Special Mensch•Mark For Elul 4: Loving God - Ohev et HaMakom (Extra for Shabbat)
How do we love God? And how can that love be commanded?
Loving God-Middah Ohev et HaMakom
Today’s Mensch-Mark is being delivered on Friday, to avoid sending it on Shabbat. Like mannah in the wilderness, there’s a double portion of mensch-marks today for your inbox!
URJ’s Take:
"You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5)
You may recognize this from the siddur or prayer book. It begins the paragraph immediately following the Sh'ma, the prayer commonly known as the V'ahavta. This biblical text commands that we are to love God. Several questions immediately come to mind: Is it possible for one to be commanded to feel a specific emotion? And is this command to love made all the more difficult because we are being commanded to love that which is invisible, not a tangible thing that can be held?
Placing this verse into the context of the siddur, the ancient authors of our prayer book showed some extraordinary wisdom. In the morning service the prayer Ahavah Rabbah precedes the Sh'ma. It reads,
"Deep is your love for us, Adonai our God and great is Your compassion. Our Maker and Ruler, our ancestors trusted You, and You taught them the laws of life…."
In the evening service we read Ahavat Olam, before the Sh'ma. Its first line states,
"Unending is Your love for Your people, the House of Israel: Torah and Mitzvot, laws and precepts have You taught us."
In both prayers we are reminded first of God's deep love for the people of Israel. This declaration of God's love is then made tangible through the gift of Torah and mitzvot. We respond to Ahavah Rabbah and Ahavat Olam with the Sh'ma, declaring that Adonai is our God and Adonai is one. It is only then that we are commanded to "love God with all of your heart, all of your soul and with all of your might." The authors of the prayer book wanted to remind the people of the reciprocal nature of the relationship between Israel and God. God loves us as demonstrated through the gift of Torah and mitzvot and we love God back by loving the Torah and showing that love by fulfilling the mitzvot.
Loving God is included in the 48 middot (ethical values) necessary for the acquisition of Torah. Midrash Shmuel teaches,
"One who loves the Ruler (i.e., God) occupies himself or herself with the Ruler's most valuable treasure. Diligent study of Torah is therefore an expression of a love for God. Through study, one learns to recognize the Godly path and express one's love of God by emulating God's ways." (The Pirkei Avos Treasury, ArtScroll p.419)
BARBARA BINDER KADDEN
My Take: The God of Love
We love God by loving our neighbor, since all were created in God’s image. As I wrote at the time of the Supreme Court’s ruling on LGBTQ Marriage, in a piece entitled "The God of Love," "It is truly astounding how quickly the landscape changed. It often takes generations for social attitudes to evolve, and we've seen how stubbornly slow that process can be with racism and antisemitism. But in America, for LGBTQ rights, the change has been stunning and dramatic."
In the article, I trace my own evolution on this topic to my relationship with my cousin Jeff Avick, who spoke at my synagogue in 1993 about coping with HIV. He said:
The God that I learned about in my home was a God of love, understanding, mercy and reason. That God has given me real strength...His love for us is not measured by the absence of hardships. His love for us is the life he's given us.
Six years later, when I last saw Jeff in hospice, curled up in a fetal position and barely breathing, I understood that no God of mine could have afflicted him so mercilessly. Rather, I sensed the sanctity in every heroic gasp of air, in each moment of survival. I reached back for every bit of kindness I could summon, and held his hand.
At his funeral, which took place back in my synagogue's sanctuary, I read a poem Jeff had written decades earlier, when he was a teenager, called "Valentine to Man."
I listened to the music -
And it sounded so sweet that I shouted
up to heaven:
"Let me love."
And God spoke to me and He said...
"You do love.
You feel the sun rise and exalt as it travels
Its long journey over its old road.
You see the great green wonder rolling in and out,
taking life from its depths of turbulence to its shores of peace
You hear the music of nature singing to you
Ringing sweetly in your ears.
You laugh and you cry, small yet large
against the majesty of life.
And while there is no one, nothing -
You do love...
And you breathe and sing along with the awkward,
Beautiful melody...
AND YOU KNOW ME,
And you love.
I've reflected on Jeff's words as the world has become more accepting of people in their infinite variety, and more embracing of all who don't fit so neatly into the categories that used to comprise what we called "community" but was in fact was leaving far too many behind.
Not only have I been freed from old, crusty preconceptions, my God has as well. My God is now, unequivocally, a God of love, not a God of exclusion, not a God who afflicts good, loving people with dreaded diseases to punish them for being so good and loving.
Some come out of the closet. I came off the fence.
Either one is a leap of faith, an act of great courage. It is also an act of return - a return to our true values, our deepest held beliefs, to who we were all along. (Click here for the full article.)
My Take #2: How can you command love of God?
We are first commanded to internalize the mitzvot — to literally take them to heart. And that is the means that bring us to the end - love of God. How then, can you command love? Well, it’s not really a command, as professor Reuven Kimelman has pointed out. Read properly, he writes, “V’ahavta is a response. An instinctive reaction projecting love out into the world. Projecting back what we have received.”
In both the morning and evening liturgies, the Sh’ma is immediately preceded by a prayer about love. In the morning, that prayer is Ahava Rabbah – “A Great Love,” a transcendent love, an UNCONDITIONAL love. The word for love, “Ahava,” appears in various forms no fewer than six times in that single prayer, including the first, middle and last words. Love, love, love, love, love, love. Six times! Like a mantra. We are loved by an unconditional love – a boundless love, as we say at night, Ahavat Olam.
When you’ve been loved in that way, when the world has loved you in that way, the only way to respond is to give love in return.
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