Love is not enough.

The opening chapter of Kadochim contains two of the most powerful of all commands,

to love your neighbor and to love the stranger.

Love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord, goes the first,

and the second, when a stranger comes to live in your land, don't mistreat him.

Treat the stranger the way you treat the native born, love him as yourself. For you,

were strangers in Egypt, I am the Lord your God. The first is often called the Golden Rule and held to be

universal to all cultures. But actually that's a mistake. The Golden Rule is different. In its positive

formulation it says, act towards others as you would wish them to act toward you,

or in its negative formulation given by Hillel, what is hateful to you don't do to your neighbor.

Now, those rules are not about love, they're about justice, or more precisely what even

Lucianouric neurologies call reciprocal altruism. The terror doesn't say

be nice or kind to your neighbor because you would wish him to be nice or kind to you. It says,

love your neighbor as yourself. That is something different and far stronger. The second command

is more radical still. Most people in most societies in most

ages have feared, hated and often harmed the stranger. There's a word for this, xenophobia,

but how often have you heard the opposite word xenophilia? My guess is never. The reason is people

usually don't love strangers. That's why almost always when

the terrorist states this command, and it does so, according to the sages, 36 times, it adds an

explanation because you were strangers in Egypt. I know of no other nation that was born as a nation in slavery and exile.

We know what it feels like to be a vulnerable minority, and that is why love of the stranger is so

central to Judaism and so marginal to most other systems of ethics. But here too, the terror doesn't use the word justice. There is a

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