In the 60’s, objectors to the Vietnam war were told “America: love it or leave it.” It was sad to see Jeff Dunetz utilizing the same line of logic in his opinion piece from last week (Jewish Star, “Why does president Obama have anti-Israel activists).
The Jewish tradition has long understood that criticism is not in conflict with loving my neighbor, it’s an expression of it. If I love my neighbor, I want the best for them, including for them to be the best person they can be.
Jewish Voices for Peace is an understandable response to AIPAC’s long standing attitude that our obligation as international Jews is to support Israel’s existence, not to criticize her policies. AIPAC’s neutral approach left many feeling that their voice was not expressed, and wanting an organization that would support Israel’s safety and existence while also supporting the right of Palestinians to live in safety and dignity.
You might disagree with JVP’s stances (frankly, I disagree with them too), but that does not make them anti-Israel. I know Lynn Gottlieb, I know Lynda Holtzman, I know Arthur Waskow, and I can tell you, they are not anti-Israel. They love Israel, and they want her to live up to the values preached by our Jewish tradition.
I was troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s ignorant critique of Rabbis for Human Rights. Take a look at their annual human rights report. RHR conducts balanced inquiries into events and assigns blame with a level hand to Israelis and Palestinians alike. They do not shy away from criticizing Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, or from using their own citizens as human shields. In terms of “investigating” a barrage of 5,000 rockets, there’s not much to investigate, but it was condemned by RHR along with all human rights violations from both sides.
Mr. Dunetz quotes a passage in which Rabbi Brant Rosen questions Israel’s massive reaction to the barrage of rockets from Gaza. Mr. Dunetz doesn’t even bother commenting on the passage, as if it questioning Israel’s motives is obviously anti-Israeli. Is someone anti-American who questions George Bush’s motives for invading Iraq, or for opposing the war in the first place? Is someone anti-American who disagrees with Obama’s health-care legislation (as I would guess Mr. Dunetz does)? Is it really a matter of “Israel: love it or leave it?”
I was also troubled by Mr. Dunetz’s off-topic, ad hominum attack on Rabbi Waskow. The fact that Mr. Dunetz does not know the name of the Hasidic rabbi who ordained Rabbi Waskow does not make him an ‘unnamed’ rabbi, or inherently put Rabbi Waskow’s credentials into doubt such that his is merely a “Rabbi” with quotes. If you want to know who the “unnamed Hassidic rabbi” is, just ask him! (FYI, It is Zalman Schachter Shalomi, who has Chabad smicha) Many rabbis, especially Orthodox ones, have smicha conferred on them privately. Does Mr. Dunetz also question the legitimacy of all those “rabbis”?
Mr. Dunetz in the next breath disparages Rabbi Waskow’s work as “unusual.” Were Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi illegitimate because their work was unusual? Should all rabbis just say the same thing, do the same thing, wave flags nicely at Israel rallies and strive to be ‘usual’? How about David Saperstein at the RAC, or Ari Weiss at Uri L’Tzedek, or David Rosenn, the founder of Avodah—should they try to just fit in instead, pursue a more normal rabbinate? The Jewish world would be much poorer without trail-blazers like Rabbi Waskow.
The truth is, if you asked the right questions, you would find that most American Jews support the same things as Rabbis for Human Rights. Do you think Palestinians should fire rockets at Jewish civilians? No. Do you think innocent Palestinians should be tortured or unjustly detained, or prevented from accessing their fields to pick tomatoes? No. Is it worth investigating alleged human rights violations to protect the human rights of all citizens of Israel and make sure she lives up to our tradition’s values? Yes. Oh, sorry, was I being anti-Israel?
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Kashrut, Prayer, and Ethics
Today’s parsha contains 74 mitzvot, one of the heftiest parshiyot.
One of them is the mitzvah of shiluach haken, sending the mother bird away so she doesn’t see you take the egg.
This verse engendered significant debate about the reasons for commandments. This mitzvah goes to the very core of halachic observance, since the clear reason is that we not have a cold heart—it is training us in the ways of compassion. Maimonides says that it teaches us to be concerned about the mother bird, because even though she cannot speak, she can still feel pain. Nahmanides, on the other hand, discounts the bird herself, but says it refines our character, training us to be merciful at every moment.
Nahmanides goes on to use this mitzvah as the model for every other mitzvah. Every mitzvah comes to refine or train us in a particular way. Mitzvot are not intended for God’s benefit, and they are not just irrational decrees. We may not always know the reason for a commandment, just as I may not know why a doctor prescribes a particular medicine, but in principle there is always a reason having to do with its impact on us.
Seen this way, Jewish observance is a prescription for coping with being a flawed human in an imperfect world. The midrash calls torah a drug—it is a remedy for how to fix our soul and how to fix the world, for how to make us rahmanim, compassionate, despite the challenges of encountering reality.
This is a surprising principle if you extend it to mitzvot which do not seem inherently humanistic. People typically think of prayer as making God happy by praising him or something like that. Nahmanides would say that we have a mitzvah to pray because of how it orients us, not because of its impact on God. Jewish prayer trains us to be grateful, orients us to what is truly important in life, helps us focus on self improvement. I pray for the sick because God wants people to care about each other, not because God needs me to remind him to heal somebody. All of the mitzvot, Ramban says, come to make us rahamim, compassionate.
If this is true, then theology becomes irrelevant, even to prayer. Yes, we are required to believe in God as Jews. But what kind of God to believe in, what God is, is up in the air. You certainly don’t need to believe in a supernatural, personal God who listens to our prayers, to appreciate the value of prayer.
This understanding of mitzvot challenges some of the ways we typically observe halacha in today’s world. If much of the purpose of kashrut is to make me compassionate toward animals I consume, then it seems logically I should care even more for the workers I impact through my spending patterns. How, then, can chocolate produced using slave labor (and most of the chocolate in the world is produced using slave labor) be kosher? How can it be kosher to consume a chicken which has never seen light of day, and never had enough room to walk around, which is how chickens are raised unless they are cage free? Is that compassionate to the chicken?
Ramban has an explanation of “be holy,” in which he says that being holy means extending the Torah’s principles beyond all of the listed mitzvot, to the infinite situations of life that it couldn’t possibly deal with. In the time of the Torah, there was no factory farming, there were no chickens bred to be too fat to walk, who were kept in tiny cages in the dark. The torah is timeless in the sense that we need to extend its teachings to our present reality; its examples are from three thousand years ago, but are applicable to today. We need to take seriously the possibility that chickens raised under inhumane conditions are simply never kosher, no matter who gives the hechsher, and that we can only eat poultry and eggs from cage free chickens.
A little cross-marketing: We are starting a movie series this month, focusing on contemporary social issues as well as contemporary Israeli cinema. The first movie of our series, Food Inc, explores the food production system in America. It is an eye opening movie, which reveals shocking things I never knew about our food production system, especially the beef and poultry industries. The Sunday Torah Breakfast Club will examine some of the Jewish sources relevant to the topic raised by the movies.
Another question this raises for our contemporary consumption habits: How can products outsourced to an overseas factory, causing lost jobs, unemployment, and increased dependence on welfare, how can such a product be kosher? Tzedakah teaches me to take care first of all of my local fellows, and the highest degree of tzedakah is giving someone a job. Over the past few decades, so many jobs have been moved overseas that it is hard to find anything produced here in the US. Do I have a Jewish obligation to try to buy local, to support local jobs?
I know of a very successful entrepreneur who makes his money by taking ideas, producing them in factories in China, and selling them to Target and Walmart. He is very wealthy, and sits on the boards of a few Jewish organizations. Is that really kosher? Has he profited by causing unemployment in America?
All of these are questions that, sadly, the OU has not addressed. If the OU admitted that these are real halachic concerns, it would throw into question all of the certifications they have granted up until now, it would question their legitimacy as the most trusted hechsher.
This failure by the OU has opened the door for the Conservative movement’s Hechsher Tzedek program, and Uri Ltzedek’s Tav HaYosher program, both of which I follow and support, and invite you to support too.
The Hechsher Tzedek is a certification from the Consrvative movement which attempts to create a slate of environmental and social standards for kosher producers, including workers being paid adequately and working in safe, clean conditions. After Agriprocessors, the producer of Rubashkin’s meat, came under scrutiny for sloppy shechting practices, people who toured their facility also raised issues around worker safety. Illegal workers were being used so they could pay them sub-minimum wage. The reason shechting was sloppy, in part, was that the shochtim were tired and overworked.
The Tav HaYosher is a register of kosher restaurants which have agreed to certain standards of worker treatment. This register was created by Uri Ltzedek, and orthodox social justice organization. Only a few restaurants have joined, and those who have have received backlash from elements in the orthodox community.
These are important questions, which raise real problems with the ethics of our economic system: how are the workers treated, how are the animals treated, what impact does this company have on the environment? These are questions that all of us as Jews need to be asking.
Kashrut is meant to be more than just checking for the right symbols on a box; it is meant to be a spiritual practice of infusing compassion into every act of consumption. This is the lesson of Shiluach Haken, sending away the mother bird, having compassion for a small bird at the moment I’m just thinking about my next meal, considering how my consumption is going to affect others, even an animal.
What can we do? We can purchase cage free eggs and poultry, fair trade products, and locally produced products. We can frequent restaurants who have joined the Tav HaYosher, and let them know that we are supporting them. Please join us, too, on Sept 12 for the showing of Food Inc, and for our discussion on Sept 23 at the Torah Breakfast Club.
One of them is the mitzvah of shiluach haken, sending the mother bird away so she doesn’t see you take the egg.
This verse engendered significant debate about the reasons for commandments. This mitzvah goes to the very core of halachic observance, since the clear reason is that we not have a cold heart—it is training us in the ways of compassion. Maimonides says that it teaches us to be concerned about the mother bird, because even though she cannot speak, she can still feel pain. Nahmanides, on the other hand, discounts the bird herself, but says it refines our character, training us to be merciful at every moment.
Nahmanides goes on to use this mitzvah as the model for every other mitzvah. Every mitzvah comes to refine or train us in a particular way. Mitzvot are not intended for God’s benefit, and they are not just irrational decrees. We may not always know the reason for a commandment, just as I may not know why a doctor prescribes a particular medicine, but in principle there is always a reason having to do with its impact on us.
Seen this way, Jewish observance is a prescription for coping with being a flawed human in an imperfect world. The midrash calls torah a drug—it is a remedy for how to fix our soul and how to fix the world, for how to make us rahmanim, compassionate, despite the challenges of encountering reality.
This is a surprising principle if you extend it to mitzvot which do not seem inherently humanistic. People typically think of prayer as making God happy by praising him or something like that. Nahmanides would say that we have a mitzvah to pray because of how it orients us, not because of its impact on God. Jewish prayer trains us to be grateful, orients us to what is truly important in life, helps us focus on self improvement. I pray for the sick because God wants people to care about each other, not because God needs me to remind him to heal somebody. All of the mitzvot, Ramban says, come to make us rahamim, compassionate.
If this is true, then theology becomes irrelevant, even to prayer. Yes, we are required to believe in God as Jews. But what kind of God to believe in, what God is, is up in the air. You certainly don’t need to believe in a supernatural, personal God who listens to our prayers, to appreciate the value of prayer.
This understanding of mitzvot challenges some of the ways we typically observe halacha in today’s world. If much of the purpose of kashrut is to make me compassionate toward animals I consume, then it seems logically I should care even more for the workers I impact through my spending patterns. How, then, can chocolate produced using slave labor (and most of the chocolate in the world is produced using slave labor) be kosher? How can it be kosher to consume a chicken which has never seen light of day, and never had enough room to walk around, which is how chickens are raised unless they are cage free? Is that compassionate to the chicken?
Ramban has an explanation of “be holy,” in which he says that being holy means extending the Torah’s principles beyond all of the listed mitzvot, to the infinite situations of life that it couldn’t possibly deal with. In the time of the Torah, there was no factory farming, there were no chickens bred to be too fat to walk, who were kept in tiny cages in the dark. The torah is timeless in the sense that we need to extend its teachings to our present reality; its examples are from three thousand years ago, but are applicable to today. We need to take seriously the possibility that chickens raised under inhumane conditions are simply never kosher, no matter who gives the hechsher, and that we can only eat poultry and eggs from cage free chickens.
A little cross-marketing: We are starting a movie series this month, focusing on contemporary social issues as well as contemporary Israeli cinema. The first movie of our series, Food Inc, explores the food production system in America. It is an eye opening movie, which reveals shocking things I never knew about our food production system, especially the beef and poultry industries. The Sunday Torah Breakfast Club will examine some of the Jewish sources relevant to the topic raised by the movies.
Another question this raises for our contemporary consumption habits: How can products outsourced to an overseas factory, causing lost jobs, unemployment, and increased dependence on welfare, how can such a product be kosher? Tzedakah teaches me to take care first of all of my local fellows, and the highest degree of tzedakah is giving someone a job. Over the past few decades, so many jobs have been moved overseas that it is hard to find anything produced here in the US. Do I have a Jewish obligation to try to buy local, to support local jobs?
I know of a very successful entrepreneur who makes his money by taking ideas, producing them in factories in China, and selling them to Target and Walmart. He is very wealthy, and sits on the boards of a few Jewish organizations. Is that really kosher? Has he profited by causing unemployment in America?
All of these are questions that, sadly, the OU has not addressed. If the OU admitted that these are real halachic concerns, it would throw into question all of the certifications they have granted up until now, it would question their legitimacy as the most trusted hechsher.
This failure by the OU has opened the door for the Conservative movement’s Hechsher Tzedek program, and Uri Ltzedek’s Tav HaYosher program, both of which I follow and support, and invite you to support too.
The Hechsher Tzedek is a certification from the Consrvative movement which attempts to create a slate of environmental and social standards for kosher producers, including workers being paid adequately and working in safe, clean conditions. After Agriprocessors, the producer of Rubashkin’s meat, came under scrutiny for sloppy shechting practices, people who toured their facility also raised issues around worker safety. Illegal workers were being used so they could pay them sub-minimum wage. The reason shechting was sloppy, in part, was that the shochtim were tired and overworked.
The Tav HaYosher is a register of kosher restaurants which have agreed to certain standards of worker treatment. This register was created by Uri Ltzedek, and orthodox social justice organization. Only a few restaurants have joined, and those who have have received backlash from elements in the orthodox community.
These are important questions, which raise real problems with the ethics of our economic system: how are the workers treated, how are the animals treated, what impact does this company have on the environment? These are questions that all of us as Jews need to be asking.
Kashrut is meant to be more than just checking for the right symbols on a box; it is meant to be a spiritual practice of infusing compassion into every act of consumption. This is the lesson of Shiluach Haken, sending away the mother bird, having compassion for a small bird at the moment I’m just thinking about my next meal, considering how my consumption is going to affect others, even an animal.
What can we do? We can purchase cage free eggs and poultry, fair trade products, and locally produced products. We can frequent restaurants who have joined the Tav HaYosher, and let them know that we are supporting them. Please join us, too, on Sept 12 for the showing of Food Inc, and for our discussion on Sept 23 at the Torah Breakfast Club.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Paid Sick Leave Talk
Check out my speech at the rally on Paid Sick Leave:
http://youtu.be/biN7KZ_G3Gs
http://youtu.be/biN7KZ_G3Gs
pursuing just ends through just means
In Deuteronomy 16:20, the Torah states tzedek tzedek tirdof—Justiuce, justice shall you pursue. This phrase can also be translated as justice shall pursue justice. So Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Pshyska and others explain this to mean that even the pursuit of justice must be only along just lines, not through invalid means such as lying and the like. Unjust ends can never justify the means.
One of the passages in the Talmud that discusses this concept is in Sukkot 30-31, where it discusses a Mishnah that says a stolen lulav is invalid. It says there that the reason is that it is a mitzvah haba’ah beaveirah—a mitzvah that only came about through a sin, the implication being that the sin invalidates the mitzvah. You can’t launder the lulav—once it’s been tainted by the sin of stealing, it can’t be used for a mitzvah. According to Rashi and Rambam, the sin adheres to the lulav, and the rule only applies when there’s a specific item that the sin is attached to. According to the Ritva and Tosafot, though, this applies any time you do an aveirah as an integral part of performing a mitzvah—it taints the mitzvah, such that it’s no longer a mitzvah. A mitzvah cannot be accomplished if you have to break halacha to do it. You will notice, last night we had new benchers. We were going to photocopy benchers, and realized it would have been a copyright violation—this sugiya is telling us you can’t bench with an illegally photocopied bencher!
Another very similar halachic principle is that an aseh does not push aside a lo ta’aseh. A mitzvah never overrides a prohibition—the prohibition always takes precedence. You can never use a mitzvah as a reason for violating halacha.
I have seen this issue come up in a couple of interesting ways in this and other shuls. I was at a shul where there was a potluck Kiddush, and people would often run to the store to pick up something for Kiddush, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. They figured that it was okay, since it was for the sake of Shabbes. The principle is, it’s better not to accomplish the mitzvah of oneg Shabbat, than to break Shabbat.
Another similar situation was posed to me by somebody whose husband can’t walk well, whether he can drive to shul on Shabbes. Her argument was that it’s for a good cause. In that case, I encouraged her to rely on the Conservative movement’s driving teshuvah, even though I don’t generally hold by or advocate that teshuvah. There can be situations that justify relying on a minority or weak opinion, but you can never outright break halacha even for a good cause.
The Hofetz Hayyim, Israel Meir Kagan, brings up the issue of a gossip filled workplace. What if you work in a place where everyone is always gossiping, and you will look uncool or even dumb if you don’t join in? What if you might risk missing out on promotion, or even lose your job by not fitting in? And he says that it’s better to appear like an idiot, and even lose your job, than to violate a Torah prohibition, in this case lashon hara.
I actually worked at a Jewish High School where the Jewish study faculty shared an office with the Hebrew Teachers. There were a few teachers in that office that always were gossiping, constantly. Rabbi Michael Yorndoff sat next to me, and when one of the teachers would start up with gossip, trying to tell him something, he would give a blank stare, so as not to agree, not to urge her on, not to react at all. He looked like a fool. The sages tell us, better to look like a fool than to engage in this.
In synagogue life, we often preach one thing, but actually conduct the business in an entirely different fashion.
I know of someone who had her child in a synagogue nursery school, and ran into financial difficulties and couldn’t pay the tuition. This was a well known synagogue with a reputation for having a strong focus on tikkun olam. She withdrew her daughter mid-year, and told the treasurer she would pay the past due balance when she could, which the treasurer agreed to.
A few months later, a lawyer from the synagogue sent a threatening letter to her demanding immediate payment not only of the past due amount, but also the tuition from the rest of the year,. When she called the lawyer, he said, “You have to understand, this isn’t just a synagogue, it’s also a business.” The synagogue pressured her into credit card debt which took her almost a year to repay.
So the synagogue preached social responsibility, raises money for barefoot children in Asia and Africa, but doesn’t conduct its own business with any regard for Jewish ideals.
I asked a bookstore owner at what age I need to start teaching my daughter Torah, and she said, when you met your wife. In other words, the example we set by how we lead our lives is the most powerful way we teach. The deepest torah we can teach as a synagogue is through how we conduct business. How do we conduct meetings—do people walk away being hurt, or feeling good? How do we treat our volunteers and employees—are they degraded or honored? Do we shop at stores and buy products that are socially and environmentally responsible? Do we conserve energy and recycle? Do we practice the values we preach?
May God give us the courage to live lives of integrity,
truth and justice
in all we do and say.
I was shocked and saddened to learn of the lynch mob assault ten days ago of 4 arabs in Zion square, a central square in downtown Jerusalem. After midnight on a Thursday, 4 young arab boys were walking through Zion square, and were approached by a mob of about 50 Jewish teenagers shouting “Arabs, Arabs” and apparently hunting for Arab victims. One of the jewish teens approached an Arab, Jamal Julani, shouting “where are you going you son of a b___,” and pushed him in the chest. He fell, and the attackers continued to kick and beat him. When the paramedics arrived, they assumed he was dead; he was resuscitated and on a respirator for a number of days.
On Yom Kippur the high priest apologizes not only for his own sins, but for those of his family, the priests, and the entire community. Every sin done by another Jew implicates us, leaves a taint on our soul.
We can never let our national struggles and challenges cause us to act in hateful or unjust ways, or else we become the terrorists. We cannot respond to hate with hate. And we all need to speak out against hate.
One of the passages in the Talmud that discusses this concept is in Sukkot 30-31, where it discusses a Mishnah that says a stolen lulav is invalid. It says there that the reason is that it is a mitzvah haba’ah beaveirah—a mitzvah that only came about through a sin, the implication being that the sin invalidates the mitzvah. You can’t launder the lulav—once it’s been tainted by the sin of stealing, it can’t be used for a mitzvah. According to Rashi and Rambam, the sin adheres to the lulav, and the rule only applies when there’s a specific item that the sin is attached to. According to the Ritva and Tosafot, though, this applies any time you do an aveirah as an integral part of performing a mitzvah—it taints the mitzvah, such that it’s no longer a mitzvah. A mitzvah cannot be accomplished if you have to break halacha to do it. You will notice, last night we had new benchers. We were going to photocopy benchers, and realized it would have been a copyright violation—this sugiya is telling us you can’t bench with an illegally photocopied bencher!
Another very similar halachic principle is that an aseh does not push aside a lo ta’aseh. A mitzvah never overrides a prohibition—the prohibition always takes precedence. You can never use a mitzvah as a reason for violating halacha.
I have seen this issue come up in a couple of interesting ways in this and other shuls. I was at a shul where there was a potluck Kiddush, and people would often run to the store to pick up something for Kiddush, so they wouldn’t be embarrassed. They figured that it was okay, since it was for the sake of Shabbes. The principle is, it’s better not to accomplish the mitzvah of oneg Shabbat, than to break Shabbat.
Another similar situation was posed to me by somebody whose husband can’t walk well, whether he can drive to shul on Shabbes. Her argument was that it’s for a good cause. In that case, I encouraged her to rely on the Conservative movement’s driving teshuvah, even though I don’t generally hold by or advocate that teshuvah. There can be situations that justify relying on a minority or weak opinion, but you can never outright break halacha even for a good cause.
The Hofetz Hayyim, Israel Meir Kagan, brings up the issue of a gossip filled workplace. What if you work in a place where everyone is always gossiping, and you will look uncool or even dumb if you don’t join in? What if you might risk missing out on promotion, or even lose your job by not fitting in? And he says that it’s better to appear like an idiot, and even lose your job, than to violate a Torah prohibition, in this case lashon hara.
I actually worked at a Jewish High School where the Jewish study faculty shared an office with the Hebrew Teachers. There were a few teachers in that office that always were gossiping, constantly. Rabbi Michael Yorndoff sat next to me, and when one of the teachers would start up with gossip, trying to tell him something, he would give a blank stare, so as not to agree, not to urge her on, not to react at all. He looked like a fool. The sages tell us, better to look like a fool than to engage in this.
In synagogue life, we often preach one thing, but actually conduct the business in an entirely different fashion.
I know of someone who had her child in a synagogue nursery school, and ran into financial difficulties and couldn’t pay the tuition. This was a well known synagogue with a reputation for having a strong focus on tikkun olam. She withdrew her daughter mid-year, and told the treasurer she would pay the past due balance when she could, which the treasurer agreed to.
A few months later, a lawyer from the synagogue sent a threatening letter to her demanding immediate payment not only of the past due amount, but also the tuition from the rest of the year,. When she called the lawyer, he said, “You have to understand, this isn’t just a synagogue, it’s also a business.” The synagogue pressured her into credit card debt which took her almost a year to repay.
So the synagogue preached social responsibility, raises money for barefoot children in Asia and Africa, but doesn’t conduct its own business with any regard for Jewish ideals.
I asked a bookstore owner at what age I need to start teaching my daughter Torah, and she said, when you met your wife. In other words, the example we set by how we lead our lives is the most powerful way we teach. The deepest torah we can teach as a synagogue is through how we conduct business. How do we conduct meetings—do people walk away being hurt, or feeling good? How do we treat our volunteers and employees—are they degraded or honored? Do we shop at stores and buy products that are socially and environmentally responsible? Do we conserve energy and recycle? Do we practice the values we preach?
May God give us the courage to live lives of integrity,
truth and justice
in all we do and say.
I was shocked and saddened to learn of the lynch mob assault ten days ago of 4 arabs in Zion square, a central square in downtown Jerusalem. After midnight on a Thursday, 4 young arab boys were walking through Zion square, and were approached by a mob of about 50 Jewish teenagers shouting “Arabs, Arabs” and apparently hunting for Arab victims. One of the jewish teens approached an Arab, Jamal Julani, shouting “where are you going you son of a b___,” and pushed him in the chest. He fell, and the attackers continued to kick and beat him. When the paramedics arrived, they assumed he was dead; he was resuscitated and on a respirator for a number of days.
On Yom Kippur the high priest apologizes not only for his own sins, but for those of his family, the priests, and the entire community. Every sin done by another Jew implicates us, leaves a taint on our soul.
We can never let our national struggles and challenges cause us to act in hateful or unjust ways, or else we become the terrorists. We cannot respond to hate with hate. And we all need to speak out against hate.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Where is the divine blessing found in our lives?
I want to share 2 stories this morning, similar and yet very different.
I have a friend I’ll call eric, who lost 3 family members over the course of 3 summers, first his grandmother, grandfather, and father. After this experience, he has no more religious feeling. He has not been part of organized religion. He doesn’t feel that God will take care of things. He feels that believing in God is a great emotional support for those who believe it, but he doesn’t.
I have another acquaintance, Moshe Schwartz, part of a well-respected family in the conservative movement. Moshe’s father, Gershon, is the author of Swimming the Sea of Talmud, a collection of Talmudic texts for discussion; his mother, Shuley, is dean of List College, the joint undergraduate program JTS runs with Columbia. Almost ten years ago, Moshe’s brother died in a freak accident while at college. The funeral at Anshe Chesed in Manhattan was enormous—hundreds of people attended. It was extremely emotional—I remember Moshe and Gershon both wore beautiful ties which they had done kriyah on, ripping them in the middle to display their grief. They were devastated. Then, within the year, Gershon died. It was totally unexpected, he was a young man. Again, the funeral was enormous, shiva was well attended every night, and the family was devastated. Shuley is still Dean of List college, and Moshe now is ther hyeadmaster at a Jewish School in New Jersey.
People often assume that faith is meant to get us through hard times; that we should believe that God will make everything turn out for the best, or that everything is already for the best. Many of these same people don’t necessarily believe that. They see the reality that bad things really do happen to good people, that things don’t always turn out for the best. Our parsha, Re’eh, promises life and blessing for those who follow the Torah, and curses for those who don’t, but all too often we see that those in life who are greedy and inconsiderate really end up with the prizes.
I want to share one text this morning that sheds an interesting light on this age old question. This text is from the Talmud, Berachot 4b.
Raba (some say, R. Hisda) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct. For it is said: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord.(Lam 3:40) If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute it to the neglect of the study of the Torah. For it is said: Happy is the man whom Thou chastens, O Lord, and teaches out of Thy law.(Ps 94:12) If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not find [this to be the cause], let him be sure that these are chastenings of love. For it is said: For whom the Lord loves He chastises. (Prov 3:12)
Raba, in the name of R. Sahorah, in the name of R. Huna, says: If the Holy One, blessed be He, is pleased with a man, he crushes him with painful sufferings. For it is said: And the Lord was pleased with [him, hence] he crushed him by disease.24 Now, you might think that this is so even if he did not accept them with love. Therefore it is said: To see if his soul would offer itself in restitution.25 Even as the trespass-offering must be brought by consent, so also the sufferings must be endured with consent. And if he did accept them, what is his reward? He will see his seed, prolong his days.26 And more than that, his knowledge [of the Torah] will endure with him. For it is said: The purpose of the Lord will prosper in his hand.27
…R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou allow the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. (Lev 2:13) And the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. (Dt 28:69) Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.
In other words, some suffering is a punishment for a specific sin, and it is a useful spiritual exercise to do self-seeking when bad things happen. We need to take responsibility for our role in the bad things that happen in our life. But there are also inexplicable sufferings, that are not punishments. People who never did anything wrong that suffer tremendously. And the Talmud is suggesting here that this is how God operates, that God actually causes good people to suffer, and just expects them to endure the suffering happily with the expectation of a reward.
A Tanna recited before R. Johanan the following: If a man busies himself in the study of the Torah and in acts of charity and [nonetheless] buries his children,1 all his sins are forgiven him. R. Johanan said to him: I grant you Torah and acts of charity, for it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. (Prov 16:6) 'Mercy' is acts of charity, for it is said: He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, prosperity and honour.(Prov 21:21) 'Truth' is Torah, for it is said: Buy the truth and sell it not. (prov 23:23) But how do you know [what you say about] the one who buries his children? — A certain Elder [thereupon] recited to him in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: It is concluded from the analogy in the use of the word 'iniquity'. Here it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. And elsewhere it is written: And who recompenseth the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children. (Jer 32:18)
Here, the theological explanation is still being offered, and to a man who specifically himself suffered this kind of unjust suffering. R. Yohanan buried 10 children, so in this passage the Tanna himself is comforting R Yohanan with these words. Interestingly, in the next passage, R Yohanan disagrees with him, and says that if it has to do with children, it’s not sufferings of love. There’s no way God could be so cruel as to murder children out of his love for the parents. So R Yohanan, who himself experienced this horrendous thing, is saying there’s no way God could be that cruel—don’t tell me this is just an expression of God’s love!
A little further on, the rabbis go even farther in rejecting this suffering. A series of rabbis fall ill, and the only redemption comes not through any explanation, any teaching, but purely through human contact, through one compassionate human being reaching out to a human being who is suffering:
R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward.9 He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.
R. Johanan once fell ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Johanan raise himself?— They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.12
R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son! — He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty [i.e. my body] that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept. In the meanwhile he said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? — He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand, and he gave him his hand and he raised him.
I think in this passage the rabbis are rejecting these sufferings—it’s true that the righteous suffer, and we don’t want it. The text is a protest against suffering, against God’s way of doing things. Jews through the ages have suffered so much, and maybe it is a sign of closeness to god, but we don’t want it.
The solution to suffering isn’t theological—the rabbis find no comfort in accepting the sufferings. Solution is through faith, not community. We can lift each other up, hold each other through the difficult times. They know what their faith tells them, but that is not enough. Faith is not enough to comfort. When we visit someone in mourning, we don’t give them any explanation of their suffering—we let them speak, we listen.
What are these sufferings? They may be physical, but they have the symptoms of depression. Maybe this is the depression of someone who mourns alone, who suffers and is not comforted by anybody present. The suffering here is not simply the suffering of something bad happening, it is the experience of getting uspet and mourning alone, unseen. The solution is community. It doesn’t take away the bad things, but it holds people through them.
The Torah promises blessing, life, and good to those who follow a life of mitzvot. So what is the good in this sugiya? Maybe you could say it is the suffering itself which is a sign of God’s love, but I don’t think so—that is not enough to relieve the experience of suffering. Maybe it is the kind of relationships, home life & community we create by living a life of mitzvot.
In the two stories I started with, both people suffered. Eric suffered, and the tragedy is not that he had no fancy theological belief that could comfort him. The tragedy is that he had no community to comfort him, he lived separate from community, like the rabbis who fall ill and lie in a dark room, alone. This is what it is like being depressed or grieving alone. I have met many people who say they are not sitting shiva because they’re not religious. So really, they are going to sit in a dark room alone. Shiva is not about being religious, it is about opening myself to a community of supportive, compassionate people.
In the case of the Schwartzes, a religious family that lost husband and son over the span of a single year, there was no explanation, there was nothing anyone could say. But by living in the richness of sacred community, they were held until they could re-experience blessing, life, and goodness.
May we all hold each other through the difficult times, and be a source of support for those among us in pain, and together share in the rich joy of creating sacred community.
I have a friend I’ll call eric, who lost 3 family members over the course of 3 summers, first his grandmother, grandfather, and father. After this experience, he has no more religious feeling. He has not been part of organized religion. He doesn’t feel that God will take care of things. He feels that believing in God is a great emotional support for those who believe it, but he doesn’t.
I have another acquaintance, Moshe Schwartz, part of a well-respected family in the conservative movement. Moshe’s father, Gershon, is the author of Swimming the Sea of Talmud, a collection of Talmudic texts for discussion; his mother, Shuley, is dean of List College, the joint undergraduate program JTS runs with Columbia. Almost ten years ago, Moshe’s brother died in a freak accident while at college. The funeral at Anshe Chesed in Manhattan was enormous—hundreds of people attended. It was extremely emotional—I remember Moshe and Gershon both wore beautiful ties which they had done kriyah on, ripping them in the middle to display their grief. They were devastated. Then, within the year, Gershon died. It was totally unexpected, he was a young man. Again, the funeral was enormous, shiva was well attended every night, and the family was devastated. Shuley is still Dean of List college, and Moshe now is ther hyeadmaster at a Jewish School in New Jersey.
People often assume that faith is meant to get us through hard times; that we should believe that God will make everything turn out for the best, or that everything is already for the best. Many of these same people don’t necessarily believe that. They see the reality that bad things really do happen to good people, that things don’t always turn out for the best. Our parsha, Re’eh, promises life and blessing for those who follow the Torah, and curses for those who don’t, but all too often we see that those in life who are greedy and inconsiderate really end up with the prizes.
I want to share one text this morning that sheds an interesting light on this age old question. This text is from the Talmud, Berachot 4b.
Raba (some say, R. Hisda) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct. For it is said: Let us search and try our ways, and return unto the Lord.(Lam 3:40) If he examines and finds nothing [objectionable], let him attribute it to the neglect of the study of the Torah. For it is said: Happy is the man whom Thou chastens, O Lord, and teaches out of Thy law.(Ps 94:12) If he did attribute it [thus], and still did not find [this to be the cause], let him be sure that these are chastenings of love. For it is said: For whom the Lord loves He chastises. (Prov 3:12)
Raba, in the name of R. Sahorah, in the name of R. Huna, says: If the Holy One, blessed be He, is pleased with a man, he crushes him with painful sufferings. For it is said: And the Lord was pleased with [him, hence] he crushed him by disease.24 Now, you might think that this is so even if he did not accept them with love. Therefore it is said: To see if his soul would offer itself in restitution.25 Even as the trespass-offering must be brought by consent, so also the sufferings must be endured with consent. And if he did accept them, what is his reward? He will see his seed, prolong his days.26 And more than that, his knowledge [of the Torah] will endure with him. For it is said: The purpose of the Lord will prosper in his hand.27
…R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, and the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings: the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with salt, as it is written: Neither shalt thou allow the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking. (Lev 2:13) And the word 'covenant' is mentioned in connection with sufferings, as it is written: These are the words of the covenant. (Dt 28:69) Even as in the covenant mentioned in connection with salt, the salt lends a sweet taste to the meat, so also in the covenant mentioned in connection with sufferings, the sufferings wash away all the sins of a man.
In other words, some suffering is a punishment for a specific sin, and it is a useful spiritual exercise to do self-seeking when bad things happen. We need to take responsibility for our role in the bad things that happen in our life. But there are also inexplicable sufferings, that are not punishments. People who never did anything wrong that suffer tremendously. And the Talmud is suggesting here that this is how God operates, that God actually causes good people to suffer, and just expects them to endure the suffering happily with the expectation of a reward.
A Tanna recited before R. Johanan the following: If a man busies himself in the study of the Torah and in acts of charity and [nonetheless] buries his children,1 all his sins are forgiven him. R. Johanan said to him: I grant you Torah and acts of charity, for it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. (Prov 16:6) 'Mercy' is acts of charity, for it is said: He that followeth after righteousness and mercy findeth life, prosperity and honour.(Prov 21:21) 'Truth' is Torah, for it is said: Buy the truth and sell it not. (prov 23:23) But how do you know [what you say about] the one who buries his children? — A certain Elder [thereupon] recited to him in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: It is concluded from the analogy in the use of the word 'iniquity'. Here it is written: By mercy and truth iniquity is expiated. And elsewhere it is written: And who recompenseth the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children. (Jer 32:18)
Here, the theological explanation is still being offered, and to a man who specifically himself suffered this kind of unjust suffering. R. Yohanan buried 10 children, so in this passage the Tanna himself is comforting R Yohanan with these words. Interestingly, in the next passage, R Yohanan disagrees with him, and says that if it has to do with children, it’s not sufferings of love. There’s no way God could be so cruel as to murder children out of his love for the parents. So R Yohanan, who himself experienced this horrendous thing, is saying there’s no way God could be that cruel—don’t tell me this is just an expression of God’s love!
A little further on, the rabbis go even farther in rejecting this suffering. A series of rabbis fall ill, and the only redemption comes not through any explanation, any teaching, but purely through human contact, through one compassionate human being reaching out to a human being who is suffering:
R. Hiyya b. Abba fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward.9 He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him.
R. Johanan once fell ill and R. Hanina went in to visit him. He said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand. He gave him his hand and he raised him. Why could not R. Johanan raise himself?— They replied: The prisoner cannot free himself from jail.12
R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son! — He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty [i.e. my body] that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept. In the meanwhile he said to him: Are your sufferings welcome to you? — He replied: Neither they nor their reward. He said to him: Give me your hand, and he gave him his hand and he raised him.
I think in this passage the rabbis are rejecting these sufferings—it’s true that the righteous suffer, and we don’t want it. The text is a protest against suffering, against God’s way of doing things. Jews through the ages have suffered so much, and maybe it is a sign of closeness to god, but we don’t want it.
The solution to suffering isn’t theological—the rabbis find no comfort in accepting the sufferings. Solution is through faith, not community. We can lift each other up, hold each other through the difficult times. They know what their faith tells them, but that is not enough. Faith is not enough to comfort. When we visit someone in mourning, we don’t give them any explanation of their suffering—we let them speak, we listen.
What are these sufferings? They may be physical, but they have the symptoms of depression. Maybe this is the depression of someone who mourns alone, who suffers and is not comforted by anybody present. The suffering here is not simply the suffering of something bad happening, it is the experience of getting uspet and mourning alone, unseen. The solution is community. It doesn’t take away the bad things, but it holds people through them.
The Torah promises blessing, life, and good to those who follow a life of mitzvot. So what is the good in this sugiya? Maybe you could say it is the suffering itself which is a sign of God’s love, but I don’t think so—that is not enough to relieve the experience of suffering. Maybe it is the kind of relationships, home life & community we create by living a life of mitzvot.
In the two stories I started with, both people suffered. Eric suffered, and the tragedy is not that he had no fancy theological belief that could comfort him. The tragedy is that he had no community to comfort him, he lived separate from community, like the rabbis who fall ill and lie in a dark room, alone. This is what it is like being depressed or grieving alone. I have met many people who say they are not sitting shiva because they’re not religious. So really, they are going to sit in a dark room alone. Shiva is not about being religious, it is about opening myself to a community of supportive, compassionate people.
In the case of the Schwartzes, a religious family that lost husband and son over the span of a single year, there was no explanation, there was nothing anyone could say. But by living in the richness of sacred community, they were held until they could re-experience blessing, life, and goodness.
May we all hold each other through the difficult times, and be a source of support for those among us in pain, and together share in the rich joy of creating sacred community.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Can you command love?
There is a story told by Reb Shlomo Carlebach about the holy Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev and the Ba’al Shem Tov’s grandson, Reb Baruch of Medzhibozh. These two Rebbes were total opposites of each other- Reb Baruch was civilized, regal and proper and this was reflected in his service of G-d. Reb Levi was unpredictable, danced wildly and would burst out passionately with his love of G-d and His people.
Reb Levi dearly wanted to spend Shabbat with Reb Baruch and invited himself to his house. Reb Baruch agreed but requested that Reb Levi behave according to his ways, especially while seated at the Shabbat table with all his family.
Reb Levi thought to himself for a moment and then turned to Reb Baruch and said, “The only way I will be able to control myself is if I keep silent. Please don’t ask me to recite any blessings, because when I start to pray, I’m no longer myself. If I just say Amen I’ll be able to keep quiet.” Reb Baruch agreed.
Reb Levi came for Shabbat. During prayers he only answered “Amen”. Everything was going according to plan. At Kiddush everyone was sure Reb Levi would jump on to the table exaltedly but he simply answered “Amen” to Reb Baruch’s recitation.
In those times the custom was to eat sweet and sour fish. The deepest controversy between the Rabbis was which fish to eat first. There was one school of thought that claimed that one should start with sweet fish as it provides one with the strength to eat the sour fish. The other school of argued that one should eat the sour fish first, get it out of the way and end with a sweet taste.
In Reb Baruch’s house a waiter would approach each guest and ask which fish he would prefer to eat first- sour or sweet. Sure enough, the waiter approached Reb Levi and asked, “Hostu lieb far zissesik fish? Do you like sweet fish?”
The poor waiter stood by astonished as Reb Levi said, “Hob ich lieb far zissesik fisch? Do I love sweet fish? Ich hob lieb nor far Hashem! I love only G-d!”
With that, he took the entire platter of fish and threw it heavenwards. The fish stuck to the ceiling and dripped down.
in those days the big Rebbes wore their Tallitot for the Friday night meal. The fish dripped Right onto Reb Baruch’s tallit.
Everyone at the table gasped. But Reb Baruch was completely unworried by the whole scene, and from that day forward he would never wash his Tallit, saying that those stains were so very holy as, “they were caused by a Jew who really loves G-d- how then can I was them out?!”
After Reb Baruch passed away the Tallit was passed down from one Rebbe to another, all the while not being washed. It was regarded as so precious that the Rebbes would only were it on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. The holy Munkatcher Rebbe was the last Rebbe to wear it. Perhaps the Rebbe foresaw the devastation the Holocaust would cause, for his last request was to be buried in Rav Baruch’s stained Tallit, stained by one who loved only G-d. (copied from ajudaica.org and breslov.org)
This week’s parsha commands us to love God. As central as this command is, it feels foreign to many of us: does God really command us to have a particular feeling? Isn’t judaism a religion of action, not of inner feelings?
Part of this reaction is the legacy of Moses Medelssohn, who argued that Judaism mandates no faith or feelings, but only actions. As he put it in Jerusalem, Judaism knows of no “revealed religion” but only “divine legislation.” In that passage, he’s defining religion based on Christianity, which rejected the mitzvot—they call them deeds-- and focused exclusively on faith. To an extent, Mendelssohn was right—we are not a religion in the same sense Christianity is. Our focus is on this life, this world, and on our actions in it.
Mendelssohn’s approach opened the way for modern study of Bible advocated by the Enlightenment: integrating archaeology, philology, all the disciplines questioning the historicity of the Bible. Mendelssohn wanted to show that you can study modern approaches to Bible and still be a good Jew. You can study and even believe in evolution and the big bang, and still be a good Jew.
It is also true that while there has been some degree of consensus on halacha as a mandatory system, there has never been a consensus on what the Jewish faith entails. The Zohar does not believe in the same kind of God that Maimonides believed in. Maimonides might say that the author of the Zohar doesn’t even really know who God is. We are a community held together by our way of life, not by our theology.
And this is a beautiful thing: the tapestry of Jewish theology, the masterful works of philosophy and mysticism, is rich and wonderful, and it would be a shame instead to have some monolithic catechism. The reason I have so many mystics and philosophers on my bookshelf is because they all disagree, which makes it interesting. Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith was an attempt to codify Jewish faith, but it never became halachically mandatory, and any one of the principles can be interpreted in multiple ways. When it comes to theology, we are a religion of dialogue, of interpretation, not of dogma.
Another reason that this notion, that we have to love God, is foreign, is because we intuitively feel that feelings don’t change, that emotions are an essential part of who we are. We “fall in love”—it is something that just happens to us, we passively experience, and that we need to follow if we are to be “authentic.” This sensibility is also ingrained in our culture, in our movies, in our music. As the King said, “I can’t help falling in love with you.”
The passage we read today, which in fact we are taught to read twice a day, seems to take a different approach. The Torah commands us to love God, to fear God, to love our neighbor and not harbor resentments. How can it ask us to be responsible for our emotions? And do we really have an obligation to love God? What if we just don’t feel it?
The tradition clearly identifies loving God as a mitzvah. Here’s what Maimonides writes in his Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 10:3:
How is it fitting to love G-d? A person should love G-d with such great and powerful intensity that his soul is bound in this love and is constantly pursuing it as one, for example, who is smitten with lovesickness -- as one who is so obsessed with a carnal love that his mind is never free of desire for that woman... Even more so is the love of G-d in the hearts of those who love him...This is what King Solomon meant when he said by way of metaphor, "For I am sick with love." Indeed, the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this concept...
Very clearly, Maimonides and the vast majority of Jewish thinkers through the ages have identified this state of loving God as the culmination the Jewish lifestyle. What is striking about this passage is that loving God is not merely a general attitude one has, that one could answer if asked—Do you love God? Oh, sure. Are you a jew? Yeah, sure. What’s your favorite color? What do you like on pizza? It’s not that kind of an attitude. It’s a state of mind which is continual, a way of approaching life where you look for God’s stamp on everything. It’s like being lovesick, where you are always thinking about, yearning for somebody.
Such a person is not like the Hindu yogi, who distances himself from the world through chanting. This is a scientist with eyes wide open, finding traces of God’s goodness and justice in the universe, and yearning to more deeply understand these traces, and to embody goodness and justice in his own character.
But how do you get there?
The Tannaitic midrash, Sifrey, has an interesting comment on the verse “love your God with all your heart,” from the veahafta:
“And these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” What is this said about? Because it said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” I don’t know from which side I can love God, so it teaches, “these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” Out of this you recognize God and cleave to his ways.
In this passage, it’s a little unclear what “these things” are. One possibility is that “these things which I command you” are the mitzvot. The mitzvot train us in God’s ways of compassion and kindness, and then we appreciate God who is the embodiment of compassion and kindness. By living a life steeped in righteousness, I come to love righteousness.
One interpretation, raised by Yakov Yosef of Polnoye, is that the mitzvot train us to abandon base desires—desires for money, greed, impuses to eat and drink, hateful feelings, etc.- and to seek what is truly important. The mitzvot are consistently ways to counter our base impulses, and do what is right, what is generous. They train us to abandon what he calls ‘false loves,’ the things people in the world are in love with. When we abandon false loves, we come to see what is truly important in life, and our soul naturally starts to love God.
Another interpretation of this passage is that “these words” are the words of the veahafta themselves. In other words, we say them repeatedly to awaken the feeling in our soul. In a stalled relationship, taking the first step, saying “I’m sorry” even when you’re not really sorry, saying “I love you” even when you don’t fully feel it, can completely shift the cycle, and get that relationship onto good footing.
A great story is told about the process of abandoning false loves for the love of God. There was a shlepper who saw a beautiful, wealthy lady, and he craved for her. He asked her when he could have her, and she said “in the graveyard,” meaning, in your dreams buddy. But he took it literally and went to wait for her at the graveyard. And he waited, and waited. Surrounded by all the corpses, he started to think about her beauty, and how it would rot away. He realized that what he really loved was the source of her beauty. In this way, he came to enlightenment. I don’t think he ever got the girl. But he abandoned his base desires, and reached a state of desiring that which is truly beautiful, the source of beauty. We can only love God once we abandon the other infatuations distracting us from that love.
Maimonides, in his laws of the Foundations of Torah, has an altogether different understanding of how we come to love God. For Maimonides, “these things” refer to the physical world. We come to love God through hitbonenut, contemplation of the physical world, and appreciating God’s role in it and our own distance from God:
This honorable, awesome God, it is a commandment to love and fear Him, as it says, “you shall love the Lord your God,” and “You shall fear the Lord your God.” (Dt 6:13)
What is the way to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His great and awesome deeds and creations, and sees His wisdom from them, which has no end or measure, immediately he loves and praises and exults and desires a great desire to know the Great Name. [This is] as David said, “my soul thirsts for God, the living God.” (Ps 42:3)
When he thinks about these things themselves, immediately he is shaken around, and fears and holds-in-awe and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing in low, light knowledge before the [One of] Pure Thoughts. As David said, “That I should see your name... what is man that you should remember him?” (Ps 8:4-5)
Because of these things I will explain general rules from the work of the Lord or Worlds so that there should be an opening to understand and love The Name [i.e. God]. As the sages said on the matter of love, that through this one recognizes the one who spoke and the world came to be. (Sifrey Vaetchanan 33)
Maimonides then continues to give a brief overview of the entire cosmos, from the lowest elements up to God, and of man’s place in the cosmos. In other words, by studying physics, we can appreciate the universe, and appreciate God who made it, and stand in awe at God’s handiwork. Science is the way to understand, appreciate, and stand in awe of God’s handiwork. On the flip side, if you don’t study the universe in this depth, and don’t really understand who God is and His role in the universe and in your life, you don’t even know who He is, so you can’t possibly love Him. The philosophers (like Snoopy) used to banty about the saying, “to know Him is to love him.”
Other thinkers lower the bar somewhat, and allow for a more basic, emotional appreciation of nature as God’s handiwork. This is really the pshat of the verse from Isaiah: "Lift up your eyes on high and know: Who created these?" (Isaiah 40:26) Taking the time to stand in awe of nature, to hike a mountain and see magnificent landscapes unfolded beneath your feet, to visit the Grand Canyon and appreciate the grandness. To spend a night out of the city, and see countless tars. To smell a flower, breathing in deeply. For each of these there is a blessing, a technique for elevating this moment to an experience of the divine.
Another approach I want to mention is that of Bahya Ibn Pakuda, whose book Duties of the Heart is a full length treatise on purifying oneself to be able to attain the love of God. His book outlines a pathway of purifying oneself of base motives and desires through jewish observance, study + spiritual meditation.
Having done all that, as well as having abstained from the pleasures and desires of the world; having fathomed the Creator's greatness, essence, veracity, and exaltedness; having reflected upon your own relative worthlessness, insignificance, and inferiority in the face of the Creator's abounding goodness and great kindness toward you—you will come to love God wholeheartedly and with genuine purity of soul. And you will long for God vigorously and ardently. As the verses germane to this put it, "My soul yearned for You in the night" (Isaiah 26:9), "My soul desires Your name and the mention of You" (Isaiah 26:8), "My soul thirsts for You" (Psalrns 63:2), and "My soul thirsts for God" (Psalms 42:3).
In other words, loving God is the final goal in a long process of self refinement.
I am not saying, by the way, that we can’t be angry at God. Sometimes that is the natural reaction to a loss, and it is important to be authentic to God, and express one’s deepest emotions. A true love relationship needs to be honest, and only through honestly expressing anger can we arrive at emotional intimacy.
Conclusion
In our society we approach feelings as sacred. You can’t question them. An extreme consequence of this is people following their passions to do crazy things, like Governor Sanford of South Carolina running after a woman in South America, saying it was a “love story,” as if that made a difference, as if the feeling of being in love is supreme.
Judaism does make a claim on our inner lives. We cannot let our impulses be the dominant force in our internal life. We can shape our inner lives.
We can nurture productive, holy feelings, like love and dedication to god, love of our fellow human, love of God’s creation. If we don’t automatically feel love, we can find something to love. There is something worth loving about every person.
And we can combat counterproductive, negative feelings.
We can combat them through actions –acting in the right way even when it feels a little unnatural. If we have a grudge, we can get to know the person, help them out with something. We can speak nicely to someone, even though we don’t feel it. We can offer the olive branch through our attitude.
We can combat them through our eyes-what we look at, what we notice about the world, and about others. Do we focus on someone’s bad habits, or on the one thing that makes them great? Everybody has something about them that is worth loving, you just need to look.
And we combat them through our hearts-reminding ourselves to be passionate about that which is important.
May we all have the merit to arrive at a deep love of God, of the world, & of our fellow creatures.
Can you Command Love? SOURCES
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Repentance” 10:3
3. How is it fitting to love G-d? A person should love G-d with such great and powerful intensity that his soul is bound in this love and is constantly pursuing it as one, for example, who is smitten with lovesickness -- as one who is so obsessed with a carnal love that his mind is never free of desire for that woman... Even more so is the love of G-d in the hearts of those who love him...This is what King Solomon meant when he said by way of metaphor, "For I am sick with love." Indeed, the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this concept...
Sifrey Va’etchanan 33
“And these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” What is this said about? Because it said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” I don’t know from which side I can love God, so it teaches, “these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” Out of this you recognize God and cleave to his ways.
Maimonides, Hilchot Yesodey HaTorah 2:1-2
This honorable, awesome God, it is a commandment to love and fear Him, as it says, “you shall love the Lord your God,” and “You shall fear the Lord your God.” (Dt 6:13) What is the way to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His great and awesome deeds and creations, and sees His wisdom from them, which has no end or measure, immediately he loves and praises and exults and desires a great desire to know the Great Name. [This is] as David said, “my soul thirsts for God, the living God.” (Ps 42:3) When he thinks about these things themselves, immediately he is shaken around, and fears and holds-in-awe and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing in low, light knowledge before the [One of] Pure Thoughts. As David said, “That I should see your name... what is man that you should remember him?” (Ps 8:4-5) Because of these things I will explain general rules from the work of the Lord or Worlds so that there should be an opening to understand and love The Name [i.e. God]. As the sages said on the matter of love, that through this one recognizes the one who spoke and the world came to be. (Sifrey Vaetchanan 33)
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Repentance” 10:5-6
6. It is known and certain that the love of God does not become closely knit in a man's heart till he is continuously and thoroughly possessed by it and gives up everything else in the world for it; as God commanded us, "with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 6:5). One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows Him. According to the knowledge will be the love. If the former be little or much, so will the latter be little or much. A person ought therefore to devote himself to the understanding and comprehension of those sciences and studies which will inform him concerning his Master.
Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart (trans. Feldman), 10:1-3 (pp. 439-446)
Every single obligation and good quality required of us—whether based on reason, Scripture, or tradition— is an aspect of and a step up to the love of God, which is their aim and purpose. For there is no higher, more advanced level than it…
Since the body always demands so much to satisfy it; and since the soul cannot help but pay attention to the body's needs because it cannot enjoy peace or rest when it senses the body suffering, the soul is therefore more occupied with the needs of the body than with the things it loves (and which should preoccupy it), that are unique to it, and help it achieve eternal rest.
But when the light of reason radiates upon it and reveals how repulsive the things are that it was inclined to lovingly and drawn to in its fantasies," instead of the things that could save it in both dwelling places, the soul turns round, relinquishes everything to the merciful Creator, and directs its attention to being rescued from the things that trap and test it so…
As to how you come to the love of God, I say that it can only be expected to come about after you will have satisfied several requirements that allow for it. Do not think it will come to you on its own, for it will not.
The requirements entail two kinds of dedications of the heart, two kinds of surrender, two kinds of introspection, and two kinds of reflection…
Having done all that, as well as having abstained from the pleasures and desires of the world; having fathomed the Creator's greatness, essence, veracity, and exaltedness; having reflected upon your own relative worthlessness, insignificance, and inferiority in the face of the Creator's abounding goodness and great kindness toward you—you will come to love God wholeheartedly and with genuine purity of soul. And you will long for God vigorously and ardently. As the verses germane to this put it, "My soul yearned for You in the night" (Isaiah 26:9), "My soul desires Your name and the mention of You" (Isaiah 26:8), "My soul thirsts for You" (Psalrns 63:2), and "My soul thirsts for God" (Psalms 42:3).
Reb Levi dearly wanted to spend Shabbat with Reb Baruch and invited himself to his house. Reb Baruch agreed but requested that Reb Levi behave according to his ways, especially while seated at the Shabbat table with all his family.
Reb Levi thought to himself for a moment and then turned to Reb Baruch and said, “The only way I will be able to control myself is if I keep silent. Please don’t ask me to recite any blessings, because when I start to pray, I’m no longer myself. If I just say Amen I’ll be able to keep quiet.” Reb Baruch agreed.
Reb Levi came for Shabbat. During prayers he only answered “Amen”. Everything was going according to plan. At Kiddush everyone was sure Reb Levi would jump on to the table exaltedly but he simply answered “Amen” to Reb Baruch’s recitation.
In those times the custom was to eat sweet and sour fish. The deepest controversy between the Rabbis was which fish to eat first. There was one school of thought that claimed that one should start with sweet fish as it provides one with the strength to eat the sour fish. The other school of argued that one should eat the sour fish first, get it out of the way and end with a sweet taste.
In Reb Baruch’s house a waiter would approach each guest and ask which fish he would prefer to eat first- sour or sweet. Sure enough, the waiter approached Reb Levi and asked, “Hostu lieb far zissesik fish? Do you like sweet fish?”
The poor waiter stood by astonished as Reb Levi said, “Hob ich lieb far zissesik fisch? Do I love sweet fish? Ich hob lieb nor far Hashem! I love only G-d!”
With that, he took the entire platter of fish and threw it heavenwards. The fish stuck to the ceiling and dripped down.
in those days the big Rebbes wore their Tallitot for the Friday night meal. The fish dripped Right onto Reb Baruch’s tallit.
Everyone at the table gasped. But Reb Baruch was completely unworried by the whole scene, and from that day forward he would never wash his Tallit, saying that those stains were so very holy as, “they were caused by a Jew who really loves G-d- how then can I was them out?!”
After Reb Baruch passed away the Tallit was passed down from one Rebbe to another, all the while not being washed. It was regarded as so precious that the Rebbes would only were it on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. The holy Munkatcher Rebbe was the last Rebbe to wear it. Perhaps the Rebbe foresaw the devastation the Holocaust would cause, for his last request was to be buried in Rav Baruch’s stained Tallit, stained by one who loved only G-d. (copied from ajudaica.org and breslov.org)
This week’s parsha commands us to love God. As central as this command is, it feels foreign to many of us: does God really command us to have a particular feeling? Isn’t judaism a religion of action, not of inner feelings?
Part of this reaction is the legacy of Moses Medelssohn, who argued that Judaism mandates no faith or feelings, but only actions. As he put it in Jerusalem, Judaism knows of no “revealed religion” but only “divine legislation.” In that passage, he’s defining religion based on Christianity, which rejected the mitzvot—they call them deeds-- and focused exclusively on faith. To an extent, Mendelssohn was right—we are not a religion in the same sense Christianity is. Our focus is on this life, this world, and on our actions in it.
Mendelssohn’s approach opened the way for modern study of Bible advocated by the Enlightenment: integrating archaeology, philology, all the disciplines questioning the historicity of the Bible. Mendelssohn wanted to show that you can study modern approaches to Bible and still be a good Jew. You can study and even believe in evolution and the big bang, and still be a good Jew.
It is also true that while there has been some degree of consensus on halacha as a mandatory system, there has never been a consensus on what the Jewish faith entails. The Zohar does not believe in the same kind of God that Maimonides believed in. Maimonides might say that the author of the Zohar doesn’t even really know who God is. We are a community held together by our way of life, not by our theology.
And this is a beautiful thing: the tapestry of Jewish theology, the masterful works of philosophy and mysticism, is rich and wonderful, and it would be a shame instead to have some monolithic catechism. The reason I have so many mystics and philosophers on my bookshelf is because they all disagree, which makes it interesting. Maimonides’ 13 principles of faith was an attempt to codify Jewish faith, but it never became halachically mandatory, and any one of the principles can be interpreted in multiple ways. When it comes to theology, we are a religion of dialogue, of interpretation, not of dogma.
Another reason that this notion, that we have to love God, is foreign, is because we intuitively feel that feelings don’t change, that emotions are an essential part of who we are. We “fall in love”—it is something that just happens to us, we passively experience, and that we need to follow if we are to be “authentic.” This sensibility is also ingrained in our culture, in our movies, in our music. As the King said, “I can’t help falling in love with you.”
The passage we read today, which in fact we are taught to read twice a day, seems to take a different approach. The Torah commands us to love God, to fear God, to love our neighbor and not harbor resentments. How can it ask us to be responsible for our emotions? And do we really have an obligation to love God? What if we just don’t feel it?
The tradition clearly identifies loving God as a mitzvah. Here’s what Maimonides writes in his Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 10:3:
How is it fitting to love G-d? A person should love G-d with such great and powerful intensity that his soul is bound in this love and is constantly pursuing it as one, for example, who is smitten with lovesickness -- as one who is so obsessed with a carnal love that his mind is never free of desire for that woman... Even more so is the love of G-d in the hearts of those who love him...This is what King Solomon meant when he said by way of metaphor, "For I am sick with love." Indeed, the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this concept...
Very clearly, Maimonides and the vast majority of Jewish thinkers through the ages have identified this state of loving God as the culmination the Jewish lifestyle. What is striking about this passage is that loving God is not merely a general attitude one has, that one could answer if asked—Do you love God? Oh, sure. Are you a jew? Yeah, sure. What’s your favorite color? What do you like on pizza? It’s not that kind of an attitude. It’s a state of mind which is continual, a way of approaching life where you look for God’s stamp on everything. It’s like being lovesick, where you are always thinking about, yearning for somebody.
Such a person is not like the Hindu yogi, who distances himself from the world through chanting. This is a scientist with eyes wide open, finding traces of God’s goodness and justice in the universe, and yearning to more deeply understand these traces, and to embody goodness and justice in his own character.
But how do you get there?
The Tannaitic midrash, Sifrey, has an interesting comment on the verse “love your God with all your heart,” from the veahafta:
“And these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” What is this said about? Because it said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” I don’t know from which side I can love God, so it teaches, “these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” Out of this you recognize God and cleave to his ways.
In this passage, it’s a little unclear what “these things” are. One possibility is that “these things which I command you” are the mitzvot. The mitzvot train us in God’s ways of compassion and kindness, and then we appreciate God who is the embodiment of compassion and kindness. By living a life steeped in righteousness, I come to love righteousness.
One interpretation, raised by Yakov Yosef of Polnoye, is that the mitzvot train us to abandon base desires—desires for money, greed, impuses to eat and drink, hateful feelings, etc.- and to seek what is truly important. The mitzvot are consistently ways to counter our base impulses, and do what is right, what is generous. They train us to abandon what he calls ‘false loves,’ the things people in the world are in love with. When we abandon false loves, we come to see what is truly important in life, and our soul naturally starts to love God.
Another interpretation of this passage is that “these words” are the words of the veahafta themselves. In other words, we say them repeatedly to awaken the feeling in our soul. In a stalled relationship, taking the first step, saying “I’m sorry” even when you’re not really sorry, saying “I love you” even when you don’t fully feel it, can completely shift the cycle, and get that relationship onto good footing.
A great story is told about the process of abandoning false loves for the love of God. There was a shlepper who saw a beautiful, wealthy lady, and he craved for her. He asked her when he could have her, and she said “in the graveyard,” meaning, in your dreams buddy. But he took it literally and went to wait for her at the graveyard. And he waited, and waited. Surrounded by all the corpses, he started to think about her beauty, and how it would rot away. He realized that what he really loved was the source of her beauty. In this way, he came to enlightenment. I don’t think he ever got the girl. But he abandoned his base desires, and reached a state of desiring that which is truly beautiful, the source of beauty. We can only love God once we abandon the other infatuations distracting us from that love.
Maimonides, in his laws of the Foundations of Torah, has an altogether different understanding of how we come to love God. For Maimonides, “these things” refer to the physical world. We come to love God through hitbonenut, contemplation of the physical world, and appreciating God’s role in it and our own distance from God:
This honorable, awesome God, it is a commandment to love and fear Him, as it says, “you shall love the Lord your God,” and “You shall fear the Lord your God.” (Dt 6:13)
What is the way to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His great and awesome deeds and creations, and sees His wisdom from them, which has no end or measure, immediately he loves and praises and exults and desires a great desire to know the Great Name. [This is] as David said, “my soul thirsts for God, the living God.” (Ps 42:3)
When he thinks about these things themselves, immediately he is shaken around, and fears and holds-in-awe and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing in low, light knowledge before the [One of] Pure Thoughts. As David said, “That I should see your name... what is man that you should remember him?” (Ps 8:4-5)
Because of these things I will explain general rules from the work of the Lord or Worlds so that there should be an opening to understand and love The Name [i.e. God]. As the sages said on the matter of love, that through this one recognizes the one who spoke and the world came to be. (Sifrey Vaetchanan 33)
Maimonides then continues to give a brief overview of the entire cosmos, from the lowest elements up to God, and of man’s place in the cosmos. In other words, by studying physics, we can appreciate the universe, and appreciate God who made it, and stand in awe at God’s handiwork. Science is the way to understand, appreciate, and stand in awe of God’s handiwork. On the flip side, if you don’t study the universe in this depth, and don’t really understand who God is and His role in the universe and in your life, you don’t even know who He is, so you can’t possibly love Him. The philosophers (like Snoopy) used to banty about the saying, “to know Him is to love him.”
Other thinkers lower the bar somewhat, and allow for a more basic, emotional appreciation of nature as God’s handiwork. This is really the pshat of the verse from Isaiah: "Lift up your eyes on high and know: Who created these?" (Isaiah 40:26) Taking the time to stand in awe of nature, to hike a mountain and see magnificent landscapes unfolded beneath your feet, to visit the Grand Canyon and appreciate the grandness. To spend a night out of the city, and see countless tars. To smell a flower, breathing in deeply. For each of these there is a blessing, a technique for elevating this moment to an experience of the divine.
Another approach I want to mention is that of Bahya Ibn Pakuda, whose book Duties of the Heart is a full length treatise on purifying oneself to be able to attain the love of God. His book outlines a pathway of purifying oneself of base motives and desires through jewish observance, study + spiritual meditation.
Having done all that, as well as having abstained from the pleasures and desires of the world; having fathomed the Creator's greatness, essence, veracity, and exaltedness; having reflected upon your own relative worthlessness, insignificance, and inferiority in the face of the Creator's abounding goodness and great kindness toward you—you will come to love God wholeheartedly and with genuine purity of soul. And you will long for God vigorously and ardently. As the verses germane to this put it, "My soul yearned for You in the night" (Isaiah 26:9), "My soul desires Your name and the mention of You" (Isaiah 26:8), "My soul thirsts for You" (Psalrns 63:2), and "My soul thirsts for God" (Psalms 42:3).
In other words, loving God is the final goal in a long process of self refinement.
I am not saying, by the way, that we can’t be angry at God. Sometimes that is the natural reaction to a loss, and it is important to be authentic to God, and express one’s deepest emotions. A true love relationship needs to be honest, and only through honestly expressing anger can we arrive at emotional intimacy.
Conclusion
In our society we approach feelings as sacred. You can’t question them. An extreme consequence of this is people following their passions to do crazy things, like Governor Sanford of South Carolina running after a woman in South America, saying it was a “love story,” as if that made a difference, as if the feeling of being in love is supreme.
Judaism does make a claim on our inner lives. We cannot let our impulses be the dominant force in our internal life. We can shape our inner lives.
We can nurture productive, holy feelings, like love and dedication to god, love of our fellow human, love of God’s creation. If we don’t automatically feel love, we can find something to love. There is something worth loving about every person.
And we can combat counterproductive, negative feelings.
We can combat them through actions –acting in the right way even when it feels a little unnatural. If we have a grudge, we can get to know the person, help them out with something. We can speak nicely to someone, even though we don’t feel it. We can offer the olive branch through our attitude.
We can combat them through our eyes-what we look at, what we notice about the world, and about others. Do we focus on someone’s bad habits, or on the one thing that makes them great? Everybody has something about them that is worth loving, you just need to look.
And we combat them through our hearts-reminding ourselves to be passionate about that which is important.
May we all have the merit to arrive at a deep love of God, of the world, & of our fellow creatures.
Can you Command Love? SOURCES
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Repentance” 10:3
3. How is it fitting to love G-d? A person should love G-d with such great and powerful intensity that his soul is bound in this love and is constantly pursuing it as one, for example, who is smitten with lovesickness -- as one who is so obsessed with a carnal love that his mind is never free of desire for that woman... Even more so is the love of G-d in the hearts of those who love him...This is what King Solomon meant when he said by way of metaphor, "For I am sick with love." Indeed, the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this concept...
Sifrey Va’etchanan 33
“And these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” What is this said about? Because it said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.” I don’t know from which side I can love God, so it teaches, “these things which I command you today shall be on your heart.” Out of this you recognize God and cleave to his ways.
Maimonides, Hilchot Yesodey HaTorah 2:1-2
This honorable, awesome God, it is a commandment to love and fear Him, as it says, “you shall love the Lord your God,” and “You shall fear the Lord your God.” (Dt 6:13) What is the way to love and fear Him? When a person contemplates His great and awesome deeds and creations, and sees His wisdom from them, which has no end or measure, immediately he loves and praises and exults and desires a great desire to know the Great Name. [This is] as David said, “my soul thirsts for God, the living God.” (Ps 42:3) When he thinks about these things themselves, immediately he is shaken around, and fears and holds-in-awe and knows that he is a small, lowly, dark creature, standing in low, light knowledge before the [One of] Pure Thoughts. As David said, “That I should see your name... what is man that you should remember him?” (Ps 8:4-5) Because of these things I will explain general rules from the work of the Lord or Worlds so that there should be an opening to understand and love The Name [i.e. God]. As the sages said on the matter of love, that through this one recognizes the one who spoke and the world came to be. (Sifrey Vaetchanan 33)
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Repentance” 10:5-6
6. It is known and certain that the love of God does not become closely knit in a man's heart till he is continuously and thoroughly possessed by it and gives up everything else in the world for it; as God commanded us, "with all your heart and with all your soul" (Deut. 6:5). One only loves God with the knowledge with which one knows Him. According to the knowledge will be the love. If the former be little or much, so will the latter be little or much. A person ought therefore to devote himself to the understanding and comprehension of those sciences and studies which will inform him concerning his Master.
Bahya Ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart (trans. Feldman), 10:1-3 (pp. 439-446)
Every single obligation and good quality required of us—whether based on reason, Scripture, or tradition— is an aspect of and a step up to the love of God, which is their aim and purpose. For there is no higher, more advanced level than it…
Since the body always demands so much to satisfy it; and since the soul cannot help but pay attention to the body's needs because it cannot enjoy peace or rest when it senses the body suffering, the soul is therefore more occupied with the needs of the body than with the things it loves (and which should preoccupy it), that are unique to it, and help it achieve eternal rest.
But when the light of reason radiates upon it and reveals how repulsive the things are that it was inclined to lovingly and drawn to in its fantasies," instead of the things that could save it in both dwelling places, the soul turns round, relinquishes everything to the merciful Creator, and directs its attention to being rescued from the things that trap and test it so…
As to how you come to the love of God, I say that it can only be expected to come about after you will have satisfied several requirements that allow for it. Do not think it will come to you on its own, for it will not.
The requirements entail two kinds of dedications of the heart, two kinds of surrender, two kinds of introspection, and two kinds of reflection…
Having done all that, as well as having abstained from the pleasures and desires of the world; having fathomed the Creator's greatness, essence, veracity, and exaltedness; having reflected upon your own relative worthlessness, insignificance, and inferiority in the face of the Creator's abounding goodness and great kindness toward you—you will come to love God wholeheartedly and with genuine purity of soul. And you will long for God vigorously and ardently. As the verses germane to this put it, "My soul yearned for You in the night" (Isaiah 26:9), "My soul desires Your name and the mention of You" (Isaiah 26:8), "My soul thirsts for You" (Psalrns 63:2), and "My soul thirsts for God" (Psalms 42:3).
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