Editing Christianity and Judaism (section)

===Love===
{{Main|Jewish theology of love|Great Commandment|Agape}}
The Hebrew word for "love", ''ahavah'' (אהבה), is used to describe intimate or romantic feelings or relationships, such as the love between parent and child in Genesis 22:2; 25: 28; 37:3; the love between close friends in I Samuel 18:2, 20:17; or the love between a young man and young woman in [[Song of Songs]]. Christians will often use the Greek of the Septuagint to make distinctions between the types of love: ''[[philia]]'' for brotherly, ''[[Eros (concept)|eros]]'' for romantic and ''[[agape]]'' for self-sacrificing love.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/city/Oord~Defining+Love.pdf|title=James K.A. Smith|publisher=Calvin College}}{{Dead link|date=December 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Like many Jewish scholars and theologians, literary critic Harold Bloom understands Judaism as fundamentally a religion of love. But he argues that one can understand the Hebrew conception of love only by looking at one of the core commandments of Judaism, Leviticus 19:18, "Love your neighbor as yourself", also called the second [[Great Commandment]]. Talmudic sages Hillel and [[Rabbi Akiva]] commented that this is a major element of the Jewish religion. Also, this commandment is arguably at the center of the Jewish faith. As the third book of the Torah, Leviticus is literally the central book. Historically, Jews have considered it of central importance: traditionally, children began their study of the Torah with Leviticus, and the midrashic literature on Leviticus is among the longest and most detailed of midrashic literature.<ref>See Bamberger 1981: 737</ref> [[Bernard Jacob Bamberger]] considers Leviticus 19, beginning with God's commandment in verse 3—"You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy"—to be "the climactic chapter of the book, the one most often read and quoted" (1981:889). Leviticus 19:18 is itself the climax of this chapter.