Mitzvah 3; To Love HaShem, an expansion of the mitzvah

The third mitzvah; To Love HaShem II

Although we already touched the surface of this mitzvah it would wrong to move on to the next mitzvah without expanding on this very critical mitzvah first. I must qualify my statement of “this very critical mitzvah”. Every mitzvah is critical, just like every organ of the body is critical. A person cannot live without a pancreas or without a liver and yet we all recognize that the brain and the heart are the more critical organs. The analogy describes well the distinction that this mitzvah carries over the other mitzvos. For this reason I believe we need to expand our appreciation of this mitzvah and to expand our understanding of what this mitzvah includes.

On the surface, this mitzvah is straightforward; love HaShem. The question that we must ask is, how does this mitzvah manifest itself. In other words, is this mitzvah supposed to modify my behavior and outlook in any way, or is it just to be a G.D loving Jew at heart with no real implications?

We will begin our exploration by going to the source of this mitzvah. The source of this mitzvah is found in the Shema Yisroel prayer. The Shema is a passage from the Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy), the fifth Book of the Five Books of Moshe. It reads as follows. “Hear (understand) O Israel, HaShem is our G.D, HaShem is One. And you must love HaShem with all your hearts and with all your soul and with all your might.”

The Torah does not state simply “Love HaShem” but rather love HaShem with all your hearts, etc. The implication is that there is more than just love that is expected. (We must forever be grateful for the Oral Law that instructs us how to read the Torah. For example, what does the Torah mean by using the plural hearts?) The Oral Law teaches us that the meaning of all your soul is that we are obligated to give our life if necessary for the honor of HaShem. The Oral Law expounds on the exact circumstances when one ought to give their life for HaShem. However, when the circumstances arise, our very life must be relinquished for His Honor.

I would like to spend the balance of this piece trying to understand how giving one’s life of HaShem is an expression of the mitzvah of loving HaShem. Why would HaShem want us to give our life for Him anyway? Does G.D not love us; does He not want us to live rather than to die? Furthermore, is it not common knowledge that one may even desecrate the Shabbos to save a life?

If we can resolve these questions or at least some of them, then we might be able to develop a more sophisticated appreciation of love as well as a deeper appreciation of what we need to do to fulfill this great mitzvah.

Let us begin by understanding the nature of love. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a great leader of the German Jewish community in the mid 1800’s, presents love as follows. Love is when you recognize that all of who you are and all of who you can hope to be is through the other party. When I understand that without the other party I am a nobody, I cannot hope to be anything, my actions are meaningless, then I can say that I love the other party.

The Maharal a great leader of the Jewish people from Prague several hundred years ago articulated this way. Love is the yearning to be connected to the other party. This phenomenon occurs when one party brings about the completeness of the other party. Let us take the classical love of husband and wife. When the husband recognizes that he is incomplete without his wife he yearns to be with her – that is love.

In the previous blog we discussed the question of how does one love HaShem without actually seeing, touching or otherwise perceiving Him. Using the abovementioned definitions of love we can address this question quite comfortably. When I am able to acknowledge that HaShem is the source of all existence and there are no other forms of power outside of Him. And when I am able to acknowledge that everything that happens in the world finds it source in HaShem. And that, following the previous sentence, HaShem is fully aware of everything that occurs to me and He has only my best interest in mind, then I realize in stark contrast how I am absolutely nothing without HaShem. I cannot hope to be anything or have anything without HaShem. My actions and relationships are meaningless, as well as life itself, without HaShem. When I recognize this, I long to be close to HaShem, to connect to Him to gain meaningfulness. When I have accomplished this understanding, this recognition, I can say that I love HaShem.

If you are still with me you must realize that we have arrived at a pivotal point in being able to address the very difficult question we asked earlier. Why does HaShem want us to sacrifice our life for Him, does He not want what is best for us, namely to live, not die? If we have the courage, let us take what we already learnt and go to the next step as follows.

The more I give to my beloved the closer I connect with them. If, out of love, I were to give up my job and place of residence to move to a foreign land to marry my wife there is no question that this great sacrifice would generate a much stronger connection between us than the connection we had before I made the sacrifice. The more you put in the more you get out. The most valuable possession Man has is life. When I give up my life for the one I love I have created the most powerful connection Man can ever hope to accomplish. The problem with this is that after I am dead what good does my connection do for me – I no longer exist? This point is not a concern when we talk about connection to HaShem. For after I die I continue to exist just as I existed before I die, albeit in a different form. And therefore there is nothing more exhilarating, nothing more meaningful, nothing more enriching than sacrificing one’s life out of love.

I know what’s bothering you; “How can you say that death is good, how can you say that there is nothing more meaningful than death? You sound like a fundamentalist!” I will respond to you that we all talk about the great sacrifice this soldier made for freedom’s sake, or for the sake of liberty or for the sake of justice, etc. We all recognize how noble it is to have died in line of battle defending the country. Is it preference to do so? NO! But it is admirable. However, HaShem does not want His people giving up their lives every time a difficult situation arises, He therefore instructs us in the Oral Law that we must transgress the entire Torah with three exceptions to save life. It is for this reason that we drive on Shabbos to save a life. It is only for those three exceptions, because they are so critical to our relationship with HaShem that HaShem expects us to give up our life before transgressing them.

Perhaps we can better understand the context in which the Torah places the mitzvah of Love HaShem.

In the first passage we declare “Hear (understand and recognize) O Israel, HaShem is our G.D (which means that He is the source of everything), HaShem is One (which means that nothing has been delegated by Him, i.e. He is involved in everything that happens to me for the good or otherwise, it is all Him). After acknowledging that, the Torah then instructs us "Love HaShem your G.D with all your hearts and with all your soul and with all your might."

Mitzvah 3; To Love HaShem

The third mitzvah that we discussed is the mitzvah To Love HaShem. Just the name itself stamps this mitzvah with a sense of great significance. And this is an accurate assessment. Before discussing the mitzvah of loving HaShem I believe that I would be remiss if I did not dedicate more attention to the nature of these first three mitzvos as well as a few others.

We can classify all the mitzvos into two categories. One category is the means mitzvos and the other category is the direct mitzvos. I will explain the distinction as follows.

Ramchal, a great teacher of Jewish mysticism and author of many classical Jewish works, teaches us “Our Sages have instructed us that Man was created for the sole purpose of reveling in the Eternal (HaShem) and delighting in the splendor of the Divine Presence as this is the ultimate joy and greatest of all pleasures….. the path that helps us reach our desired objective is this world … The means that lead Man to this goal are the mitzvos that the Eternal commanded us to observe, and the place for doing the mitzvos is in this world alone… If you delve further into this matter you will realize that attaching to the Eternal alone is absolute perfection … For a person to be entitled to this good, it is only appropriate that he first labor and make the effort to acquire it. This means that he must try to attach to HaShem through deeds that will lead to this goal. These deeds are the mitzvos.”

Behold, Ramchal is teaching us that the mitzvos are actually a means by which we can attach ourselves to HaShem. (This is not to imply that there is no intrinsic value in the mitzvah itself but rather that the intrinsic value of the mitzvah is what attaches us to HaShem.) These mitzvos serve as the means to attach us to HaShem. This understanding works for all the mitzvos in the first category, the means mitzvos. However, the direct mitzvos are quite different.

The direct mitzvos are those mitzvos that directly attach us to HaShem; these mitzvos are the actual attachment. Let us take for example the first mitzvah To Know HaShem. Knowing HaShem is in itself a level of attachment to HaShem. The same is true with recognizing the Oneness of HaShem. The greater Man accomplishes this mitzvah the greater he becomes one with HaShem – clearly attachment itself. Our third mitzvah, To Love HaShem is also a direct mitzvah. The single most articulate manner of expressing attachment is love.

Having placed our third mitzvah in its context let us examine it.

As a child growing up I was always troubled with this mitzvah. How can HaShem expect me to love Him? I do not see Him. I do not touch Him. How can I relate to Him with an emotion of love when my entire exposure to Him is only on the intellectual level? Even a passionate physicist will not love gravity or any other law of nature. You might argue that our physicist friend does love physics, so you see that one could love on an intellectual level. If you would make that argument, I would respond that the physicist does not love physics like a mother loves her child or like a man loves his wife, he loves physics like he loves fish. When one loves fish, this means that he loves to eat fish; he has no special attachment to the fish. The physicist loves to study physics, he is not attached to physics; it is only a fascination in which he indulges. So can we come to love HaShem?

The answer is simple but requires much thought and much contemplation. In fact, the only reason this question bothered me as a teenager was because I never contemplated something that I already knew. HaShem is not an idea. HaShem is not some theory by which we can explain creation. HaShem is a very real Being that Exists. HaShem interacts with me, He does for me, He cares for me, He protects me, He maintains my physical and emotional well-being (to the extent that I do not mess things up myself). How can I not love Him? The only way for me not to love HaShem is to either deny His existence or to be thoughtless. Both explanations are an indictment which point to a lack of thoughtfulness and contemplation.

Does a blind child love her mother any less due to her disability? How about if the child would be blind and deaf? Of course the child would be limited in her ability to communicate with her mother but to the extent that she recognizes her mother and recognizes the incredible love that her mother has for her, she loves her mother. As the child grows older and becomes more sophisticated her love for mother will grow exponentially. This happens because as she realizes how helpless she is without her mother she realizes how much she needs her mother.

The path that leads us to loving HaShem requires us to devote our attention of the first two mitzvos. As our knowledge of HaShem increases and as our awareness of His Unity increases the natural result will be heart full of love that all the water in the world cannot extinguish.

Mitzvah 2; Recognizing the Unity of Hashem

The second mitzva that we addressed is the mitzvah of the Unity of HaShem. The base of this mitzvah finds itself in the abstract but expresses itself in every breathing moment of the Jew. We will address the mitzvah in that order.

The mitzvah is to recognize that the Being of HaShem is One. This mitzvah follows the mitzvah of recognizing HaShem’s existence as the only absolute existence. To best appreciate the notion of absolute existence we will use the analogy of the dreamer and his dream. We will take Sleepy Joe who lays down after a long day at work. After falling into a deep sleep he begins to dream of two people, Mike and Ike. The people in the dream do not exist they are not even representations of people who exist – they are simply figments of his imagination. In his dream both Mike and Ike develop into very successful businessmen. Mike becomes the CEO of a large corporation and oversees 900 employees. One day he turns to Ike and remarks how there is nobody who has been as successful as him. Ike tells him that he shouldn’t talk to loud lest he wake up Sleepy Joe. Ike points out to Mike that neither of them really exist. For that matter, adds Ike, none of the 900 employees really exist nor the corporation, in fact, nothing exists except Sleepy Joe, everything they know is nothing but dream puff.

Sleepy Joe is only a crude example that provides only a window to understanding the relationship between HaShem and His creatures. As Jews we know that HaShem created the universe and everything in it as well as Space in which the universe finds itself as well as Time through which the universe travels.

It is axiomatic that if HaShem created Time and Space then He must exist outside of Time and outside of Space, for if He exists only within Time and Space He could not exist before their creation and hence He could not create them.

Once we understand that HaShem’s existence is dependent on no state of existence and all else that does exists is a creation of His, then we can reduce all of created existence to the dream puff of HaShem. In other words, all of existence is the result of HaShem’s Will that it should exist.

If you are still with me, then we have arrived at the notion of HaShem’s Oneness. When we recognize that HaShem is One and there is none other, we mean to say that there is no other existence. And although we know that we exist as well as all of our employees and all of our employers, nevertheless, their existence is only circumstantial not intrinsic. Their existence is the result of HaShem’s Willing them into existence. Whereas HaShem’s existence is intrinsic – there is simply no way to contemplate HaShem as not existing.

Until now we have only touched the notion of HaShem’s Oneness. Let us attempt to understand the next level; the Unity of HaShem.

Once we have arrived at the understanding of His Oneness, then we understand that all of existence finds its source in HaShem. This means that as varied as creatures are they nevertheless come from the same source. This is true not only with creatures but with physical laws, such as gravitational force, centrifugal force, magnetic force, etc. even though these forces often and conflict each other nevertheless we recognize that the source of all forces is HaShem. The implication is that all matter and energy as varied as they may be come from the same Source and must therefore be understood as working with each other rather than working against each other.

There are other conflicting forces that will be reconciled with this recognition. Within each of the readers of this article there are conflicting tensions. One side of us wants another cookie or another cigarette and the other side of us knows that we should reject to temptation. We all have our upper half which in so many decisions disagrees with our lower half. Using our principle of the Oneness we recognize that both of these internal forces find their origins in HaShem. The implication is that both forces are needed for the common goal that HaShem intended. Hence we recognize the Unity of HaShem.

Let us take the principle of Unity into the realm of history. History is replete with good times and bad times. Some good times were very good while some bad times were very bad. Recognizing the Unity principle we understand that all of history finds its reality in HaShem. The implication is mind boggling.

It is not my intention to reconcile the conflicts that seem to be irreconcilable or to reconcile those that are easily reconcilable. At this point I want to distill the abstract to practical, and we just about there.

Once we acknowledge that all circumstances find their source in HaShem and that all circumstances are parts of HaShem’s grand scheme (if they were not part of the grand scheme, then HaShem would not cause it to happen) then there is no cause for me to get aggravated when the stock market falls 1,000 points. I certainly would be justified to feel sad, however, aggravation or depression would not be justified. Only an ignorant person or perhaps a child would be angry at the doctor who saved his life by amputating his infected leg. An intelligent person would only be sad at losing his leg but would be grateful to the doctor for saving his life.

Being human and thereby being subject to the human feelings, I acknowledge that such a perspective is quite difficult to adopt when serious tragedy strikes. Nevertheless, this attitude of recognition is very applicable when the difficulty or challenge arises which is not catastrophic. Take for example the traffic tie up that you hit on the way to a business meeting and as a result you miss the meeting. The difference between the one who recognizes the principle of Unity and the one who does not recognize it will be most apparent.

Being able to recognize the principle of Unity is an accomplishment of achieving the mitzvah of Unity.

Mitzva 1; Know HaShem

The first mitzvah that Rambam lists in his list of the 613 mitzvos is the mitzvah to know HaShem is the only Being that truly exists and that all existence as we recognize exists only because He wills it to be.

This mitzvah is articulated in the first commandment of the Ten Commandments. “I am Adonoi your G.D Who took you out from the land of Egypt from the house of slaves…”

The following question needs to be addressed. It is of a philosophical nature. How HaShem can instruct us to know Him. It is possible to instruct someone to know how HCl is formed or who America’s allies were during the war, because these are facts that are researchable and are verifiable. However with respect to HaShem’s being the only Being that truly exists is something that mortal man can scarcely comprehend and even if it is comprehendible he certainly cannot not research it or analyze its truth. At best, HaShem might instruct us to believe that He is the only Being that truly exists, but not to know Him. Knowledge implies an awareness in which there is no question of it’s’ veracity. Belief would be more appropriate to something that might be questionable but you accept it as belief.

Before answering this question let us pose a different notion of knowledge than we have thus far identified. There is a knowledge that although you cannot prove it, nor can you research it and analyze it’s veracity, nevertheless, you know it to be true. I speak about a solid knowledge, not a belief which is unverifiable. We find such knowledge about so many things that are closest to us. Let us take the knowledge that your sister is your sister. Anyone else could question whether she is your full sister, perhaps she is only your sister from your mother. And even that she is your sister from your mother could be questioned. The only way for you to verify that she is your sister would be through several packets of documents many of which are not necessarily reliable. And yet, from your perspective there is no question about who she is. Even if the documents could not be found you would not consider your recognition of being your sister a function of belief; it is absolute knowledge. It is a knowledge that only you know because you know who your sister is and someone else may not know. But that lack of veracity does not minimize your absolute knowledge.

Let us return to the mitzvah of knowing HaShem. Let us articulate the mitzvah a bit sharper now. Know, with an absolute unquestioning knowledge that needs no veracity, that HaShem is the only being whose existence is absolute.

Now the question is how HaShem can instruct us on this knowledge. If we have this knowledge then there is no need to instruct to have it; we already have it. And if we do not have this intrinsic knowledge how can HaShem instruct us to have it; it cannot be verified, as mentioned earlier?

The answer is that every Jew knows without question that HaShem is the omnipotent Being from Whom all existence emanates. The reason we are commanded to know this is because so often we lose this knowledge. We lose this knowledge because this knowledge is situated deep inside the consciousness of our neshoma (soul). As a person detaches himself from his neshoma by attaching himself to the physical world this consciousness become buried and we relate to this information like a stranger who does not know who my sister is. We actually begin questioning the very existence of a G.D. We need proofs that there is even a Creator.

Hence, the mitzvah to know HaShem is to open ourselves up to allow that knowledge to become apparent.

There is another approach to answer this question as follows.

I would like paraphrase Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in his book on the mitzvos, Horeb.

Life lived properly should be the flower of one’s knowledge. However, in order for this flower of knowledge to blossom it is not sufficient that one has acquired knowledge in his mind and brain. The knowledge must be transmitted from the brain to the heart for it is the heart that guides man in all his life’s decisions. So long as the knowledge remains in the head the flower of life will not blossom. Man must take all he knows and work on internalizing it till the knowledge becomes a part of his very essence. At that point his knowledge will blossom and the knowledge will take on a life of existence.

Let us return to our original question; how can HaShem instruct us to know something that we cannot verify? And if we already know it just like our sister, then why bother instructing us if we know already?

In the Hebrew language the word of da-as refers to an intimate form of knowledge.; a knowledge that is part of man’s very essence. The first mitzvah as Rambam articulates it is “Know (using the Hebrew word of da-as) that HaShem is the only Being that truly exists…”

Although our knowledge of HaShem as being the only Being of true existence is something that is already known, just like you know that your sister is your sister, nevertheless, HaShem instructs us to internalize that knowledge and make that knowledge a part of who we are. HaShem is instructing us to allow that knowledge of Him to penetrate our every fiber of existence. So that our lives should be the flower of that knowledge.