Dear Jewish Response,
The Torah commands us in many places to love G-d. For example, in the Shema we recite, "You shall love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your means." I have two questions: 1) What does love of G-d mean? Is the Torah just commanding us to have a feeling, or is there some practical ramification as well? 2) How do I attain this level of serving G-d out of love? How can I love Him if I have never seen Him and know very little about Him? Thanks, Dov
Dear Dov,
Our Sages speak of two kinds of Jews who do mitzvos: those who do them out of fear, and those who do them out of love. Those who do mitzvos out of fear of punishment and expectation of reward are in a reciprocal relational with G-d. They are bartering with Him - they do as commanded in return for reward. They avoid what He commanded not to do, in order to avoid getting punished. On the other hand, those who do mitzvos out of love are acting unilaterally. They do what G-d wants regardless of how He treats them.
The commentary on the Rambam's Yesodei Hatorah, beginning of chapter 2, makes this distinction, except that what is usually called fear, he calls one of the categories of love. He says that there are different kinds of love. The first kind is love you feel toward someone who gives you benefit, such as the love of the servants for the king, or the love of a husband for his wife. The second kind is when you will get no benefit from the object of the love, and you just love it because of its great beauty, and you want to come near to it. This second kind is the love one should have for G-d. If one loves G-d only because of all the good G-d showers upon him, he will only love Him as long as things are going well.
It was for this sort of love that all the commandments of the Torah were given, as the Torah says, "Behold I place before you today life and good, and death and evil, as I command you today, to love the L-rd your G-d and the walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His laws and statutes..." (Devarim 30:15-16). And the Torah finishes off that chapter by repeating the obligation to love G-d, "To love the L-rd your G-d, to hearken to His voice and to cling to Him..." (v. 20).
You already mentioned the verse, "You shall love the L-rd your G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your means." And in the second section of the Shema (Devarim 11:13) the Torah says, "And it will come to pass, if you truly listen to My commandments which I command you today, to love the L-rd your G-d and serve Him with all your heart and soul..." Chazal explain that "with all your soul" means even if He takes away your soul, and "with all your means" means even if He takes away all your money. This selfless, unconditional love is the ideal way to serve G-d.
Further proof that this is the meaning of love of G-d comes from the Mishnah (Sotah 27b), which says, "Iyov served G-d only out of love, as Scripture says, 'Even if He kills me, to Him I will hope' (Iyov 13:15)." Now, this shows that Iyov still held out hope that G-d would save him, even in the face of death. But how does it show that he served G-d out of love? The answer is that we must translate the words differently. "Lo ayachel" must be rendered as "for His sake I will hope." When faced with death, Iyov was not worried about himself. His only concern was for G-d - that G-d would lack a righteous servant like Iyov in the world.
The Jerusalem Talmud cites an opinion that the proof that Iyov served G-d out of love comes from the following verse, "Also He is my salvation, for before Him any faker (Heb. chanef) cannot come." One who serves out of fear is a chanef - a faker. He is pretending to serve G-d, but in reality he is only serving himself - he is doing mitzvos so that he will get rewarded. Iyov was calling his friends fakers because they served G-d out of fear, as we see in an earlier verse there (13:11): "Does not His greatness scare you, and the fear of Him fall upon you?" But he, who served out of love, would be saved.
The Zohar comments that in Tehillim 23, King David says, "The L-rd is my Shepherd, I shall not cause [Him] to lack." David's concern was not that G-d should not cause him to lack something. His concern was that G-d should not lack a servant such as David in His world. The Midrash says, "There was once a king who became angry with his servants and put them on death row. Then he stood outside the jail with his ministers to hear what they were saying. He heard them say, "Our master the king is our praise and our life! May we not die and be lacking to our master the king forever!" Said the king, "Say it a little louder so that the ministers who are above you in rank should hear!" (Shir Hashirim Rabbah 8:11) Here again, we see that these servants were serving the king out of love. They praised and blessed him even while being punished by him. In the face of death, their only concern was that they shouldn't be lacking to the king. This is how we should act toward G-d, and then G-d will show us off to His angels.
The Ibn Ezra, commenting on Shir Hashirim 8:12-13, says: "She [those Jews who serve G-d out of love] despises the money and says: 'My vineyard is before me. You can keep your thousand silver pieces, and your tenant farmers can earn a profit of two hundred. But I do not desire money - neither principal nor profit. I simply want my vineyard before me, where I joined my Beloved. That is a greater pleasure to me than all money.' Her Beloved [G-d] answers: 'When you sit in the gardens of the vineyard, do not raise your voice, for I have friends [the Jews who serve out of fear] and they are listening to your voice [and you will shame them].'"
In Bereishis, the Torah concludes the account of creation with the words, "And G-d saw all that He had created, and behold it was very good." The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 9:8) comments, "Death is good" (based on the similarity of the words "me'od" and "maves"). It goes on to explain that the reason there is death is because there were some wicked individuals (such as Nevuchadnezzar and Chiram) who claimed to be divine. G-d had to make them die to disprove their claims. The Midrash then asks: Let only the wicked die! The answer is that then the wicked might then do mitzvos and good deeds in order to live, and they would be doing it "shelo lishmah" - with ulterior motives.
We see here that doing mitzvos "lishmah" - out of love for G-d, without expecting anything in return - is so important that all people have to die to make such service of G-d possible.
The Rambam in Sefer Hamitzvos, Mitzvas Aseh 3, says that another practical ramification of loving G-d is that one must teach others to serve Him: "Included in this mitzvah is that we must call upon all people to serve G-d and believe in Him. Just as when you love someone, you praise him and call upon others to love him, so too if you truly love G-d, based on what you know of His truth, you will certainly teach the ignorant people of the world what you know. This is what the Sifri says, "And you shall love Hashem" - make Him beloved to people, as Avraham Avinu did, as Scripture states, "And the souls they made in Haran."
Now we turn to your second question: how to attain love of G-d. The Torah says, "And you shall love the L-rd your G-d...and these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart" (Devarim 6:5-6). Rashi comments that the second verse ("and these words...") is the explanation of the first. How does one attain love of G-d? By learning Torah, for from the Torah one can gain knowledge of G-d and cling to His ways.
The Rambam in Hilchos Yesodei Hatorah 2:2 offers a different path to love of G-d - to study His wondrous creations and see the boundless wisdom behind them.
Humans have an innate desire to know G-d, although He is unknowable. The Midrash (according to the version cited by Rashi on Bereishis Rabbah 41:1) explains this with an analogy to a palm tree, which is used in the Bible as a simile for the righteous (Psalms 92:13). There was once a female date palm growing in Chamsan, near Tiberias, and it bore no fruit. A palm expert passed by, saw it and said, "This tree sees a male tree far away in Jericho, and she longs for him." They brought the male tree from Jericho, and immediately the female bore fruit. The tree longed for its match, although she had never seen him. Similarly, the righteous long for knowledge of G-d.
A righteous person can really only have one longing, the longing for G-d. This longing cannot coexist in a person's heart with worldly desires. In the analogy, this is represented by the palm tree, which saw the other male trees around it but had no desire to produce fruits with them. Its only desire was for that one tree in Jericho.
Therefore, the truly righteous serve G-d out of love, with no ulterior motives, because their only longing is for G-d. Nothing else would make them happy.
The love of G-d was expressed well by King David in Psalm 63: "A psalm of David, when he was in the desert of Judea: G-d, You are my G-d! I will pray to You. My soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You, in a desolate and tired land, without water."
On the word "longs" Rashi says, "This means desire, and it has no parallel." Rashi often uses the words "it has no parallel" to mean that the word in question occurs only here and in no other place in Scripture. But then Rashi invariably says, "it has no parallel in Scripture." Here he does not say "in Scripture." Therefore it seems that he means that the word means a desire that has no parallel. David longed to come close to G-d in a way that he did not long for anything else in the world.
"In a desolate and tired land, without water." This refers to the body, which is dry and empty of any holiness. The soul finds itself in the body, yet it longs for holiness. The person knows he is missing something, yet however much he eats, drinks and has pleasure from this world, something is still missing.
The Akeidas Yitzchak explains that the "desolate and tired land" referred to here cannot be a desert, because a desert has nothing growing in it and does not need water. It is not tired when it receives no water. Rather, the verse is talking about a fertile field that has not received water in a long time, and is now parched, tired and incapable of producing fruit. This is an analogy to a person, who, however far he may be from holiness, has the latent ability to come close to G-d and become holy.
Jewish Response Staff