serve different purposes. In biblical Hebrew it is sometimes called a vav hahipuch, a grammatical device that can reverse the tense of a verb— from past to future or from future to past. In modern Hebrew, the vav can simply mean“ and.” With a bit of interpretive license, we might see the vav as a connector linking these three commandments.
And you shall love your neighbor and love the stranger and love God.
The Torah commands us to love our neighbor and the stranger long before it commands us to love God. Perhaps that sequence is not accidental.
Maybe loving God does not begin with theology or ritual observance. Perhaps it begins with how we treat other human beings.
Only sixteen verses separate the commandment to love our fellow Israelites from the commandment to love the stranger. Judaism asks us to hold both truths at once.
Only when we fulfill these first two mitzvot— loving those who are like us and those who are not— can we begin to fulfill the third.
I do not want to suggest, as John Lennon does, that“ all you need is love.” Yet the Torah’ s message about how we treat others— including immigrants and strangers— is unmistakably clear.
To love God means to recognize the divine image in other people. Loving ourselves requires that we
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