GEN969 [Continued from [[GEN1335]] Genesis 31:19 idols SACKS xxvii] And there is a corollary principle about the Abrahamic faith, that the relationship between God and humanity, and specifically between God and the people of the covenant, is one of love --- love moralized, love as deed, love as commitment and mutual obligation. The biblical word emuna, usually translated as “faith,” does not mean this at all. It is not a cognitive attribute, meaning something you believe to be true. It belongs to an entirely different sphere of discourse. It is a moral attribute and means faithfulness, as in a marriage. Faith in the Hebrew Bible is the story of a love -- the love of God for creation, for humanity, and for a particular family, the children of Abraham, a love full of passion but one that is not always, or even often, reciprocated. Sometimes, as in the Mosaic books, it is described like the relationship between a parent and a child. At other times, particularly in the prophetic literature, it is envisaged as the love between a husband and an often faithless wife. But it is never less than love. Judaism was the first moral system to place interpersonal love at the center of the moral life: love of God “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” Deuteronomy 6:5, love of “your neighbor as yourself” Leviticus 19:18, and love of the stranger because “You know what it feels like to be a stranger” Exodus 23:9. This was later adopted by Christianity and remains a distinctive element of the Judeo-Christian ethic. All moral systems have at their heart a system a principle of justice, or reciprocal altruism: do as you would be done by. But love is something different and more demanding. Hence the fundamental importance of sexual ethics in Judaism, and of the sanctity of marriage and the family as the matrix of society and a place where children are inducted into the moral life. This is announced early in the biblical story. In the only place where the Torah states why Abraham was chosen, it says, “For I have chosen him and his household after him that they may keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just” [This verse]. Hence also the significance of circumcision as a sign of the covenant, as if to say that holiness has a direct connection with the way we conduct our sexual relations. It seems that the Torah sees the Darwinian drive to pass on one’s genes to the next generation, and with that the phenomenon of the alpha male who dominates access to females, as one of the prime causes of violence within society. Judaism is as much about the moralization of sex as it is about the moralization of power, and the two are connected.  SACKS xxvii-viii