In biblical tradition, the practice of encounter shows up most often as the practice of hospitality, or philoxenia. Take the word apart and you get philo, from one of the four Greek words for love, and xenia, for stranger. Love of stranger, in other words, which is about as counterintuitive as you can get. For most of us, xenophobia—fear of stranger—comes much more naturally, but in that case scripture is unnatural. According to Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Great Britain, “the Hebrew Bible in one verse commands, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ but in no fewer than 36 places
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