Quotes from Jon D. Levenson

the selfless disregard of reward brings the greatest reward. There is room for reward and punishment within a structure of covenantal love, but there is no room for genuine covenantal love premised on reward and punishment alone.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Here, the focus is not on the irrevocable covenantal promises so prominent in Genesis but rather on the proven record of fidelity and integrity that rabbinic thought attributes to those national ancestors. Presented with God's offer, Israel protests her unworthiness—people do not, after all, deserve to have a specific person love them to the point of proposing marriage—