10/26/2026
Sacred Service
Weekly Theme: Loving Your Neighbor
Monday, October 26, 2026:
Interspiritual teacher Mirabai Starr centers Jesus’s teaching to love one’s neighbor as oneself in his Jewish tradition:
The second-century Talmudic master Rabbi Akiva said that the entire essence of the Torah could be summed up by Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There is a famous story in the Talmud about Rabbi Hillel, another spiritual genius of this lineage. A Gentile came to a rabbi named Shammai and said that he would convert to Judaism if Shammai could teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Infuriated, the rabbi chased the man away. Hillel, however, balanced on one leg and said, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Now go and study it.” The Gentile converted on the spot.
While Judaism takes it on faith that the ultimate Divine Being transcends all attributes and defies all description, it also affirms that God is intimately concerned with the human predicament. If human beings are made in God’s image and if His nature is one of infinite compassion, then efforts to act with kindness and to defend the persecuted are as vital to spiritual life as are prayer and Torah study. To love God is to love each other and to see each other as having been created in Her image, just as we ourselves have been….
Mercy is the root that blossoms into living acts of chesed (lovingkindness) and tzedakah (righteousness). Tzedakah can be confused with charity. But it is not about grand gestures of beneficence. If we are spiritually attuned, giving becomes a natural outflow of our recognition of the interdependence of all life. To withhold what we have from others is to violate the gifts the Holy One has given to us. Not only that, but acts of tzedakah are said to sanctify God: our righteousness makes the Holy One holy!
Jesus’s teaching invites us to express who we are by how we act:
Jesus reminded his Jewish followers that the most important of all the Holy One’s prescriptions are “to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength” and “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Following these two commandments requires a balance between reaching upward toward the divine mystery and manifesting our commitment to the sacred in each other.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ calls his disciples “the salt of the earth.” By carrying his message of love to all they touch, they will serve to bring out the true flavor of the spiritual life and preserve what is best in the human experience. Sacred service in the name of love, he promises, is worth far more than worldly fame and material fortune. The divine commission is to stand up in our righteousness and radiate our light to the world.
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Reference:
Mirabai Starr, God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2026), 87–88.
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/sacred-service/
