You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love your fellow as yourself: I am the L-RD.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Faith in the Future, p. 78
"The Hebrew Bible contains the great command, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:18), and this has often been taken as the basis of biblical morality. But it is not: it is only part of it. The Jewish sages noted that on only one occasion does the Hebrew Bible command us to love our neighbour, but in thirty-seven places it commands us to love the stranger. Our neighbour is one we love because he is like ourselves. The stranger is one we are taught to love precisely because he is not like ourselves.”
Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals
Act only according to that maxim that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.
Justice, justice, pursue it!, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the L-RD your God is giving you.
§ The mishna teaches: One does not protest against poor gentiles who come to take gleanings, forgotten sheaves, and the produce in the corner of the field, which is given to the poor [pe’a], although they are meant exclusively for the Jewish poor, on account of the ways of peace. Similarly, the Sages taught in a baraita (Tosefta 5:4): One sustains poor gentiles along with poor Jews, and one visits sick gentiles along with sick Jews, and one buries dead gentiles along with dead Jews. All this is done on account of the ways of peace.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love 2.0: Creating Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection
Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D.
Once you actually forge a connection with someone else to create a shared moment of positivity resonance, the doors of perception widen further, in unique ways. First and foremost, you come to view one another as part of a unified whole -- a single “us” rather than two separate “me’s.” And compared to other positive emotions, love stretches your circle of concern to include others to a greater degree.