moran has established the relationship of this Deuteronomic concept of love with the ideology and the terminology of ancient Oriental treaties, from the 18th to the 7th centuries B.C.E., in which the term "love" is used to describe the loyalty and friendship joining independent and equal rulers (cf. I Kings 5:15), overlord and vassal, or king and subject. This use of the term "love" is no innovation of the author of Deuteronomy 6:5, which is generally considered the earliest reference to the love of God in Deuteronomy. Since Judges 5:31 belongs most likely to the original Song of Deborah and uses the expression "those who love Him," it is probable that the term "love" goes back to a very early period in the Israelite covenant tradition. The formula "those who love Me" appears also in the passage of Exodus 20:6 and Deuteronomy 5:10, which belongs to the Decalogue. The father-son relationship in Deuteronomy, which reflects the very ancient Israelite concept of Israel as the Lord's son (cf. Deut. 32:6, 10–11, 18–20), is also found in the body of the Book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 1:31; 8:5; 14:1). If there is tenderness in this relationship as seen in Deuteronomy 1:31; 32:10–11; Isaiah 63:16; Jeremiah 3:19; 31:9; and Hosea 11:1, the Lord is in Deuteronomy 8:5 the father who does not spare the rod, but this divine chastening is considered in Proverbs 3:11–12 as a sign of the divine love. Israel appears as a disobedient son also in Isaiah 1:2 and 30:9. He is disloyal even to the point of turning away from the Father to other gods (Deut. 32:18–20), just as a faithless vassal abandons his sovereign for another overlord. God intervenes then as one who is angry with his sons for their disloyalty (Deut. 32:19), and who is, therefore, ready to punish them (Isa. 30:1–5, 8–14). In Deuteronomy 14:1, the relationship between father and son as applied to God and Israel is a motive to obey a particular command. It is thus clearly akin to the covenantal love, which should exist between the suzerain and the vassal, called respectively father and son in the diplomatic terminology of the ancient Near East (cf. E. Lipinski, Le poème royal du Psaume LXXXIX, 1–5, 20–38 (1967), 57–66). Malachi 1:6 parallels the son with the servant, and expects reverence from each. Since covenantal love involves reverential fear, there may be here a later offshoot of the same tradition. It may reasonably be inferred, therefore, that the ancient Israelite concept of Israel as God's son is very close to the Deuteronomic conception of covenantal love between God and Israel, though it is also associated with the current imagery of father and son. It can be influenced too by the idea of divine Fatherhood, expressed in personal names of the type ʾaviyyah (Abijah), ʾaviyyahu (Abijahu), "the Lord is my Father." Occasionally, the affection of God for His people is also depicted as the love of a mother for her child (Isa. 49:15; cf. 66:13; Deut. 32:11). The husband-wife metaphor of Hosea 2 recurs in the earliest poems of Jeremiah (Jer. 2–3; 31:2–6), who had most likely been influenced in his youth by the Hoseanic tradition. Ezekiel, too, knew the symbolism of the marriage (Ezek. 16; 23), which recurs again in Deutero-Isaiah as a means of describing Israel's restoration after the Exile: Zion was a deserted wife (Isa. 49:14; 54:6; cf. 60:15; 62:4), without children (Isa. 49:20; 51:18; 54:1), and reduced to captivity (Isa. 40:2; 52:2), because she has been repudiated by the Lord (Isa. 50:1); but the Lord had decided to take her back (Isa. 54:5–8). YHWH's wrath required the rejection of the people – the repudiation of the unfaithful wife. This was the historical turning point with which the prophets were confronted. Nevertheless, the people was the Lord's people, the chosen people, the object of God's love. What would become of the election and of the divine plan for Israel if the "repudiation" became definitive? A tension ensued between God's love and God's wrath. Even the end of Judah as an independent state did not mean the complete annihilation of the nation. The reason is that Israel is precious in the Lord's eyes, and is loved by the Lord. In Hosea 14:5 it is expressly said that God of His own free will and love will heal the faithlessness of His people. Ezekiel emphasizes that the Lord will restore Israel, but not because of her fidelity to the covenant (Ezek. 16:60–68); and Deutero-Isaiah (under the influence of Ezekiel, e.g., ch. 36) says that God blots out the transgressions of His people not because of their sacrifices, but "for His own sake," i.e., His sovereign love (Isa. 43:22–44:5). A few texts affirm that God loves the righteous (Ps. 146:8; Prov. 15:9; cf. 3:12), and some psalmists refer to God's compassion (Ps. 25:6; 40:12; 51:3; 69:17; 119:77) for all His creatures (Ps. 145:9). Such texts are relatively rare: the Lord's love is almost exclusively love for Israel, the elect people. Even the prophets never say that the Lord "loves" other peoples, or that mankind is an object of His love; but God's actions in Israel's history are dictated by His love. The same is true of His punitive educative work as well as of His gracious gifts in the continued course of history. This is the main theme of the biblical theology of love, probably because the divine love is generally conceived as related to the covenant. The use of the word ḥesed reveals indeed that this term also belongs to the covenantal terminology. The love for God is sometimes signified in an indirect way, without mentioning the divine name. Thus when Amos 5:15 exhorts the people to "love the good," he intends the justice demanded by the divine law (cf. Micah 6:8; Ps. 52:5), which is mentioned 11 times in Psalm 119 as an object of love (vs. 47, 48, 97, 113, 119, 127, 140, 159, 163, 165, 167). Of course, the author   meant by law, the stipulations of the covenant. The love of wisdom (Prov. 8:17, 21; cf. 4:5–6; 7:4; 29:3; Eccles. 4:11–14) is also interpreted as love of the law (Wisd. 6:17–18; cf. 6:12; 7:10), but this theme probably has an Egyptian origin: the personified divine wisdom seems to be an Israelite adaptation of the Old Egyptian Maat, whose love was also highly recommended in texts celebrating this deified idea of truth and justice (cf. Ch. Kayatz, Studien zu Proverbien 1–9 (1966), 98–102). The biblical passages mentioning the love for the Temple or Jerusalem (Isa. 66:10; Ps. 26:8; 122:9) express instead the desire for the divine familiarity, more vividly felt in the holy places. (Edward Lipinski) -Post-Biblical The Song of Songs has been called the world's greatest love poetry. In range of imagery, lyric quality, and personal insight, it has taught the true nature of love to much of mankind. While it was admitted to the Bible only after a struggle, and then, apparently, because it was seen as an allegory of the love of God for Israel, the manifest content of the poems could never be denied. Thus an intimate link was established in Jewish literature between human love and the love of God. Jewish mysticism made this a major motif in its esoteric teaching. Rabbinic literature likewise reveals its appreciation of love only tangentially but with the same deep feeling: "A man once said, 'When love was strong, we could have made our bed on a sword-blade; Now that our love has grown weak, a bed of 60 cubits is not large enough for us'" (Sanh. 7a). It is not the love in itself, or the passion associated with it, or its sexual fulfillment which are valued in these writings, as much as the understanding and the generosity which love creates and sustains. Thus, understanding and generosity become the highest ideals for human relationships. Love between man and woman is almost always connected with marriage, which is either the goal of love or the motive which brings it into being. This ideal of love in marriage which leads to understanding and generosity, though influenced by the various cultural circumstances among which Jews found themselves, remained relatively stable over the centuries. Though the ideal of romantic, courtly love did penetrate the Jewish community in the 11th and 12th centuries, unrequited passion never became a major Jewish concern. Following the Aristotelian denigration of the senses and passion, the Jewish philosophers, maimonides in particular, tended to denigrate sexual love, and to intellectualize the love of God. They viewed the love of God as an essentially cognitive matter. Maimonides explains that "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart" means that "you should make His apprehension the end of all your actions" (Guide of the Perplexed, 1:39; see also 3:33; Yad., Teshuvah 10:3–4, 6). Ḥasdai Crescas , as part of his general attack on the Maimonidean system, rejected this intellectualization of man's fundamental relationship to God. In great measure this is due to Crescas' insistence that positive attributes may be postulated about God (see god , Attributes of). Since he then connects will and goodness with God, it is obvious that the appropriate response to such a benevolent God is love (Or Adonai, 1:3, 3). This feeling becomes for Crescas the desired basis of man's service to God (ibid., 2:6, 1–2). joseph albo 's Book of Principles 3:35 treats human love of God and God's love for humanity in general, and for Israel in particular. God is worthy of human love because He is good, beneficent, and pleasant, the three criteria Aristotle posited for the object of love (Nicomachean Ethics 8:2; cf. Maimonides, Commentary to Mishnah Avot 1:6). God's love for people is analogous to a king's love of his subjects, a father's love of his children, and a husband's love of his wife. Albo also represents God's love for Israel as a "desire" (ḥeshek), which has not cause or reason (3:37). The Renaissance philosopher judah abrabanel (Leone Ebreo; Leo Hebraeus) devoted his book Dialoghi di Amore ("Dialogues of Love") to the theme of love, to the connection between love, passion, and reason, and to love as the principle moving the world and expressing the mutual relationship between God and his creatures. The mystics, though they had an anti-corporeal, ascetic strain in their teaching, similar to the Aristotelian view of Maimonides, nevertheless, had a more emotional understanding of love, and, following the Song of Songs, could see in the sexual passion between man and wife the model of the reintegration of the presently fragmented divine unity (Zohar 1:49b–50a). In modern times, Jewish thinkers have tended to accept the general, gradual reaffirmation of the physical aspects of human existence as essentially healthy. In the 19th and early 20th century, before this change of attitude toward the physical aspects of love, most Jewish discussions of love remained under the influence of German idealistic philosophy. The Neo-Kantian philosopher hermann cohen emphasized the moral characteristic of love in Judaism: the love of the alien and of one's fellow Jew is a function of the feeling of compassion, and human love of God is defined as the love of the moral ideal. After World War I, the existentialist philosophy of franz rosenzweig and martin buber introduced a new concern for the whole person, and emphasized human relationships. For them, love becomes the very ground of one's being, the source of all meaning and the guide to all action. Rosenzweig characterized divine revelation as an expression of love of man. Since revelation occurs in the present – creation being the past and redemption the future – the love of God is the embodiment of the human-divine encounter in every present moment. God being the source of love, He can also command man to love Him ("Love the Lord your God") as an expression of His love for man. Buber emphasized the necessary connection between love of one's fellow (re'a) and love of God, whom he calls "the eternal you (Thou)." Against Soren Kierkegaard, who felt the need to abandon his beloved fiancée in order to make room for love of God, Buber argued that only by love of the other person, the human "you"   ("Thou"), can a person attain the love of God, the "eternal you" (Thou). -Love and Fear of God (Heb. יִרְאַת ה׳ ;אַהֲבַת ה׳) In his morning prayer the Jew asks God to "unify our hearts to love and fear Thy Name." This request indicates the recognition, prevalent in Judaism since a century or two before the destruction of the Second Temple, that the love and fear of God are the major motives for serving Him, and that there is some tension between them. Both terms are widely used in the Bible, but the concept of fearing God appears much more frequently than that of loving Him. It is not clear, however, exactly what the biblical writers sought to convey about their faith by using a word for it which, when related to normal experience, regularly describes emotions of dread and fright (Josh. 10:2; Jer. 42:16). In many of its uses, the term loses all denotations of fear, and conveys a broad sense of one's religion, one's god, or one's pattern of worship (II Kings 17:28; Isa. 29:13). In some cases the term occurs in conjunction with the love of God, so that the two appear to have a similar content (Deut. 10:12). Some scholars have therefore argued that the terms are identical in meaning, but this interpretation seems unlikely in view of the heavy biblical emphasis on God's punishing sin and His utter transcendence of man. He is never described as simply loving man, though He does love Israel; rather the emphasis is on His mercy and benevolence, that is, though He is the master, He deals kindly. Hence, while the primitive denotations of fear have been sublimated in much biblical usage to a more intimate relationship with God, there is good reason to believe that the fear of God is a primary Hebrew response to God as the transcendent one, but it shades off into the love of God as the benevolent one. In both terms, however, the immediate connotation is action. Neither is used to commend an emotional state, worthy because of the feelings it arouses. Both are used as motivations for doing the will of God. They are means to observance. By early rabbinic times, the emphasis on love had risen to parity with that on fear. Throughout talmudic times, the emphasis was increasingly placed on love as the most appropriate motive for the service of God. This is in accord with the rabbinic stress on carrying out the commandments for their own sake (lishemah). The implication arises that, in doing them out of fear, it is reward and punishment which move the doer, which, to the rabbis, are extrinsic and inferior motives. They do not insist that doing the commandments for their own sake is the only acceptable way for Judaism, but rather accommodate themselves to human frailty by reasoning that from extrinsic motivation people will come to intrinsic motivation, which indicates their preference. Hence, though a number of rabbinic dicta make a distinction between the two motives, none of them prefers service from fear to service from love. The following are typical: "The reward of the lover is two portions; that of the fearer is one" (SER 28:140–1); "Act out of love, for the Torah makes a distinction between one who acts out of love and one who acts out of fear… In the former case his reward is doubled and redoubled" (Sif. Deut. 32). A major addition to the meanings of loving God is the rabbis' association of martyrdom with the term. Love would naturally seem to imply a willingness to do anything for one's beloved. With R. Akiva as the model, the rabbis saw the will to give one's life for God and His teaching as the highest expression of love for Him (Ber. 61b; Sif. Deut. 32). The rabbis, however, considered martyrdom an end in itself, and placed severe restrictions on the conditions under which one had to give one's life for the love of God. This idea became a major part of the medieval Jew's sense of the right motive from which to serve God. With the advent of Muslim-Jewish philosophy, with its rigorous, abstract evaluation of motives, a full-scale preference for the love of God over the fear of God began to pervade Jewish literature. For Maimonides, the rigorous philosophical estimate of all things led to a disparagement of the fear of God as a motive worthy of women and children alone (Maim., Yad, Teshuvah 10:1). Only the love of God, because it seeks nothing for itself, should be considered the motive which men ought to strive to achieve as the basis for their action. Yet Maimonides' Aristotelianism did not permit him to accept love in all its emotional connotations. What he carried over of love's normal meaning is its singleness of focus and its comprehensive relation to its object. In terms of man's inner state, however, since thinking was for Maimonides the most significant thing one can do, love was completely reinterpreted in terms of reason and cognition (ibid. 10:6). Even where Maimonides used the symbols of the love of God, his meaning always related to an intellectual activity which concentrates utterly on its object and seeks to carry that fixation into every other aspect of existence (Guide of the Perplexed, 3:51). Such intensive love of God is called "desire" (ḥeshek). isaac arama 's treatise Ḥazut Kashah portrays the philosophers as attaining the rank of love of God resulting from admiration, but not the higher rank of fear of god . On the other hand, the philosophers negated divine love of man, because in their view God does not relate in any way to individual humans. baruch spinoza typifies such a philosophic position, emphasizing that God does not love individual people (Ethics 5:17). In Jewish mysticism, by contrast, though there are continual references to the fear and love of God, no clear-cut emphasis on one or the other becomes dominant in any of the major movements. The Zohar, for example, esteems both very highly. The concept of devequt calls on man to intimately associate his being with God and to be linked to Him in every activity of his life. This concept incorporates aspects of the traditional ideas of both the love and fear of God. It carries over the closeness of the former, yet maintains a sense of the distance and greatness of God. Modern Jewish thinkers have avoided discussing the fear of God, since it seems too closely associated with the image of man as passive and abject. Wishing to ascribe to man an active role in his relationship with God, they have almost   universally made the reciprocal love of God and man central to their teaching. Since this idea can easily be extended to the point where the distance between God and man is obliterated, as in various schools of humanism, some thinkers have begun to suggest that a concern for the fear of God is not incompatible with the dignity of man and is required by the transcendence of God. -Love of Neighbor Leviticus 19:18 commands: "Love your neighbor (re'akha) as yourself: I am the Lord." The surrounding verses qualify this commandment. They prohibit unfair dealing and defrauding even of the defenseless, and forbid vengeance and the bearing of a grudge. It is not clear whether the commandment to love one's neighbor applies to Jews only or to non-Jews as well. There is no substantial data from the Bible concerning the practice of the commandment. From the parallel term in the first part of the verse, benei ammekha ("children of your people"), it would seem that re'akha ("your neighbor") in the second part of the verse refers to specifically Jewish neighbors (see for example, Maim., Yad, De'ot 6:3), though the word re'a is used elsewhere in the Bible to refer to non-Jewish neighbors as well. The fact that the love of the resident stranger (ger) is enjoined in the same chapter in a separate verse (19:33–34) would seem to indicate further that "neighbor" in verse 18 refers specifically to Jews. It is clear that according to the interpretation of the rabbis of the talmudic period the commandment of loving one's neighbor does not refer to idolaters. Idolatry is, of course, the classic wickedness in Jewish eyes. While there is no commandment to hate idolaters, and while there are in rabbinic literature many stories about the positive relations between Jews and idolaters, the law places so many restrictions on association with idolaters and their goods that the commandment of neighborly love cannot easily be said to apply to them. The rabbis had a clear appreciation of the significance of this commandment. Akiva called it the epitome of the Torah. Ben Azzai, in preferring the verse: "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him" is not denying Akiva's assertion of the importance of this commandment (Sifra 19:18). If anything, he is seeking a more inclusive verse, for "neighbor" might be understood literally or locally, but "creation in the image of God" excludes no human being. Similarly, both Hillel (Avot 1:12) and R. Meir (ibid. 6:1) enjoin that one should love all mankind ("creatures"). Concern for the non-Jew and his welfare is understood to be part of the Jewish goal of promoting peace among men, mi-penei darkhei shalom ("in the interest of peace"). From this commitment a whole range of moral responsibilities toward gentiles devolves upon Jews. Maimonides, in a typical ruling from the many in medieval writings, writes: "We bury the dead of heathens, comfort their mourners, and visit their sick, as this is the way of peace" (Yad, Avel 14:12). In modern times, when the Jew's neighbor for the first time is widely understood as encompassing all humanity, the understanding of neighborly love by Jewish thinkers has been, correspondingly, universalized. moses mendelssohn argues that the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 cannot mean to love someone else as one loves oneself, which is impossible; moreover, had the Torah intended to command love of neighbor "as yourself," it would have said ke-nafshekha. The term kamokha, in his analysis, does not mean "as yourself" but "that which resembles you"; the commandment thus means "love your fellow, for he is like you, equal to you and resembling you, for he was also created in the image of God; he is human, like you. This includes all humans, since all of them were created in (God's) image" (Be'ur to Lev. 19:18; the commentary to Leviticus was prepared by H. Wessely, and was supervised and edited with bracketed additions by Mendelssohn). samson raphael hirsch makes the love of all mankind a condition for being a true Israelite, and hermann cohen considers it the necessary and unique concomitant of Jewish monotheism . Cohen also follows Mendelssohn in interpreting the commandment as meaning love for the other who is like you: "The ethical self must be engaged in action. For this self, there exists no I without a Thou. Re'akha means "the other," the one who is like you. He is the Thou of the I. Selfhood is the result of an unending relation of I and Thou as well as its abiding ideal" ("Charakteristic der Ethik Maimunis" (1908), in: Juedische Schriften III, Eng. tr. in E. Jospe (ed.), Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), 218). leo baeck writes: "In Judaism neighbor is inseparable from man… there is no 'man' without 'fellowman,' no faith in God without faith in neighbor…" (Essence of Judaism (1936), 193). (Eugene B. Borowitz / Raphael Jospe and Hannah Kasher (2nd ed.) -BIBLIOGRAPHY: IN THE BIBLE: B.J. Bamberger, in: HUCA, 6 (1929), 39–53; D.W. Thomas, in: ZAW, 57 (1939), 57–64; E. Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (1958), 108–13; W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 1 (1961), 250–8; 2 (1967), 290–301; W.L. Moran, in: CBQ, 25 (1963), 77–87; N.H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (19643), 94–142; D.J. McCarthy, in: CBQ, 27 (1965), 144–7. ḤESED: A.R. Johnson, in: Interpretationes ad Vetus Testamentum pertinentes Sigmundo Mowinckel septuagenario missae (1955), 100–12; N. Glueck, Ḥesed in the Bible (1967). POST-BIBLICAL: N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig, His Life and Thought (1961), xxiii–xxv; M. Buber, Between Man and Man (1948), 28–30, 51–58; M. Harris, in: JQR, 50 (1959/60), 13–44; idem, in: Conservative Judaism, 14 (1959/60), 29–39. LOVE AND FEAR OF GOD: A. Buechler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (1928), 119–75; Scholem, Mysticism, 233–5, and index, S.V. Love of God; G. Vajda, L'Amour de Dieu dans la thélogie du moyen âge (1957); F. Bamberger, in: HUCA, 6 (1929), 39–53. LOVE OF NEIGHBOR: S.R. Hirsch, Horeb: A Philosophy of Jewish Laws and Observances (1962), 52–54; H. Cohen, Religion der Vernunft (19292), 144ff.; M. Buber, I and Thou (1937), passim. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Harvey, "Love," in: A.A. Cohen and P. Mendes-Flohr (ed.), Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (1986), 557–63; Leone Ebreo, The Philosophy of Love, tr. F. Friedenberg-Seeley and J.H. Barnes (1937); W.Z. Harvey, "Albo on the Reasonlessness of True Love," in: Iyyun, 49 (2000), 83–86; H. Kreisel, "The Love and Fear of   God," in: idem, Maimonides Political Thought (1999), 225–66; E. Simon, "The Neighbor (Re'a) Whom We Shall Love," in: M. Fox (ed.), Modern Jewish Ethics: Theory and Practice (1975), 29–56.