All You Need Is Love

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service on November 15th when Rabbi Lizzi delivered a drash all about love.

The Torah also calls us to love our fellow Jews. But surely not that Jew, right? The one who won’t stop posting about, y’know? The one you have blocked on Facebook? Unfortunately, Maimonides says we have to love them too. So how do we love our fellow Jews even when it’s hard?

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

On our second date, my now-husband Henry and I stood in line at Jimmy Johns and bonded over our shared distaste for mayonnaise. Except he explained that actually, his hatred of mayonnaise stems from his hatred of all foods that have a white, creamy or ambiguous consistency — he doesn’t want to look at, touch, smell or even think about cottage cheese, ranch dressing, alfredo sauce… or yogurt. Fast forward a few years: our youngest child will only eat yogurt for breakfast — not from the container, but transferred from the container to her special bowl. And not only that, she needs to take an allergy medication and won’t chew it so it needs to be dissolved in hot water and mixed into this yogurt. Every morning, for the past four years, Henry has scooped yogurt from the container into a bowl, mixing in the liquid medication and somehow managing to not puke every single day. That’s love.

There is a word used for the first time in this week’s Torah portion to describe a relationship — that introduces a very important, maybe THE most important word and concept into the Jewish lexicon — and I’ve already said it. Any guesses, advanced students of Torah? LOVE. Love. Adam and Eve — not in love. Abraham and Sarah…had an epic relationship but “love” is not used to describe it. This week, we see for the first time, love between grown-ups. “And Isaac brought Rebecca into the tent that had been his mother’s, and he loved her: וַיֶּאֱהָבֶ֑הָ — v’ye’ehaveha.” (Gen 24:67)

Our commentary writers over the years have paid a lot of attention to Isaac and Rebecca’s love, but I want to take the opportunity to widen the lens and really explore: what is unique about how Judaism understands love? Because it’s a central Jewish concept, appearing hundreds of times in the Torah after this point and throughout our liturgy and commentaries. In the words of Rabbi Shai Held, Judaism Is About Love.

The Torah doesn’t give us mitzvot, doesn’t give us spiritual work to do, that we’d do anyway on our own. In the Torah there’s not a commandment for a parent to love their child, because generally speaking, this doesn’t need to be taught. Parental love is expressed in a milion concrete ways the Torah could never command. It’s Henry with the yogurt, and any number of other even more inconvenient, emotionally challenging or disgusting things that parents don’t need to be told to do for their kids because it’s assumed. 

https://youtu.be/49UIO-Jls4k

So if certain kinds of love don’t need reminding, then what kinds of love do? If you’re God writing the Torah… what kind of love do you want to tell the Jewish people to practice, a) bc it’s important in creating a holy society and b) bc it’s not necessarily intuitive — bc you wouldn't necessarily do this on your own?

Maimonides, otherwise known as RaMbaM, the great medieval Spanish Jewish philosopher, identified a few kinds of ahava, love — that form the backbone of a relationship with Jewish tradition. 

The first kind of love is love of God, or Ahavat ha’Shem. RamBam didn’t come up with this idea but he did decide to make it the first book in his important series on Jewish Law, the Mishne Torah, inspired by the line from Deuteronomy that we read right after the Shema — Vahavta et Adonai eloheikha — and you will love the lord your god with all your heart, mind and strength. This is the foundation for everything else. 

But, there’s a problem anyone with a little EQ, emotional intelligence, has to notice: you can’t command a feeling! You couldn’t command love for a person they don’t know, let alone an invisible, formless being beyond comprehension… so how do you observe this commandment? Here’s a unique Jewish idea: love isn’t primarily about a feeling you have. Love is what you do. It’s how you act. It’s words you say, and don’t say. It’s attention you pay, or don’t pay.

So in order to practice this kind of love, Ahavat HaShem, Maimonides recommends: Go touch grass. Do what Moses does at the Burning Bush: stop and stare, spend time really trying to understand the science of things. Observe the cycle of the seasons and wonder, how do the leaves know when to fall off the trees and when to grow back in the spring? Observe the working human body and wonder, how does my body know how to breathe without me telling it to? Take care of a plant, or an animal, and understand what they need to thrive. These are marvels that if you didn’t stop and pay attention, you might take for granted, might not even see, even though they’re right in front of you or happening in your very body. And RamBam says, when a person spends this kind of time coming to know nature in this way, it’s impossible to not be swept off your feet in love with the designer. He compares this to the kind of obsession a person has who’s madly in love with someone, except it’s it’s obsession with God and all the incredible miracles just swirling around us and in us at every moment. Like Albert Einstein said, either you believe that nothing is a miracle… or you believe everything is a miracle. 

Judaism lives in the world of “everything’s a miracle.” Hence all the blessings Jews have for nature — we said some of them this morning: a blessing for light, for darkness, a blessing for the transition between light and darkness, a blessing for rainbows, for seeing the ocean, a blessing for after you go to the bathroom… all of these are opportunities to stop and really contemplate how extraordinary it is that any of this exists. This kind of holistic, full body love for God — you can call it for God, or for the Great Mystery, Gaia, whatever you want to call it — it’s not just a nice-to-have… it’s a mitzvah, a commandment in the Torah. For Maimonides, this was the most important commandment. 

Think for a moment, on a scale of 1 to 5, about the grade you’d give yourself on this mitzvah? 1 being “I haven’t touched grass or marveled in radical amazement at anything in years,” and 5 being I’m literally so God-intoxicated, radically amazed, all the time it’s hard to walk straight. Hold up your number.  (This is a great moment of spiritual accountability and an invitation to all of us to slow down, and find a moment today to touch grass.)

Ok — moving on. Because we haven’t gotten to the kind of love Rabbi Akiva says is the most important mitzvah in the Torah, and he disagrees with RaMBam. Akiva says the most important commandment in the Torah is:

Love your neighbor as you love yourself. V’ahavta l’reyekha kamocha. And I will add its companion, v’ahavta et ha’ger, Love the Stranger. It’s important to know “your neighbor,” has been understood throughout history as your fellow Jew. The “stranger” has always been understood as the non-Jews in your world, specifically the most vulnerable in your midst. Both are commandments in the Torah — and they are separate commandments. Which raises the question: Why not just say “love other people — Jews and non-Jews alike — the way you want to be loved and treat them the way you want to be treated?” Why make a distinction?

Well, sometimes your literal neighbors shovel snow ONTO your driveway, or have a dog that barks all day and all night, or have a political sign in their yard that gets under your skin… sometimes your neighbors are actually the hardest to love, so it warrants being specific because a generic mitzvah about loving people actually won’t cut it. But in our case, neighbor means Jew. So, now let’s adjust the lens: how many of us may have on occasion, found it challenging to love some of our fellow Jews in the last, say, two years? You know, those Jews — the ones you’ve blocked on Facebook because you just can’t stand to see what they’re saying about this or that issue. Guess what: we’re commanded to love them. 

And this is actually where the fact that it’s not about how you feel, but what you do, is helpful. Because no one is suggesting you feel any differently about politics or religious practice… But loving your fellow Jew, looks like putting aside those differences when someone gets sick and visiting them in the hospital or bringing food to the loved ones caring for them. It is dancing and singing at each other's simchas with genuine joy. It is showing up at the funeral and the shiva. It’s supporting our people in need even though they might not count you in the minyan or consider you a rabbi. 

And — this one’s important — practicing love of fellow Jews has to include giving one another compassionate critique, or tochecha. In fact, the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is preceded by the commandment to tell one another when you feel they’re missing the mark — in a loving way. I want to give big props to a Mishkan teen, who last week gave us tochecha, loving critique. Instead of running around spreading rumors or negative vibes, this teen got to work on a really thoughtful email which began and ended with the presumption of positive intent and of mutual care for their teachers… and also included their frustrations. When the giver of tochecha remembers they’re speaking from a place of love, it’s so much easier for the receiver to take the feedback, and actually address the problem. 

This version of loving your neighbor, your fellow Jew, takes a lifetime of real practice. Want to grade yourself on this one? 1-5?

But what about the people who don’t look like you and talk like you and worship like you? What about strangers? The Torah reminds us we also owe them behavior that reflects decency, respect, and care and yes, love. Not because it’s not about how we feel about them (we don’t know them! They’re the stranger!), rather, it’s about doing mitzvot, doing the right thing. It’s care, it’s advocacy, it’s tzedakah/charity. Including and especially when it’s inconvenient and we don’t feel like it, the way you’d show up for a family member in need. It’s been so powerful to see members of this community show up in this way for people outside the Jewish community here in Chicago over the past few weeks as our Latino neighbors have been the target of raids of snatching off the street and detention; the way you’ve shown up just to be a loving presence or pulled a person into your actual home or car, to protect them. Not because you knew them, but because it’s what you’d hope someone would do for you if you were in their shoes… All of this is what our tradition means when it says you shall love.  V’ahavta…

You can keep the strictest form of kosher, you can be the most shomer shabbat, but if you don’t act like you love people — our people, and all people — you’re missing the point. 

Since Ben talked about numbers I want to close with one of my favorite bits of gematria, Jewish numerology. God’s ineffable name in Hebrew is Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey, adds up to 26 if you add 10 + 5 + 6 + 5, the value of each of those Hebrew letters. Now ahavah is spelled aleph-hey-bet-hey, whose gematria is 1+5+2+5… 13. Every day in our service, we say the Shema: Hear O Israel, there is One God, one mystery connecting all of us — Y-H-V-H - 26. Beforehand we say a prayer called Ahavah Rabah — abundant love, about the love we receive, from our parents, from our tradition, from God- 13. Afterward we say the V’ahavta, “and you will love,” about the love we give as we walk around the world, in our home, on our way, when we lie down, when we rise up: 13. 

13 + 13 = 26.

Love in and love out is what it means to know God, to be godly. 

Which is important. Because not everyone can discern the mysteries of the universe in a blade of grass, but we can all do a shift at the food pantry. Not everyone can or wants to keep strictly kosher, but we can all show up at the shiva. Not everyone can be as involved in building and sustaining Jewish community as Gary and Hannah, and so many people in this room — but we can aspire toward their examples! And there is no shortage of need right now for us to practice love of our people, and love of strangers and the most vulnerable. In this world of ours, that love as the most basic expression of what it means to be Jewish, is needed now, more than ever.

Shabbat shalom.