We’ve said it before: Rami Shapiro is one of our favorite contemporary spiritual writers. He’s been challenging and inspiring us since his first books began publishing in the mid-1990s. He’s a part of our Living Spiritual Teachers Project. His last two books, in 2022 and 2025, earned “Best Spiritual Book of the Year” awards from Spirituality & Practice.
And it's been interesting to watch Rabbi Rami’s subjects and perspectives evolve, as he has moved from being one of the most creative figures in contemporary American Judaism to a thinker and teacher who expands our understanding far beyond his native tradition.
Love and the Bible is an enthusiastic discovery of meaning in familiar, sometimes nowadays ignored or disregarded sources: Jewish and Christian bibles. Rami has been a teacher and professor of undergraduate religion for decades and when he teaches Bible it isn’t just what Judaism regards as scriptural — the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings), which Christians call the Old Testament — but the writings of the Christian New Testament as well. He embraces it all in this powerful, often playful and poignant, always serious exploration of what life is about. He finds answers over and over again in the messages of love in the Bible.
Without ignoring difficult passages in these scriptures that might seem to contradict a message of love, Rami locates the essential and abundant meaning of the Bible in God’s love for humanity, the love of wisdom, love of neighbor, love of stranger, love of enemy, the ways of lovers and friends, love of nature, love of animals, and how human love beautifully blends with the neediness of God. Don’t miss this book!
