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).