Love. It makes the world go around. It makes the pain of life worthwhile. It is so sublimely important, that it
inspires much of the world’s art, literature, and music. And religion.
Remember the movement, G-d is Love? Remember love-ins in the park, where clergy
would flit around, telling revelers, G-d loves you?
We Jews never got caught up in
that. Or perhaps I should say, our religion
never got caught up in that. Chances
are, there were plenty of Jews at those love-ins. But chances are, you never saw rabbis at one.
And we’ve paid a price for that! Because official Judaism never joined the G-d
is Love movement, we’ve been accused of seeing G-d only in terms of stern
Judgment. Vengeance. The G-d of war. The G-d of punishment. All this, in contrast to the G-d of
Love. Imagine if we could have recruited
a corps of rabbis who would have flitted around the park on Sundays, blowing
bubbles, strumming ukuleles, handing out flowers, telling people that G-d loves
them. Perhaps there would be 200,000
Jews in Australia today instead of 100,000?
But G-d is a G-d of love even
in Jewish thought. Ever heard of the
Torah? You know, that funny book we read
now-and-then when we simply can’t avoid it?
Well, that book describes a G-d for whom love is supremely important. Let’s look at some examples.
G-d wants us to love Him. In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, we’re told
that, if we love G-d, then G-d will love 1,000 generations of our offspring.
In Leviticus 19, we’re told to love
our fellow Jew as ourselves. A little
later in the chapter, and in Deuteronomy 10, we’re told to love the non-Jew.
In Deuteronomy 6, we’re told to love
the Lord our G-d with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our being.
In Deuteronomy 7, we’re told that G-d particularly
loves the people Israel. And it’s not
because they are the most numerous or powerful nation on the earth. And since G-d loves the people Israel so
much, Israel is obligated to love G-d.
And we’re promised that, because G-d loves us, He will particularly
bless us in a number of substantial ways.
In Deuteronomy 10, we’re told again to
love G-d. And we’re told that, when we
love G-d, He takes delight in that.
In Deuteronomy 11, we’re told repeatedly
to love G-d. And we’re told explicitly
that, out of our love for G-d, we must keep His commandments.
In Deuteronomy 13, we’re told to love
G-d and out of that love, we’re to resist the efforts of false prophets to get
us to love other gods.
In Deuteronomy 19, we’re promised
that, if we love G-d, we will see more cities of refuge established to us.
In Deuteronomy 30 we’re promised that,
if we love G-d, He will let us live and will curse our enemies. If out of love for G-d we obey His laws and
commandments, He will bring all sorts of success to the works of our hands.
All this is just in the Five Books of
Moses. The other books of the Tanach
abound in references to the importance that G-d attaches to love. The G-d of Israel, the G-d of the Torah, is most
definitely a G-d of love.
Ah, but not a G-d of unconditional
love! In most of the citations above, we’re
told that G-d loves us because of this or that. Or that we should love G-d because of this
or that. Or that we should love one
another, or the non-Jew because of this or that. The Torah’s message is not a G-d who
practices, or who demands, unconditional love.
So the Torah’s message is that love is
supremely important. But not
unconditional love. Or, as Rabbi Sacks
put it this week, Love is not enough. Love must evoke a response of justice,
fairness and concern. Proclamations of
love not accompanied by actions confirming it, are empty words. Feelings of love that are not
accompanied by acts of devotion, are just feelings. Those feelings – the emotions connected with
love – are important. But if they do not
inspire us to acts of kindness, justice, and of willing sacrifice, then who
cares?
The protagonist of this week’s Torah portion,
Jacob, has a love problem. Oh, it’s not
that he doesn’t love; he loves in a big way! He loves Rachel and works seven years for his
father-in-law for her hand. When he
tricks him into marrying Leah instead, Jacob works another seven years
for the bride whom he thought he’d already earned. Laban tricks him, just like Jacob tricks his
brother Esau, and his father Isaac.
Later on, we’ll see how Jacob loves his sons, but loves one son more
than the others, and that causes strife in the family.
Jacob is a man of love, but he is not
always a man of justice. He does love
Leah, the wife he didn’t choose. But
because he loves her less than he loves Rachel, Leah doesn’t feel loved. She feels hated. Perhaps she deserves it to some degree. Maybe she should not have allowed her father
to put her in Jacob’s bed in place of her younger sister. The Torah omits these lacunae. But it does not omit that G-d loves
Leah, and sees her suffering. As a way
of trying to alleviate that suffering, G-d opens her womb and gives her
numerous sons to present to Jacob, in hopes that Jacob would love her more.
Jacob is a man of love, but he is a
man sometimes challenged to act ethically. And that sometimes makes his love almost meaningless. Because, if love is not accompanied by
ethics, then love is empty. Love the
emotion, without love the devotion, does not impress us. We should therefore focus less on the emotion,
and more on the devotion. We should
outgrow the childish notion that love should be unconditional. We should love one another, and out of that
love, we should strive to act toward one another in a supremely rational,
predictable, ethical way. So why don’t
we?
Because it’s hard work! Love the emotion is giddy, and exciting, and
fun. Love the devotion is hard
work. Drudgery. Sacrifice.
Boring. Everything that’s calculated
to take our inner child, our ADHD, and
frustrate it.
Jacob never quite outgrows the
child-like quality of his love. He never
quite manages to always accompany his love with devotion, fairness, and
justice. He does get better over
time. But he never quite gets there, to
the goal. In that way, Jacob is exactly
like you and me.
We’ll never perfect this stuff. But we must nevertheless keep working at it. As individuals. As families.
As a community. Because even love
accompanied by an imperfect devotion is better than love that ignores that
dimension entirely. We can’t be perfect. But that does not free us from working. And working.
And working. And working some
more.
There’s something to be said for
carrying child-like qualities into adulthood. But when an adult acts only like a child, we
don’t find that endearing at all. For example,
when an adult acts explosive repeatedly and doesn’t learn from the experience. We reserve our greatest scorn for adults who
won’t grow up. And we should. Because an adult who acts like a child
all the time, or much of the time, is nothing more than…pathetic.
So Jacob must grow up. He must struggle to temper his love with
justice. And he does get better
over time. In the same way, we must work
on this and get better over time. Even
if we despair of never quite being able to get there.
‘Tis the season, right? Back home in the USA, yesterday was
Thanksgiving, which is the official opening of the Christmas holiday season. We don’t have Thanksgiving here in Australia,
but I noticed last night from the commercials on TV that we are definitely in
the throes of Christmastime greed. The
holiday itself does not resonate for us Jews – why would it? But as the summer comes to our austral world,
it is a good time to take stock of everything we are, and everything we aren’t.
It’s a good time to ask ourselves: Are we accompanying our love, with justice? With fairness?
With devotion? With kindness? If not, let’s rededicate ourselves to doing
just that. Rededication is definitely
something that should resonate for us.
In just over a fortnight, we will celebrate a festival whose name means ‘rededication.’ Let’s let our light shine for all the world. But let’s let our love – and the
devotion it inspires – shine for one another. Shabbat shalom.
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