Love. That four letter word that causes chaos. Back in the Shtetle Tevye and Golde went through some tough times. After giving permission for his daughter to marry the tailor, Tevye turns to his wife and says:
Tevye: Do you love me?
Golde: Do I what?
Tevye: Do you love me?
Golde: Do I love you?
With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town,
You’re upset. You want out. Go inside. Go lie down.
Maybe it’s indigestion.
Tevye: Golde, I’m asking you a question. Do you love me?
Golde: You’re a fool!
Tevye: I know. But do you love me?
Golde: Do I love you?
For twenty-five years, I’ve washed your clothes,
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house,
Given you children, milked the cow.
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?
After focusing on children during the first part of Pesach, today we focus on love.
Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, is quite bizarre. In its’ eight chapters we encounter the sacred flames of passion between the Jewish people and Hashem. This glorious partnership began on Pesach night in Egypt. The great tragedy of Shir Ha-shirim and the great misfortune of history is the lack of synchronicity between these partners; when one is ready, the other is not. Coordinating these two partners is the ongoing challenge of the Jewish historical experience. We need to be ready for Hashem when He wants us.
Whose heart wouldn’t be stirred by the depiction of the Dod (male lover), symbolizing Hashem, knocking at his beloved’s door, begging her to let him in, or by the riveting drama of the Re’aya (female lover) the Jewish people returning to her beloved as the mutual bonds of affection are restored?
Alongside the Book of Esther Shir Hashirim is lacking any obvious religious content. Though erotic, the language of the book does not become pornographic. The Rabbis viewed the book with extreme caution and it took Rabbi Akiva to pronounce “The whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the [sacred] Writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies” (Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5) for the book to be included.
Rashi says, “The love between God and the Jewish people stands as a guarantor that God will appear again and redeem us again” for the reason it’s read on Pesach, linking the first redemption with the final one.
In Jewish thought love and passion are not tolerated as part of a fragile human condition but are rather seen as the holy of holies of human life. The Rabbis read the story as a metaphor for Hashem’s love of the Jewish people. The fact that the message is expressed using human actors teaches us that to separate human and divine love and to allocate one to the body, the other to the soul, is a false distinction. Relationships begin when we master the Mitzvah of “Love your neighbour as yourself” Hashems asks us that we see the other as no less real than we see ourselves. To the query, “What is a friend or what is love ?” Aristotle replied “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” It’s the only time when we can legitimately calculate 1+1 as 1.
Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda engage in a fascinating debate, it focuses on the verse “Ad she-hamelekh bi-msibo nirdi natan reicho” — “As the king was still in his celebration, my plant gave its odour” (1:12). Rabbi Meir views this as an obvious reference to the humiliating catastrophe of the Golden Calf. According to Rabbi Yehuda, this verse refers to the quick response of “Na’aseh ve-nishma,” which the Jews offered even as the King was still in heaven formulating His proposal. At first glance, Rabbi Yehuda’s rebuff seems compelling; why would Shlomo insert embarrassing moments into this nostalgic review of our golden moments of Jewish history? How then can we justify Rabbi Meir’s reading?
In our own romantic relationships, do we deal with our personal insecurities and failures by concealing them? Do we hide our flaws, seeking to vainly project a model of perfection? Any solid and sustainable relationship is predicated upon acknowledging imperfection and admitting it into the personal discourse of our relationship, confident that our relationship will not suffer. Ideally, the relationship will only grow, as a spouse accepts the personal limitations of the other and redoubles the pledge of love and personal commitment.
Shlomo confidently lists the various failures of the Jewish people, and reminds us that if anything God’s love grows through atonement, recovery and unwavering loyalty. A true and lasting relationship is formed by moments of elation and intimacy, but only as it outlasts disagreement and strife.
In the eighth century BCE God appeared to the Prophet Hoshea and tells him to marry a prostitute, a woman who will bear him children but will be unfaithful to him. God wants the prophet to know what it feels like to love and to be betrayed. The prophet, uncertain perhaps about whether the children are in fact his, is to call them “Unloved” and “Not my people.” He must be patient and continue loving his wife. He will wait until his wife is abandoned by all her lovers, and he will take her back, despite her betrayal. He will love her children, whatever his doubts about their parentage. He will change their names to “My people” and “Beloved.” He will, in other words, know from his own experience what God feels about the Israelites.
It is a daring narrative, suggesting that God will not cease to love His people. He has been hurt by them, wounded by their faithlessness, but His love is inextinguishable.
Hoshea then hears God say this: “I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt” (Hosea 2:16–17).
Jeremiah also captured the romance of the Exodus story, with words we include on Rosh Hashana in Musaf: “I remember of you the kindness of your youth, your love when you were a bride; how you walked after Me in the desert, through a land not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2).
Now it is not just God who calls, but Israel who responds Israel who follows her husband faithfully into the no-man’s-land of the desert as a trusting bride, willing in the name of love, to take the risk of travelling to an unknown destination.
The message of Hosea and Jeremiah is that the Exodus was more than a theological drama about the defeat of false gods by the true One, or a political narrative about slavery and freedom. It is a love story.
Rabbi Soloveitchik taught: “The purpose of the Exodus is not political freedom, but the conversion of a slave society into a kingdom of Priests – mamlekhet kohanim v’goi kadosh and a holy nation.”
Freedom must have purpose and direction. If the slaves are simply freed to go off and do whatever they want, that is a lower level of freedom. But, with freedom with purpose, the Jewish people are asked to go to God, giving them meaning, a system of mitzvot about how to live and how to perfect the world. That is freedom with purpose.
The demands Hashem makes of us through the prophets are expressions of love. The mitzvot are all invitations to love: “I seek You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commands” (Psalms 119:10).
That is the theme of the Song of Songs. Like God summoning His people out of Egypt, the lover in the song calls on his beloved, “Come… let us leave” (2:10). The beloved herself says: “Come, draw me after you, let us run!” (1:4). Then in an image of extraordinary poignancy, we see the two of them emerging together from the wilderness: “Who is this, rising from the desert, leaning on her beloved?” (Song. 8:5).
God chose Israel because Israel was willing to follow Him into the desert, leaving Egypt and all its glory behind for the insecurity of freedom, relying instead on the security of faith. That faith often emerges through the medium of song.
To really understand the uniqueness of Shir Ha-shirim, we must first understand the concepts of “shir” of song. Most of the Biblical songs come from a distinctive voice, an individual who has been redeemed, or who seeks rescue from the pit of despair.
Much of Tehillim constitutes the emotional outpouring of King David, a song which both mourns personal failure and fancies redemption. Moshe’s parting song reveals a heart gratified but a soul perturbed by the prospects of future challenges which his nation will be forced to negotiate in his absence.
Song, whether collective or personal, is so intuitive a response to a deep emotional experience that the Talmud suggests that Hashem solicits it: “‘When He avenges Israel, when the nation devotes itself, praise God’ (Shofetim 5:2) when Ha-kadosh Barukh Hu performs miracles, voice shira.” This form of response is so natural and effortless that we are summoned towards it.
The valley of dry bones that are resuscitated in Ezekiel’s vision, arise, sing praise and subsequently return to their graves. Perhaps this episode, more than any other, highlights the instinctive energy and the unpremeditated nature of human song. It springs from the depths of a grateful heart and is delivered in the moment, without any calculation or even future expectation.
Grammar and syntax suffocate the human imagination, stifling the fresh burst of impulse under the weight of structure and coherence. Song provides an outlet for the unbridled rampant spirit; our hearts encounter the event or the system, and in the wake of this encounter they are stirred to song.
At the very moment in which the Torah legislates the command for each Jew to author his own sefer Torah, in order to internalize his own system of Torah, the Torah is referred to as song: “Write for yourselves this shira” (Devarim 31:19). By incorporating Torah into one’s identity, a Jew drafts his own Torah, finds their own soul and song in the Torah. The Jew finds the love song that can become his.
So after all these years, when Hashem/God asks us “Do you Love me what are we going to say?”
Golde : For twenty-five years, I’ve lived with him,
Fought with him, starved with him.
If that’s not love, what is?
Tevye: Then you love me?
Golde: I suppose I do.
Tevye: And I suppose I love you, too.
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