Loving

By the Grace of G-d

Dear Friend,

We are reading the fifth book of the Torah. Second Parsha of the fifth book to be precise.

The most well-known passage among Jewish People is the ‘Shma Yisrael’. Most Jews if there is one part of the Torah and prayer that they know in the original Hebrew it’s the six words of ‘Shma Yisrael….’.

As stories emerge from the October 7th massacre, many survivors recall those moments when they held onto Shema Yisrael as tightly as they held onto their weapons. And in many cases, it was the only weapon they had. They whispered or shouted or closed their eyes and moved their lips over and over again—”Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad.”

Benni Chasson lived on Kibbutz Kissufim. He and his wife spent hours and hours in their “safe room,” until soldiers arrived to rescue them at 4:00 in the morning. Were they terrorists or Israelis? He wasn’t sure.

“Finish this sentence,” he told the soldier outside: “Shema Yisrael …”

And the soldier answered, “Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.” Finally, they felt safe to open the door.

From article by Linda Hirschel entitled From the Gas Chambers to Gaza, Shema Was on Our Lips

Yet, the Shema prayer only appears in the Torah at the fifth book, which means that it was said by Moshe in the fortieth year after the giving of the Torah at Sinai.

Where was the Shema prayer earlier?

And once we are asking. Here is another basic question.

The Shema is a lead up to the next verse. 

One of the most important commandments of the 613. 

Ve’ahavta et Hashem. You shall love Hashem.

Same question. Why does such a fundamental mitzva only get taught forty years into the journey, just before Moshe passes away?

Let us think about love and discuss some basic facts about love.

Sometimes love is automatic. Spontaneous. A natural response to the circumstances.

Most babies are loveable. 

During the courtship and early stages of marriage love seems to be natural and effortless.

When a business partnership is thriving, the partners may feel quite appreciative of each other. It would seem like the ideal model.

In the fairy tales, we could now say that ‘they lived happily ever after’ and close the book.

In real life, it is hardly ever like that.

Kids grow up and the love is challenged.

Parents start going to parenting courses on how to love their child once the kids start growing up and doing their own thing. They seem less naturally loveable at that state. Sometimes mindfulness and rational thinking is required to guide the parents over the humps of dysfunctional parenting, into healthy love.

Kids may have to invest and work on loving their parents.

Self-driving may or may not work in today’s new technology heavy cars. In marriages, it is not at all advisable. Couples must work on their relationship if they want their marriage to endure.

Business partnerships usually develop some hints of disunity. Partners need to invest efforts in keeping the harmonious balance in their joint enterprise.

The first forty years that the Jews were in the desert, there was no need to instruct them to love G-d.

They were in the idyllic state of being totally enveloped with G-d’s kindnesses.

Yes, most of the time the Jewish people had a paradise-like experience in the desert.

I know that it doesn’t sound like that when you read the Torah.

That is because bad news makes for larger headlines.

Our memories and impressions are often formed by sporadic extraordinary episodes that take place. Even though in terms of quantity, they are nowhere near the majority of the days of our life.

Even in the Torah this is the case.

When you read about the sojourn of the Jewish people in the desert, it seems full of drama. Never a dull moment.

When you select out the few incidents that were spread over the first year in the desert and the event of the last year, you have some thirty-eight years of ‘boring’ and ‘routine’ living. 

Pleasantly boring. 

Dependable source of food. 

Mana fell from heaven six times a week. Friday a double portion fell to provide for Shabbat.

Water was provided by the miraculous ‘well of Miriam’. 

Their clothing was preserved by the divine ‘clouds of glory’ that enveloped them. Those clouds also protected them from the elements and smoothed out the terrain in front of them.

They had none of the usual concerns and worries of making a living. Neither did they have health issues for nearly forty years.

The natural state of being for the Jews living in that environment was an awareness that Hashem is their provider. No need for reinforcing that belief by declaring the Shema Yisrael.

Also, as they all saw and felt that it was G-d who is providing all of this beneficence, they naturally and instinctively loved G-d.

There was no need to instruct them to make efforts to love Him.

Now the Jewish people are poised to enter Israel. 

No more miraculous sustenance. Ploughing, sowing, harvesting and all the other strenuous stages of preparation till one gets an edible loaf of bread.

This is not by mistake, this is by Hashems design. Our mission here in life is to engage in the material world and infuse it with purpose and meaning.

The challenge that Hashem introduces into the mission is the hiddenness of His presence. He chooses to have us live in a natural environment without overriding the system continually with miracles. 

We now need to search for him. 

Loving G-d will not be instinctive anymore. It needs to be consciously aroused.

Now let’s get practical. For here and now 2024. 

How do you bring yourself to love G-d? 

Isn’t love only an instinctive emotional expression. If you love something you love it, if you don’t, you don’t.

Can you tell someone ‘love healthy food’?

Most mothers would love to tell their children that.

The answer is that one can bring oneself to love something if one contemplates and internalizes the goodness and importance of it.

Loving G-d is really about being mindful of G-d, His greatness and most importantly His relevance to my life.

By thinking about all the good that Hashem does for us, we will be aroused to love Him.

If you are not immediately sure that Hashem does myriads of good things for you personally, stop and pause. Take a moment to be honest with yourself.

True, we have selective memories. Ask someone about their memorable moments and they will recount the high points of their life and the low points. And many people have weathered many difficult and painful moments during their lifetimes.

However, for the majority of people most of life is lived in the middle zone. In the nondescript uneventful flow of life with its occasional rises and drops that are not newsworthy.

During that ‘routine life’, there is so much blessing that we can and ought to be mindful about.

The question we need to ask ourselves is how much time do we take to reflect on the good that Hashem does for us in our personal life?

The difference between feeling love to Hashem and not feeling that love is all in the mind.

The moment we will be mindful about what Hashem gives us and the all-encompassing embrace that He wraps around us, we will be aroused with a feeling of attraction and love towards Him.

This weeks Parsha is a reminder to us. To pay more attention to the passages we say at least twice daily. It is a mitzvah to say Shma Yisrael and the subsequent verses about loving Hashem in the morning and evening. Click here for the text

Because we say it so often, we don’t always reflect meaningfully enough on the depth of what we are saying.

Pause. Reflect. Contemplate. 

Every breath is a blessing from G-d. Your biological systems are blessings from G-d. Food, shelter, family, nachas and everything else we often take for granted, are all from our loving Creator.

He is the source of all of that. He is one. He is the ONLY one. There is no power outside of Him. Once you realize He is the provider of all your beneficence your heart will be aflame. 

You will love G-d.

The word V’ahavta translates both as instruction – you shall love G-d.

And an affirmation. You will love G-d.

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Nachamu – the Shabbat of Comfort. Post Tisha B’av we read the Haftorah from the prophets starting with the words ‘nachamu nachamu ami’ ‘comfort, comfort, my people’. Click here for Rabbi Shais talk on this.

We pray and hope that as we emerge from remembering the destruction on Tisha B’av, we become comforted. We look forward eagerly to the time when Hashem will show us how the destruction was only to make way for the building of the Third Bet Hamikdash. 

Once the building commences, the destruction will be recognized as not having been destruction in the first place, rather it was the first stage of the demolition/renovation/rebuilding. Of the Third and eternal Temple. 

May the world be immediately blessed with the security, healing, unity and peace of Mashiach’s arrival.

Amen.

Rabbi Yosef Kantor