Not Like Us

“It is easy to love our neighbour. It is difficult to love the stranger. This is why the Torah commands us only one to love our neighbour, but on thirty-six occasions commands us to love the stranger. A neighbour is one we love because he is like us. A stranger is one we are taught to love precisely because he is not like us. That is the Torah’s repeated and most powerful command. I believe it to be the greatest religious truth articulated in the past four thousand years.”

Radical Then, Radical Now p. 92