Post by Rabbi Neil on Jul 27, 2018 21:16:35 GMT
V’ahavta et Adonai elohecha – You shall love the Eternal your God. How? B’chol l’vav’cha, uv’chol nafsh’cha uv’chol m’odecha – with all your heart, all your soul and all your might. Words from Sh’ma, and from this week’s Torah portion. But how can love be commanded? And what does it mean for our love of God to be commanded, particularly today, on Tu B’Av, which is a day traditionally dedicated to love of each other?
To answer this question, we partly have to explore what love is, in Judaism. In traditional Jewish thought, most often following the view of Maimonides, love is something that is uncovered and expressed. It is not a warm, glowing, fuzzy feeling, and it’s not the romantic or even erotic kind of love that is usually address on Tu B’Av. For Maimonides, love of God and knowledge of God are the same thing (see Guide for the Perplexed 51). As he says, “When a person contemplates God’s wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates God’s infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, they will immediately love, praise and glorify God… When they continue to reflect on these same matters, they will immediately recoil in awe and fear, appreciating how they are a tiny, lowly, and dark creature, standing with their flimsy, limited wisdom before the One who is of perfect knowledge.” (Mishneh Torah, Y’sodei HaTorah, 2:1-2) For Maimonides, love of God meant placing awareness of God as Creator on our heart, and also cleaving to God (Sifre D’varim 33), a concept I’ll return to later. Knowing God and loving God are basically synonymous, and that love arises from contemplation of the world around us and where it came from. More than that, love of God traditionally comes from the idea that God revealed to us God’s will, and that in an of itself was an act of love. As Shmuel Sperber said, “What kind of God would put us into this world and not give us some kind of guidance for living in it?!” Since Torah is an expression of God’s will, study of Torah naturally leads to some understanding of God.
And that’s all well and good, until you become a Reform Jew, and don’t believe that the Torah was dictated word for word from God. Rav Yehudah Rock, a contemporary Rabbi, describes (https://www.etzion.org.il/en/love-god-and-torah-study) the dual sense of love – that of the sense of praise and wonder on the one hand, and the thirst and longing for God, the knowledge of God, on the other. He says that “one’s wonder at God’s wisdom is what gives rise to the desire to know more.” But if we cannot ascertain God’s wisdom from Torah, where can it come from? I would suggest from the rest of creation, and our liturgy quotes numerous times from Biblical sources to that effect. For example, the book of Psalms (Ps. 8:4-5) says that “when I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers… what is man that you should recall him?” I remember the first moment of seeing an ultrasound of Zafra and being totally confused, totally awed, by creation. I couldn’t understand how she was being formed out of essentially nothing. When in later scans I saw her spine and her beating heart, I was again filled with humility and awe. The moment she was born they gave her straight to me and the words, “What do I do?” came out of my mouth. I had held babies countless times before, but I was so overwhelmed with wonder and fear that I was awestruck and confused. That is the closest I think I have ever got to Maimonides’ idea of love of God, and it wasn’t based in Torah, but in wonder of creation as made totally evident by the miracle of birth.
Biblical scholar Marc Zvi Brettler notes, as have others in the past, that it’s odd to command love. If love is commanded, then how can it be genuine love? He writes (My People’s Prayer Book, Vol. 1, p.100-101) that the section of Sh’ma in which love is commanded it “the central, and most misunderstood, section of the Sh’ma.” He explains that it has to be read in its contents as a covenant in which Israel is God’s vassal and the commandments of Deuteronomy are the obligations that Israel must fulfil in order to keep God’s protection over them. He explains that treaties with vassal states at the time customarily used the word “love”. “For example,” he says, “the vassal treaties of the early-seventh-century B.C.E. Assyrian king Esarhaddon, which have significant similarities to Deuteronomy, call on the vassal to “love the crown prince designated Ashurbanipal, son of your lord, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria as you do your own lives.” In fact, the main point of the text is that Ashurbanipal alone shall be recognized as king, an idea quite close to the initial verse of the Sh’ma.” I need to clarify something here. The first line of Sh’ma has for a long time been translated as “Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One,” and was taken as a statement of monotheistic faith. However, that doesn’t make sense because the statement that God is One is fairly meaningless, since I am also one, as is everyone else here. However, when translated as “Hear, O Israel, Adonai our God and only Adonai,” then especially when read in the context of ancient treaties, it makes a lot of sense. So, Brettler explains that ““Love” here is therefore a technical term for acceptance of treaty obligations.” He further explains, for example that the mezuzot that Sh’ma commands aren’t amulets designed to ward away evil, but are constant reminders of our vassal status. I think his analysis is extremely appealing, but then that’s very depressing. In this reading, love of God isn’t about knowing God, it’s about subservience. That’s not a healthy expression of love as we would use the word today.
Earlier, I mentioned cleaving to God, and this idea certainly took hold in Chasidism, itself following on from earlier mystical thought. D’veikut, cleaving to God, became an essential aspect of Jewish life, and was in and of itself another form of love, as expressed through mystical experience. But an authentic mystical Jewish experience is so difficult to draw out unless one devotes one’s entire life to it that that also becomes problematic for many of us. Sure, Kabbalah teachers are a dime a dozen, but true Jewish mysticism comes only with a lifetime of devotion and particularly separation. The Hasidic masters regularly communed with nature and the fables of their lives often involve the subversion of natural laws in order to demonstrate their devotion.
So, we who love Torah but who do not necessarily see it as the immutable will of God, we who do not feel like we are vassals to an almighty Protector, and we who do not have the time or the knowledge to spend our lives clinging to God through mystical ecstasy, how can we uncover or express love of God? Rav Moshe Aberman, another contemporary Rabbis, explains (https://torahmitzion.org/learn/love-god/) that “our rabbis have taken the idea of the love of God one step further. Our love of God must be projected to others. The Gemarah in Yumah (86a) speaks of making God loved by virtue of our behavior. Our deeds should reflect our love enhancing the love others feel for him. The midrash (Sifrei Devarim, Parashat Va’etchanan sec 32) reads the words “ve’ahavta et Adonai” as make Adonai beloved. It calls for us to take our passive love of God and proactively take measures to make God loved by others just as Avraham Avinu did.” This accords with the Chasidic saying that to love God truly, one must first love one’s fellow human being. And that if anyone tells you that they love God but does not love their fellow human being, you will know that they are lying. Love of God as love shown to a supernatural Deity, is incomprehensibly difficult for most of us. Love of our fellow human being is at least something possible, no matter how difficult it may be. And it is difficult. Some people are jerks! But Judaism acknowledges that while some people may make terrible decisions, love of them as a human being comes from one core principle – that we were all made in the Divine image. Not only are we all family, but we are all miraculous. Indeed, not just love of other fellow human beings, but Judaism demands love for all. As we read in Pirke Avot (1:12), we are commanded to love all our fellow creatures. All life. The acknowledgement of life, the real understanding and taking to heart of the miracle of life, should in and of itself bring out love for every element of creation.
And that is why the command to love God is so important on Tu B’Av, because love of God and love of everyone around us cannot be differentiated. If we don’t love each other, we don’t love God. If we don’t see the Divine in each other, then we’re not fully loving them. We don’t need to yearn for Enlightenment through Torah, we don’t need to exclude ourselves from society in order to field God in the wilderness. We need to find God in each other, and love each other for what we find. So, while Tu B’Av is traditionally a day of rather superficial expressions of love, I’d like to suggest on this Tu B’Av that we all think about how we might look for love in other people, and to demonstrate our love to them, not because we might receive something back but simply because expressing love is a profound – perhaps the most profound – Jewish way of living. Every person in this Sanctuary, every person in this community, every being in this town, is deserving of our love. And if we find God in the expression of that love, so much the better, but if we don’t then at least we can know that our expressions of love are, in and of themselves, Divine. May we not only love each other but show that love to each other, so that we and future generations may live truly authentic Jewish lives. And let us say, Amen.
To answer this question, we partly have to explore what love is, in Judaism. In traditional Jewish thought, most often following the view of Maimonides, love is something that is uncovered and expressed. It is not a warm, glowing, fuzzy feeling, and it’s not the romantic or even erotic kind of love that is usually address on Tu B’Av. For Maimonides, love of God and knowledge of God are the same thing (see Guide for the Perplexed 51). As he says, “When a person contemplates God’s wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates God’s infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, they will immediately love, praise and glorify God… When they continue to reflect on these same matters, they will immediately recoil in awe and fear, appreciating how they are a tiny, lowly, and dark creature, standing with their flimsy, limited wisdom before the One who is of perfect knowledge.” (Mishneh Torah, Y’sodei HaTorah, 2:1-2) For Maimonides, love of God meant placing awareness of God as Creator on our heart, and also cleaving to God (Sifre D’varim 33), a concept I’ll return to later. Knowing God and loving God are basically synonymous, and that love arises from contemplation of the world around us and where it came from. More than that, love of God traditionally comes from the idea that God revealed to us God’s will, and that in an of itself was an act of love. As Shmuel Sperber said, “What kind of God would put us into this world and not give us some kind of guidance for living in it?!” Since Torah is an expression of God’s will, study of Torah naturally leads to some understanding of God.
And that’s all well and good, until you become a Reform Jew, and don’t believe that the Torah was dictated word for word from God. Rav Yehudah Rock, a contemporary Rabbi, describes (https://www.etzion.org.il/en/love-god-and-torah-study) the dual sense of love – that of the sense of praise and wonder on the one hand, and the thirst and longing for God, the knowledge of God, on the other. He says that “one’s wonder at God’s wisdom is what gives rise to the desire to know more.” But if we cannot ascertain God’s wisdom from Torah, where can it come from? I would suggest from the rest of creation, and our liturgy quotes numerous times from Biblical sources to that effect. For example, the book of Psalms (Ps. 8:4-5) says that “when I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers… what is man that you should recall him?” I remember the first moment of seeing an ultrasound of Zafra and being totally confused, totally awed, by creation. I couldn’t understand how she was being formed out of essentially nothing. When in later scans I saw her spine and her beating heart, I was again filled with humility and awe. The moment she was born they gave her straight to me and the words, “What do I do?” came out of my mouth. I had held babies countless times before, but I was so overwhelmed with wonder and fear that I was awestruck and confused. That is the closest I think I have ever got to Maimonides’ idea of love of God, and it wasn’t based in Torah, but in wonder of creation as made totally evident by the miracle of birth.
Biblical scholar Marc Zvi Brettler notes, as have others in the past, that it’s odd to command love. If love is commanded, then how can it be genuine love? He writes (My People’s Prayer Book, Vol. 1, p.100-101) that the section of Sh’ma in which love is commanded it “the central, and most misunderstood, section of the Sh’ma.” He explains that it has to be read in its contents as a covenant in which Israel is God’s vassal and the commandments of Deuteronomy are the obligations that Israel must fulfil in order to keep God’s protection over them. He explains that treaties with vassal states at the time customarily used the word “love”. “For example,” he says, “the vassal treaties of the early-seventh-century B.C.E. Assyrian king Esarhaddon, which have significant similarities to Deuteronomy, call on the vassal to “love the crown prince designated Ashurbanipal, son of your lord, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria as you do your own lives.” In fact, the main point of the text is that Ashurbanipal alone shall be recognized as king, an idea quite close to the initial verse of the Sh’ma.” I need to clarify something here. The first line of Sh’ma has for a long time been translated as “Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One,” and was taken as a statement of monotheistic faith. However, that doesn’t make sense because the statement that God is One is fairly meaningless, since I am also one, as is everyone else here. However, when translated as “Hear, O Israel, Adonai our God and only Adonai,” then especially when read in the context of ancient treaties, it makes a lot of sense. So, Brettler explains that ““Love” here is therefore a technical term for acceptance of treaty obligations.” He further explains, for example that the mezuzot that Sh’ma commands aren’t amulets designed to ward away evil, but are constant reminders of our vassal status. I think his analysis is extremely appealing, but then that’s very depressing. In this reading, love of God isn’t about knowing God, it’s about subservience. That’s not a healthy expression of love as we would use the word today.
Earlier, I mentioned cleaving to God, and this idea certainly took hold in Chasidism, itself following on from earlier mystical thought. D’veikut, cleaving to God, became an essential aspect of Jewish life, and was in and of itself another form of love, as expressed through mystical experience. But an authentic mystical Jewish experience is so difficult to draw out unless one devotes one’s entire life to it that that also becomes problematic for many of us. Sure, Kabbalah teachers are a dime a dozen, but true Jewish mysticism comes only with a lifetime of devotion and particularly separation. The Hasidic masters regularly communed with nature and the fables of their lives often involve the subversion of natural laws in order to demonstrate their devotion.
So, we who love Torah but who do not necessarily see it as the immutable will of God, we who do not feel like we are vassals to an almighty Protector, and we who do not have the time or the knowledge to spend our lives clinging to God through mystical ecstasy, how can we uncover or express love of God? Rav Moshe Aberman, another contemporary Rabbis, explains (https://torahmitzion.org/learn/love-god/) that “our rabbis have taken the idea of the love of God one step further. Our love of God must be projected to others. The Gemarah in Yumah (86a) speaks of making God loved by virtue of our behavior. Our deeds should reflect our love enhancing the love others feel for him. The midrash (Sifrei Devarim, Parashat Va’etchanan sec 32) reads the words “ve’ahavta et Adonai” as make Adonai beloved. It calls for us to take our passive love of God and proactively take measures to make God loved by others just as Avraham Avinu did.” This accords with the Chasidic saying that to love God truly, one must first love one’s fellow human being. And that if anyone tells you that they love God but does not love their fellow human being, you will know that they are lying. Love of God as love shown to a supernatural Deity, is incomprehensibly difficult for most of us. Love of our fellow human being is at least something possible, no matter how difficult it may be. And it is difficult. Some people are jerks! But Judaism acknowledges that while some people may make terrible decisions, love of them as a human being comes from one core principle – that we were all made in the Divine image. Not only are we all family, but we are all miraculous. Indeed, not just love of other fellow human beings, but Judaism demands love for all. As we read in Pirke Avot (1:12), we are commanded to love all our fellow creatures. All life. The acknowledgement of life, the real understanding and taking to heart of the miracle of life, should in and of itself bring out love for every element of creation.
And that is why the command to love God is so important on Tu B’Av, because love of God and love of everyone around us cannot be differentiated. If we don’t love each other, we don’t love God. If we don’t see the Divine in each other, then we’re not fully loving them. We don’t need to yearn for Enlightenment through Torah, we don’t need to exclude ourselves from society in order to field God in the wilderness. We need to find God in each other, and love each other for what we find. So, while Tu B’Av is traditionally a day of rather superficial expressions of love, I’d like to suggest on this Tu B’Av that we all think about how we might look for love in other people, and to demonstrate our love to them, not because we might receive something back but simply because expressing love is a profound – perhaps the most profound – Jewish way of living. Every person in this Sanctuary, every person in this community, every being in this town, is deserving of our love. And if we find God in the expression of that love, so much the better, but if we don’t then at least we can know that our expressions of love are, in and of themselves, Divine. May we not only love each other but show that love to each other, so that we and future generations may live truly authentic Jewish lives. And let us say, Amen.