Reflections
D'vrei Torah by Rabbi Ellie Shemtov
A world without love by Peter and Gordon
Please lock me away And don't allow the day Here inside where I hide With my loneliness I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love There was once a man whose adolescent son had fallen into sinful ways. The boy would stay out late at night, carouse with Gentiles, and chase after girls. He even spoke to his mother and father with disrespect. Finally, at a complete loss as to how he might lead his son back to the proper path, the father went to speak to the Baal Shem Tov. “Rebbe,” he said, “I am at my wits’ end. My son has fallen into such evil that I fear for his soul. He has completely abandoned the teachings of our faith, and his behavior is disgraceful. I have threatened to beat him or to throw him out of the house, but nothing seems to work. How can I convince him to change his ways?” The Baal Shem Tov replied: “Love him more.” “But he deserves no love!” the father answered. “That is all the more reason to increase your love for him,” the Besht insisted. “Do you think God loves us because we deserve it? No. Love is the very essence of life. It is the light that illuminates the path to God. If you would have your son follow that path, then you must be such a light unto him. Love him more.” In the Talmud, Rabbi Simlai declares: The Torah begins with an act of lovingkindness and the Torah ends with an act of lovingkindness.” In the Book of Genesis when Adam and Eve are naked, God clothes them. At the end of Torah when Moses dies, God buries him. A midrash adds that the middle of the Torah also includes acts of lovingkindness. When Abraham is in need of healing after his circumcision, God visits him.[1] Judaism is about love. If that sounds strange to you, I get it. How often do we hear that Christianity is about love but Judaism is about….. well it’s about….something else …. like law or justice, or whatever. In the past Christian anti-Judaism was about the supersession of a loveless Judaism by a loving Christianity.[2] American Jews long ago began to define Judaism as whatever they thought Christianity was not, perhaps out of their anxiety about assimilation. Since Christianity was about love, Judaism wasn’t. Since Christianity places an emphasis on feeling, Judaism was more about action and ritual. Since Christians were so focused on belief, Judaism played down faith. Because Christianity stresses divine grace, many Jews believed that Judaism doesn’t have a notion of grace. In actuality, grace, in Hebrew chesed, is foundational to Jewish theology and spirituality. The gift of life, God’s love and the gift of Torah, is grace -- not something we have earned but a gift. In the same vein, we often hear that whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy and grace, the God of what Christians refer to as the Old Testament, is an angry, vindictive and bloodthirsty God.[3] The truth is Judaism is a religion of love and law, of action and emotion. In fact, Jewish liturgy reminds us every day, dare I say multiple times a day that Jewish law itself is a manifestation of divine love.[4] Twice a day we recite the Shema in which we declare God’s love for us and then we recite words that come right out of the Book of Deuteronomy: וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your might (Deut. 6:5) Judaism is built on the idea that God loves us. It’s a reciprocal love. We see that in the blessing that appears just before we recite the Shma: ברוך אתה ה' הבוחר בעמו ישראל באהבה Blessed are You Adonai our God, who lovingly cares for the people Israel. Rabbi Akiva said: Even more beloved is the human being, for it was made known to him that he was created in the image of God. In other words, God didn’t just create us in God’s image but God let us know that God did that.[5] Some Jewish thinkers go further. When you love someone, said Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, you don’t tell them unless you want to be in a relationship with them. That is God’s hope – that God’s love for us will be reciprocated by us. That’s what we recite in the Shema – we attest to God’s vast love for us, and then take upon ourselves the charge to reciprocate that love.[6] Many of us struggle with ambivalence and uncertainty about ourselves, about our worth and lovability. God is not ambivalent. God loves us more than we love ourselves.[7] Despite the fact that God loves all of us, it doesn’t mean we are all the same. In one Mishnah we read: Adam was created singly to proclaim the greatness of the Blessed Holy One, for a human being stamps many coins with one die and they are all alike one with the other. But the King of Kings, the Blessed Holy One, has stamped all of humanity with the die of the first man, and yet not one of them is like his fellow.[8] The message here is that there has never been and never will be in the history of the cosmos another human being just like you. And that simple fact testifies to the glory of God. We are all valuable and we are all distinctly unique. That is why each of us matters. It was said of Reb Simcha Bunem that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha-olam—“for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’efer”—“I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out each slip of paper as necessary, as a reminder to himself. While these two statements might seem like a contradiction, Jewish tradition tells us that knowing we matter is not pride. Pride would be the insistence that we have earned all of the worth we have, or the pretension that we matter while others do not. Knowing our worth is not vanity. Vanity would be the insistence that our worth is something we ourselves have achieved. Similarly, knowing our talents and abilities is not arrogance but self-awareness.[9] Being humble does not mean feeling incompetent or inferior to others. Humility has nothing at all in common with self-hatred or self-loathing. To see ourselves as worthless, is to grant ourselves license to behave in vulgar and abject ways. As Maimonides said: If one has a base view of oneself, one will readily do base things.”[10]. As the Hasidic master Rabbi Zadok Ha-Kohen of Lublin once said: Just as a person believes in God, one must also believe in oneself.”[11] Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a 20th century teacher of Mussar, a movement focusing on virtue-based ethics and personal transformation, wrote that to be conscious only of our shortcomings is a prescription for failure and despondency. Woe to a person who is unaware of their shortcomings, because they will not know what to work on. But even greater woe to a person who is unaware of their virtues, because they don’t even know what they have to work with.[12] Whether we think too much of ourselves or too little, we all too frequently end up thinking only of ourselves. As the 12 Step slogan goes: Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking of yourself less. Just as no human being can confer God’s love upon us, so also can no human being take it away.[13] This afternoon we will talk about the story of Jonah. The assumption we often make is that Jonah is read on Yom Kippur because it is a story about the power of repentance. Threatened with obliteration for their sins, the people of Nineveh heed Jonah’s warning: they repent and change their ways. But another reason we read Jonah is because he is an ambivalent prophet; a man called by God, given a mission and he refuses to do it. It is only reluctantly, kicking and screaming that he finally responds to the summons to fulfill God’s word. In a way we are all Jonah. Each of us has things often deeply consequential things, we’re called upon to do that we’d simply rather not. So, like Jonah we run away from our calling. On Yom Kippur we acknowledge that painful reality, both to God and to ourselves, and stand ready to respond to God’s call.[14] Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote: to be created in the image of God is to be assigned a specific task by God. Rabbi Soloveitchik believed that each of us is given a distinctive mission and the moment into which we are born is reflective of the assignment God has in mind for us.[15] In some sense Rabbi Soloveitchik adds, we are not free to accept or decline our mission. We are sometimes called to a task that is overwhelming or exhausting or that seems like a fool’s errand, and yet we are not free to walk away. This was a hard lesson for Jonah to learn. We read this story in part because it is also our story. We read this story on Yom Kippur to remind ourselves that although we have the ability to turn away, religiously (Jewishly) speaking we don’t have the right to do so. Jewish tradition makes a simple but audacious claim: despite our conflicting impulses, we remain capable of choosing the good – and the height of good is love. Judaism is not naïve about who and what we are, so it isn’t that we will choose the good, but rather we can choose the good.[16] God loves us but God’s love is mediated and experienced, at least initially, through the love shown to us by human caregivers. We need parents and caregivers to bolster our sense of dignity and self-worth.[17] Our parents’ love is something that helps us create who we are. Ideally, they teach us how to love, how to mourn loss, how to form real and enduring relationships; how to live peacefully with others; and how to learn and grow from our experiences.[18] Having said this I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that many of us did not experience anything like that growing up. While love and nurturing builds us up, neglect and abuse tear us down. If good care can help us mature into loving people, poor, indifferent, or abusive care can damage or stunt us in countless ways.[19] As philosopher Natalia Marandiuc writes: “It is not the case that the human self gives rise to love, but rather that the love that comes from others gives rise to the self.” If we look at the Torah a little bit closer, we will see that it isn’t just about God’s love or individual love. We are commanded to love our neighbor and the stranger as well[20]. The Hebrew word ger is translated as “stranger” “sojourner” “alien” or “foreigner. In the Torah this word ger refers to a non-Israelite resident of the land who has no family or clan to look after him, and who is therefore vulnerable to social and economic exploitation.”[21] We have a name for folks like that today-- immigrants. It may be hard enough to love a member of our own community, but we are asked to do more; to love the stranger like a neighbor. When it comes to loving our neighbor, the Torah is not unique. All over the ancient Near East evidence has been found of concern for the widow, the orphan and the impoverished. It is rare however, to find the stranger included in such lists outside of the Torah.[22] In Exodus we read: You shall not oppress a stranger for you know the feeling of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.[23] The Torah’s charge is based on empathy. Since you know what it feels like to be a stranger, you must never abuse a stranger. Exodus teaches the baseline requirement: not to oppress the stranger, while Leviticus magnifies the demand. Not only must we not oppress the stranger, we must actively love him:[24] When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.” The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your native-born; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God.”[25] It’s one thing to not oppress the foreigners living among us. It’s quite another to actively love them.[26] In any case, the Torah could easily have responded differently to the experience of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt. Instead of learning the lesson of how to treat the stranger, the Torah could have instructed the Israelites that the lesson to learn is-- since you were treated so horribly you don’t owe anyone anything.[27] Instead, the Torah teaches us that demonizing and dehumanizing immigrants and foreigners is an abomination. We are told the highest achievement of which we are capable is to live with compassion. This is considered nothing less than walking in God’s own ways. I started this sermon by singing an excerpt from the classic tune by Peter and Gordon, A World Without Love, written by Paul McCartney and released in 1964. There are hundreds or more likely thousands of songs about love. Many of those songs are about romantic love. What struck me about this song was the title, A World Without Love. Although this song is about romantic love, as I read and listen to the news, I can’t help but think that those who are attempting to create a world without love, don’t just hate others, they hate themselves. Love is a choice we make in a world that is inundated with both beauty and barbarism. On any given day we may dance with joy and recoil in horror. We see signs of moral progress in one corner and symptoms of decay in another. We see some who revel in killing innocent people and others who risk life and limb to save perfect strangers.[28] Creating a world with love is a challenge but if we know we are created with love, for love; that we are always already loved; that we don’t earn God’s love but rather strive to live up to that love, we can achieve love. To be human is to grow in love, love for friends, family and community; love for humanity, especially the vulnerable and downtrodden; and ultimately love for all creation. In short, we need each other.[29] The kind of world we inhabit depends to a great extent on the choices we and others make. To paraphrase the Torah: Choose life, but more importantly, choose love. So, I wait and in a while I will see my true love smile She may come, I know not when When she does, I'll know, so baby, until then Lock me away And don't allow the day Here inside where I hide With my loneliness I don't care what they say I won't stay in a world without love [1] Shai Held. Judaism is About Love (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, c2024) 225 [2] Ibid. 4 [3] Ibid [4] Ibid [5] Ibid. 23 [6] Ibid. 24 [7] Ibid [8] Ibid. 25 [9] Ibid. 32 [10] Commentary to Mishnah Avot 2:18 [11] Ibid. 33 [12] Ibid [13] Ibid. 34 [14] Ibid. 35 [15] Ibid. 36 [16] Ibid. 7 [17] Ibid. 79 [18] Ibid. 94 [19] Ibid [20] Lev. 19:34; Deut. 10:19 [21] Ibid. 180 [22] Ibid. 181 [23] Ex. 23:9 [24] Ibid. 181 [25] Lev. 19:33-34 [26] Ibid. 181 [27] Ibid. 189 [28] Ibid. 6 [29] Ibid. 379-380 Comments are closed.
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