Parshat Ekev: Recipe for Love

Love is complicated. Let us attempt to address what we really mean when we discuss loving someone. Some forms of love are much easier to explain than others. Some forms of love can cynically be simple biological imperatives or evolutionary developments: we love our children, we love our parents. It simply makes sense.

But loving a partner is significantly more complicated. There is no genetic or real biological connection. Some people throughout their lives love more than one partner—hopefully not at the same time. But this is clearly a more nuanced emotional response.

It is quite fascinating then that the description of the commandment of ואהבת את ה’ אלקיך בכל לבבך—love God with all your heart(s)—is the love between husband and wife. Not the simple love between generations but the love formed between man and woman. There must be something more significant about a love that develops over time that God wants us to emulate when considering our relationship with Him.

So then we must ask ourselves what is the love between man and woman? Rishonim clearly struggle with this question as well as they attempt to address how to develop the relationship between us and god. Broadly, they offer three perspectives; although if we would consider this issue together, and reflect on our own relationships, we should be able to compile a similar list on our own.

1. Intellectual: Our spouses often complement us and offer perspectives on life that we would not consider on our own. Independent of how our spouses help us, we respect their achievements and are in awe of all that they do. We may experience something similar when considering the Torah and its intricate literary and legal structure. An incredibly complicated and comprehensive work.
2. Action: We’ve all had those grand moments where we decided to surprise our spouse with a present or vacation. But lets not focus on those. Much more importantly is the day to day actions that we do for our spouses. Doing dishes when we know the other one is tired. Or just surprising them with their favorite dish because we want to. Here too, we have a similar model in our אהבת ה’. Not just fasting on Yom Kippor or buying expensive Matza for Pesach but washing our hands before we eat bread or making an אשר יצר after going to the bathroom.
3. Appreciation: We can all hopefully provide a long list of items we can appreciate from our spouses. This can reflect quite easily to God as well, focusing on our own lists of good things in our lives. We can always add more as well. Studying sciences or even history can offer numerous opportunities to appreciate all the good God has done for us.

Now obviously I am going to make the point that our relationship with Hashem does not need to be limited to simply one of these Rishonim’s perspective, our relationship should encompass all of these components. But I would argue the פסוק makes a similar point. Note above, we translated לבבך to heartS it is more than one heart that allows us to love our spouse and God. Together, intellectual, action and appreciation allow us to feel that raw emotional response: LOVE.

But love is not simply an emotional response that we hope to achieve and then maintain. It requires consistent work and conscious effort. The not so secret methodology is also alluded to in our פרשה. We are told מה ה’ אולקיך שואל מעמך, and in the אבן עזרא’s read we are not told what is God asking of us but are being told what we can do in order to connect to Hashem. On his reading of the subsequent פסוקים is תפלה. It is logical, three times a day we schedule time to spend quality time with our godly spouse. As an aside, we should also schedule time to ensure we spend time with our spouses.

But that daily תפילה is important and incredibly significant but we must also discuss just how powerful that can be. The significance of the power of תפילה is also alluded to in the quasi-holiday we celebrate this week, namely, טו באב. A midrash describes what we are truly celebrating that day. After the Jews sinned by the חטא המרגלים and were condemned to travel the desert for forty years, every year of תשעה באב, in a morbid day, they would dig their own graves and go to sleep. Each year 40,000 people never got up the next day. On the last year, when the last 40,000 people went to lie down in their grave they all woke up the following day. Assuming they had miscalculated the day, they went to sleep again that night in their graves and again they woke up. Again and again until ט”ו באב they went back to sleep in their grave until finally they realized that they would not die.

What happened? That last 40,000 remaining people from the previous generation knew that there was no chance that it would be anyone else. They could not rely on the hope that they were not one of the people condemned to die. And so, while they always prayed hoping that they would not die, this year they pleaded and begged more than ever before. And they were able to reverse their curse. They did not die.

As we turn to אלול and the ימים נוראים we should all work together towards a common goal of increasing our own תפילה experience. As we get closer to ימים נוראים, our incoming rabbinic intern, Rabbi Dayan and myself will give a few shiurim focusing on different components of the תפילות of the ימים נוראים. But we should start preparing ourselves already now. Do not wait for us to present the material to you. We have excellent resources in the shul, namely the Koren siddur that offers an excellent commentary on different components of תפילה. I suggest we all take the time to focus on one small step together. We say אשרי three times a day. Let us, starting tomorrow, read the commentary of the Koren siddur on אשרי at least once a day. Let us all take the time as we get closer together continue working on our spousal relationship with god as we get closer to אלול.