Listen … Love: Shabbat Message by Rabbi Dan Levin

Astronomers teach that the universe is more than 13 billion years old. They also teach that the earth is around 4.6 billion years old.

Human beings emerged only 300,000 years ago, and the most primitive societies began just 12,000 years ago.

Human civilization began only 6,000 years ago.

Take a look around. Think about everything we experience and encounter in the course of a day or an average week. Life, as we know it, is an explosion of surprise.

How amazing and wondrous was the confluence of events that created the conditions for life to exist at all? How incredible is it that the human species formed and evolved, with the capacities we have to think, to learn, to reason, to wonder, to imagine, to invent, and to love?

Somehow the force that spawned the whole universe into being empowered allowed all this to happen. And we are the result!

שמע ישראל יי אלהינו יי אחד –

Shema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad!

Listen Israel! Adonai is our God! Adonai is One.

These six simple words demand that we refuse to walk through our lives blind and oblivious to the miracle of our very existence. In these six simple words, Moses reminds our ancestors, and us, of the core of our spiritual duty. To notice. To pay attention. To listen.

When you look at these words in a Torah scroll you will notice the letter “ע” – ayin at the end of the word שמע – shema, and the letter “ד” – dalet at the end of the word אחד – echad. If you bring those two letters together, you get the word “עד” – eid, which means “witness.”

To be a witness means to have personal or direct cognizance of an experience or a phenomenon. To be a witness requires us to look and to listen, to be awake and alert and aware.

Following those six words in this week’s portion VaEtchanan is the famous admonition: “You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your being.” (Deuteronomy 6:5).

What is connection between the awareness Moses calls us to cultivate and the love for God he demands we profess?

In some ways, loving God means truly bearing witness, using the pathways of commandment and tradition in every moment, in every fashion, to nurture the awareness and appreciation for the elements of God to be found in all existence.

Rabbi Shai Held, in his book Judaism Is About Love, reminds us of a midrash that interprets this verse a little differently: “And you shall cause Adonai your God to BE LOVED among people.”

“How do you make God beloved?” asks Rabbi Abaye in the Talmud in tractate Yoma? “By learning Torah and Mishna, living in service to Torah scholars, and by being pleasant with people in business transactions. What do people say about such a person? Fortunate is his father who taught him Torah, fortunate is his teacher who taught him Torah, woe to the people who have not studied Torah. So-and-so, who taught him Torah, see how pleasant are his ways, how proper are his deeds.” (Yoma 86a)

But at the same time, Rabbi Held teaches, religious people “can be smug rather than humble, cruel rather than compassionate, callous rather than caring, indifferent rather than empathetic. Religious leaders often stoke hatred instead of inspiring their followers to love; they often model self-satisfaction rather than generosity, hypocrisy rather than integrity. … God’s name is debased through the behavior of such a person.”

To be real witnesses, we must open our consciousness in every moment, in everything we do and in all that we are, to the very miracle of our existence. But to truly show our love for God, we must live in a way that inspires others to be just as conscious, aware, loving and grateful.

Loving God ought not be an additional commandment for us to follow, but should flow naturally from hearts filled with appreciation and gratitude for the miraculous gifts that surround us in every moment.

It is love that should drive all we do, what we diligently teach our children, what we bind on our hands, keep before our eyes, and inscribe on the doorposts of our homes.

Shabbat Shalom,