Parasha Va-et’chanan

Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM

Emanuel Synagogue, Sydney

All you need is love

This Friday we celebrate the festival of Tu Be Av, the 15 th day of the
month of Av, known in Jewish tradition as the festival of love. On this
day in the past, young women would go into the vineyards dressed in
white and seek a partner. Beneath the full moon, they danced and were
filled with joy as they sought love and happiness.
Today, this festival has morphed into a kind of Jewish Valentine’s Day, an
auspicious day for weddings and a time to celebrate love. It is interesting
that this festival is always celebrated at the time we read this week’s
parashah Vaetchanan, within which are the words of the shema prayer:
“veahavta” “and you shall love.” The very portion which speaks of the
love between God and the people of Israel, is read at a time when we
celebrate and rejoice in love.
But this passage has led to much discussion and debate. How is it
possible to command an emotion? How can we be told to “love?” And in
fact, in the Torah we are commanded to love in a number of places and to
love a number of people. We are told to “love the stranger” “to love our
neighbours as ourselves” and of course, in this week’s portion, to “love
God.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that in the book of Deuteronomy,
the word “love” appears 23 times. In Genesis, 15 times and then only 4
times total in the other books. The references to love in Genesis are all
connected with personal relationships: spouse, parents, children, but in
Deuteronomy it concerns love of the stranger, people and God. This,
Rabbi Sacks suggests, is surprising given that Deuteronomy is a book
concerned mostly with rules and laws, yet it contains the highest number
of mentions of the word love. What do rules and laws have to do with
love: a feeling, an emotion? Rabbi Sacks suggests that the rules and laws,
the constraints we place upon ourselves, are the ways we demonstrate,
create and sustain the love for which we have been commanded. (Rabbi
Jonathan Sacks “Making Love Last.”)
Rami Shapiro offers a different interpretation. He connects the words of
the shema, “listen, hear” with the manifestation of love. He suggests that
the two parts of the prayer go hand in hand. In order to love, we need to
listen and when we stop, hear and truly, deeply listen to the other, then we
make a connection with them, embrace them and love them. He argues
that when we listen deeply, we find the “echad” the oneness and unity in
creation. We can see that God is one and so too, we are all one. We
encounter the Divine in one another, we find the connection which links
all of us together. He writes: “What is the meaning of “you shall love?” It
isn’t a command, it is a consequence. Do not read: “you must love” rather

read: “you will love.” In other words, if you listen and hear the unity of
God as all reality, then you will love God as all reality and all reality as
God…this is what happens when Neshama is tilled by spiritual practice:
you engage the world with love.” (Rami M Shapiro “Open Secrets”)
So, for Rami Shapiro, love is a consequence of listening, hearing and
seeing the other and recognising the unity of humanity in that deep
connection. For Rabbi Sacks, that love is a consequence of constraint,
following the commandments, reaching out to one another and
connecting through the commitment to God, humanity and ourselves.
The Torah commands us to love: to love God, our neighbours and
ourselves. Each one flows from the other, from seeing God in the faces of
others, reflected in ourselves and in the world around us. Tuning into the
hum which permeates all humanity and links us together in a beautiful
song of love. I pray that this time of Tu BeAv we can feel and express the
love in our souls and sing the song of love into the world so in need of the
healing power of love.
Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM