HE LOVES US, WE LOVE HIM

“The Lord your God is commanding you this day to keep these decrees and laws. Take care to keep them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have singled out the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways, keep His decrees, commandments, and laws and listen to His voice. And today the Lord has singled you out to be, as He promised you, His treasured people who guards His commands; He will set you high above all the nations He has made, in praise, fame and honour. You will be a people holy to the Lord your God, just as He has promised.” (Devarim 26:16-19)

This remarkable, short paragraph contains one of the most inspiring messages in the Torah, namely, that Hashem has singled out Israel from all nations to be His chosen people and Israel has done likewise with God. It is somewhat difficult to comprehend that the omnipotent, omniscient and eternal God should have any consideration for frail, transient human beings. And yet He does. Moreover, the Torah states earlier (Devarim 7:13), “And He will love you and bless you…” Not only has God selected Israel to be His nation – He also loves them.

Ramban provides the background and meaning of this paragraph: “Now Moshe finished explaining the Torah to them and issuing all the new commandments which God commanded him to declare to them. Therefore, he said, “This day the Eternal your God commands you to do these statutes and ordinances, for I have already completed everything for you.” He mentioned, and you shall observe and do them with all your heart, and with all your soul… “You singled out the Lord” – The meaning thereof is: “Since you have accepted the entire Torah upon yourselves with all its interpretations, details, and new promulgations, you have thus magnified God and exalted Him, that He alone will be your God; you will in no way acknowledge another god.”

“And to walk in His ways” – to do what is good and right, and do kindness one to another. “And keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His ordinances”. He [Moshe] singles out the statutes and ordinances [for the reason] I have explained, and he includes in the expression “and His commandments” – all the commandments — positive and negative. “And to heed His voice” — this refers to whatever He will command you concerning other deeds through me or through the rest of the prophets, as I have explained. It is possible that the expression “His commandments” refers to the positive commandments, and “heed His voice,” means the avoidances, that is to say, the negative commandments.

“And the Lord did single you out this day” – For this day is to you as the day of [the Revelation on] Sinai, and God exalted and magnified you by your acceptance of the Torah in order that you be His own treasure from among all peoples, and that you should keep all His commandments, for, to you alone He gave His Torah and commanded you with all the commandments that are desirable before Him and to no other nation. It is similar to what is written, “He declares His word unto Jacob, His statutes and His ordinances unto Israel. He has not dealt so with any nation” (Tehillim 147:19-20).

The fact that a deity could, and does, love a human being should not be taken for granted. In fact, it is one of the most radical concepts introduced by the Torah. It is a concept completely at odds with the gods of the ancient world. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, wrote and spoke often about this idea. Here is one sample (The Birth of Hope, parshat Bechukotai, Covenant and Conversation, 5779): “In the ancient world, there were tragic cultures in which people believed that the gods were at best indifferent to our existence, at worst actively malevolent. The best humans can do is avoid their attention or appease their wrath. In the end, though, it is all in vain. We are destined to see our dreams wrecked on the rocks of reality. The great tragedians were Greek. Judaism produced no Sophocles or Aeschylus, no Oedipus or Antigone. Biblical Hebrew did not even contain a word that meant “tragedy” in the Greek sense. Modern Hebrew had to borrow the word: hence, tragedia.”

Take, for example, Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, which is currently the subject of a major motion picture by the renowned director, Christopher Nolan. Odysseus, king of Ithaca in Greece, undertakes a long and eventful journey home after his victory in the Trojan War. But at every point, he is thwarted by the gods. He must confront storms at sea; giants; monsters; witches; sirens and much more. The gods do whatever they can to prevent his homecoming. They are capricious, vengeful and downright nasty. The best Odysseus can do is to try to appease them with sacrifices. In the end, he loses all of his soldiers and returns home alone. In fact, before the Trojan War, king Agamemnon sacrifices his own child so that the gods will grant him favourable winds on his voyage to Troy.

Someone like Odysseus could never fathom the concept that a god could love a puny human being. But this is precisely what the Torah states in our parsha and in several other places. We are beloved to God and Him to us. This is also the major theme of the Biblical book Song of Songs. There King Solomon states (6:3), ”I am for my beloved and my beloved is for me.” In Hebrew, this is ani l’dodi v’dodi li, the first letters of which spell the word Elul, the month before the High Holy Days. It is during this month that Hashem summons us to Him in love, begging us to return and repair any breeches in our relationship with Him.

Perhaps the person who put it best was the Rambam, in the Mishna Torah (Hilchot Teshuva 10:3) where he addresses the mitzvah to love Hashem: “What is the proper [degree] of love? That a person should love God with a very great and exceeding love until his soul is bound up in the love of God. Thus, he will always be obsessed with this love as if he is lovesick. [A lovesick person’s] thoughts are never diverted from the love of that woman. He is always obsessed with her; when he sits down, when he gets up, when he eats and drinks. With an even greater [love], the love for God should be [implanted] in the hearts of those who love Him and are obsessed with Him at all times as we are commanded [Devarim 6:5: “Love God…] with all your heart and with all soul.” This concept was implied by Solomon [Shir HaShirim 2:5] when he stated, as a metaphor: “I am lovesick.” [Indeed,] the totality of the Song of Songs is a parable describing [this love].”

Lee, Chani Merryl & Naomi join me in wishing you Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Liebenberg.

This week’s YouTube message: https://youtu.be/JYzeRY-xduk?si=vPRUXYu1i8NNRmWS