“thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
........................................................................................................................................ Leviticus 19-18

Torah relates that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, whose character our inner soul reflects. His mission was “to work it and guard it”. Torah is the means to re-enter the Garden of Eden. The 'work' is to express the soul's inner beauty through the active commandants in outer reality while “guarding” through the commandants forbidding unseemly behaviour that the more mundane character of outer reality not spoil the soul's inner specialness.

Living a genuine Torah life, carefully observing God's commandants, openly and sincerely exploring the depths of Torah, and experiencing standing before God in prayer brings ever increasing awareness of this joy, transcendent reality. It becomes part of, indeed central to oneself, to the experience of life.

Banishment from the Garden of Eden was something like the present exile, removal from God's presence. We might ask how this could be possible since “ the whole land is filled with His glory.” The answer is that we are no longer able to perceive God's presence. Godliness permeates all reality but we are largely oblivious of this.

We are capable of perceiving God in our lives. This must be our ideal if we truly want closeness to God. It requires willingness and effort to live in a Godly world.

Judaism, recognizes the reality of different religious systems and has gone so far to say that God makes certain demands of all beings- certain ways in which all human beings ought to behave in response to the best within them, or within God- those demands translate sometimes differently for Jews than for non Jews.

“But all people have to treat each other decently. Nobody has the right to steal. Nobody has the right to commit murder. Nobody has the right to be adulterous. So, there are certain universal demands on every one, and then there are other demands for us who are Jews because we have a particular tradition.”