 | Jewish life centers on love – not like, honor or respect, but love. Love is the core of our creed (V'ahavta), Torah's literal center ("Love your neighbor as yourself"), and the most repeated admonition in sacred Jewish text ("love the stranger, for you were a stranger"). But how can love be commanded? How can any true love be required, especially if the world feels unlovely to us? What kind of love is that? Turns out, this kind of love is most important of all. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Vaethanan 5784 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah on this portion, "Jewish Greatest Hits"
Tina Turner asked, "What's love got to do with it?" Jewishly speaking, love has everything to do with "it" – if we're clear about what the "it" is.
I call this week's Torah portion "Jewish Greatest Hits," because it really is. This week's portion reprises the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-18) and also includes the Shema and V'ahavta (Deut. 6:4-9) that are the core of the Jewish creed:
Vaethanan 5784 (2024)
Click here for last year's Dvar Torah on this portion, "Jewish Greatest Hits"
Tina Turner asked, "What's love got to do with it?" Jewishly speaking, love has everything to do with "it" – if we're clear about what the "it" is.
I call this week's Torah portion "Jewish Greatest Hits," because it really is. This week's portion reprises the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-18) and also includes the Shema and V'ahavta (Deut. 6:4-9) that are the core of the Jewish creed:
| שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יהו''ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יהו''ה אֶחָד׃ וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יהו''ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָּל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָּל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָּל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ׃ וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשָׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃ וּקְשַׁרְתָּ֥ם לְא֖וֹת עַל־יָדֶ֑ךָ וְהָי֥וּ לְטֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֥ין עֵינֶֽיךָ׃ וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזֻז֥וֹת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ | Hear, Israel! YHVH is our God. YHVH is One. Love YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take these words that I command you this day to heart. Teach them to your children. Speak them in staying at home, in going on your way, when you sleep and when you wake. Bind them as a sign on your hand. Let them be a symbol before your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. |
These words might be core to our creed, but we're prone to intone them without thinking or feeling. Yet there's much to think and feel. Can love be commanded? What does even it mean to love the One we call God? Can we really love at all times in all places – especially when the world feels unlovely? And if "God" leaves us feeling unlovely, what then?
For guidance and inspiration, I turn to another part of Torah that also commands us to love – the very center of Torah, the Holiness Code, that we will revisit on Yom Kippur (Lev. 19:17-18):
For guidance and inspiration, I turn to another part of Torah that also commands us to love – the very center of Torah, the Holiness Code, that we will revisit on Yom Kippur (Lev. 19:17-18):
| לֹֽא־תִשְׂנָ֥א אֶת־אָחִ֖יךָ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ הוֹכֵ֤חַ תּוֹכִ֙יחַ֙ אֶת־עֲמִיתֶ֔ךָ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֥א עָלָ֖יו חֵֽטְא׃ לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יהו''ה׃ | Do not hate your kin in your heart: rebuke one of your people, but do not thereby take on sin. Do not take vengeance or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your fellow as yourself: I am YHVH. |
To love asks not us not to harbor resentments or keeping grudges amidst unloveliness. Even more, to love asks an emotional Golden Rule of loving another as ourselves – as if they are us. As Maimonides put it, we are to love in the way of the beloved for the beloved, not as mere reflection of our selves. We become for the beloved.
Defining love in terms of loving? That's circular and irrational... but love isn't rational. Love defies definition. We know love when we feel it. We know love as the stuff of poets – leaps of heart, grand gestures and tiny glances, gentle and passionate, sacrificing and companioning, courageous and anxious, kind, tender and maddening, accepting and goading, yearning and content. When our beloved rejoices, their joy can be truly ours. Same for their hurt.
Love lifts us beyond ourselves, subsumes us, transcends us, transforms us. To truly love is to cede some of our individuality to our love and our beloved – in a sense, to become one with them. In love we can lose ourselves, and find ourselves anew. Our rigid individuality, our separateness, our ego, our pride, all can inhibit to such love. (Some inhibitions can be healthy; others not. Odds are, deep down, we can feel the difference. If not, be in touch.)
The V'ahavta asks us to bring this same sense of love to God – and even more so. (If we need, substitute for "God" ultimate goodness, ethics, the universe, Spirit with a capital 'S,' or Love with a capital 'L.') To love God this way is indeed to love "with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might" –
– even to risk ourselves. It can be difficult to cede any part of ourselves to loving the Beloved, the existential Oneness – especially when the world is unlovely.
Yet, Torah hints, ultimately there is no other way – not if we want any part in deeply healing the world, or ourselves, or each other. There is no other way but to feel such a personal stake in another, in others, in community and the world, that it'd break our hearts to hurt them, for their hearts are parts of our own. Their fates are ours. Existentially now, their fates are ours.
Our creed is to live into these truths, and into becoming these truths. There is no other way.
Yes, there's plenty of unloveliness around us (perhaps within us, too), and some may behave unlovingly, but our creed isn't conditional. To the contrary, we are urged to love not despite the unloveliness around us but precisely because of it. Torah repeats 36 times that we are to love the stranger, the defenseless and the other because "we" ourselves have been strangers, even slaves. We're commanded to turn adversity into marinade.
There's another reason, too: it's for our own good. Love doesn't ask us to be a doormat, or accept the unacceptable, or pretend away hurt, or call things right when they are wrong – such a love is imprisoning rather than liberating. But even when the world is most unlovely, we needn't let ourselves be robbed of our power to love. Even if a particular relationship or other object of our love goes cold, we must retain our ability and inclination to love fully and deeply. To withhold love in the world because we feel unloved, to withhold kindness if we feel treated unkindly, is to imprison ourselves. Not to love hurts us most of all.
So can we dare to love anyway? Can we dare to a love in our lives so totally that no amount of unloveliness can steal away the great blessing of loving? Even if our hearts are broken – and nowadays, there's much to break our hearts – can we love even so, precisely so, even with our broken hearts?
After all, there's more room in a broken heart, and more room inside than outside.
Defining love in terms of loving? That's circular and irrational... but love isn't rational. Love defies definition. We know love when we feel it. We know love as the stuff of poets – leaps of heart, grand gestures and tiny glances, gentle and passionate, sacrificing and companioning, courageous and anxious, kind, tender and maddening, accepting and goading, yearning and content. When our beloved rejoices, their joy can be truly ours. Same for their hurt.
Love lifts us beyond ourselves, subsumes us, transcends us, transforms us. To truly love is to cede some of our individuality to our love and our beloved – in a sense, to become one with them. In love we can lose ourselves, and find ourselves anew. Our rigid individuality, our separateness, our ego, our pride, all can inhibit to such love. (Some inhibitions can be healthy; others not. Odds are, deep down, we can feel the difference. If not, be in touch.)
The V'ahavta asks us to bring this same sense of love to God – and even more so. (If we need, substitute for "God" ultimate goodness, ethics, the universe, Spirit with a capital 'S,' or Love with a capital 'L.') To love God this way is indeed to love "with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our might" –
– even to risk ourselves. It can be difficult to cede any part of ourselves to loving the Beloved, the existential Oneness – especially when the world is unlovely.
Yet, Torah hints, ultimately there is no other way – not if we want any part in deeply healing the world, or ourselves, or each other. There is no other way but to feel such a personal stake in another, in others, in community and the world, that it'd break our hearts to hurt them, for their hearts are parts of our own. Their fates are ours. Existentially now, their fates are ours.
Our creed is to live into these truths, and into becoming these truths. There is no other way.
Yes, there's plenty of unloveliness around us (perhaps within us, too), and some may behave unlovingly, but our creed isn't conditional. To the contrary, we are urged to love not despite the unloveliness around us but precisely because of it. Torah repeats 36 times that we are to love the stranger, the defenseless and the other because "we" ourselves have been strangers, even slaves. We're commanded to turn adversity into marinade.
There's another reason, too: it's for our own good. Love doesn't ask us to be a doormat, or accept the unacceptable, or pretend away hurt, or call things right when they are wrong – such a love is imprisoning rather than liberating. But even when the world is most unlovely, we needn't let ourselves be robbed of our power to love. Even if a particular relationship or other object of our love goes cold, we must retain our ability and inclination to love fully and deeply. To withhold love in the world because we feel unloved, to withhold kindness if we feel treated unkindly, is to imprison ourselves. Not to love hurts us most of all.
So can we dare to love anyway? Can we dare to a love in our lives so totally that no amount of unloveliness can steal away the great blessing of loving? Even if our hearts are broken – and nowadays, there's much to break our hearts – can we love even so, precisely so, even with our broken hearts?
After all, there's more room in a broken heart, and more room inside than outside.
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