Love is in the Air

You can’t help but think about love on a day like today. And I’m not just referring to the overabundance of red hearts and Valentine’s Day candies in the supermarkets. Every Friday as we draw closer to Shabbat, we are given an opportunity to think about love. Romantic, passionate, giddy love. The kind of love that gives you butterflies. The kind of love that consumes your every waking moment. The kind of love that forces you to doodle in the margins of your notebook dreaming of the next time when you will glimpse the one you long for. 

That kind of love.

Of the 89 times that Shabbat is mentioned in the Tanakh (Hebrew bible) love is not mentioned once. In its original incarnation, the instructions for keeping Shabbat revolve entirely around the prohibition to work. Shabbat is first and foremost a day of rest. This weekly commitment serves as a sign between us and God. It demonstrates that we move through time in sync with the Divine. 

As lofty and important as those motivations are, the Rabbis added another crucial dimension to Shabbat. For them, Shabbat isn’t merely a cessation from work that serves as a remembrance of the first week of creation or the Exodus from Egypt. Throughout rabbinic literature, Shabbat is sanctified as an expression of love.

In Bereshit Rabah 11:8, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai imagines Shabbat saying to God, “‘Master of the universe, all of them [the other days] have partners, but I do not have a partner.’ The Holy One blessed be God said to her: ‘The congregation of Israel is your partner.’” The Talmud relates that Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yannai would wrap themselves in special Shabbat garments on Friday evenings to greet Shabbat imagining her as a queen bride. (Shabbat 119a). The Shulhan Arukh, the preeminent code of Jewish law, even identifies Friday nights as the most auspicious night for partners to engage in intimacy as they will not only be fulfilling the mitzvah of nurturing their romantic relationship, Onah, but also Oneg, delighting in Shabbat. (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 280:1)

Even Rambam, Maimonides, the great rationalist, couldn’t help but be swept away with this sacred romantic love. He writes, “And what is the proper love? One should love Adonai with an exceeding great and very strong love so that the soul be tied to the love of Adonai, finding itself totally absorbed in it, as if [that soul] were suffering of lovesickness, when a person’s mind is never free because of love for the person they desire, and they are obsessed with that person, whether sitting down, or standing up, even when they are eating and drinking. More than this should the love for Adonai be in the heart of those who love God, meditating on it constantly, even as God has commanded us: “With all your heart and with all your soul.” (Mishneh Torah, Repentance 10:3)

The Kabbalists in the 16th century would expand on this imagery. Rabbi Isaac Luria, the architect of the Kabbalat Shabbat service, would go outside just before sunset on Friday night to greet the Shabbat Queen Bride with love poems and psalms. The first poem we recite, Yedid Nefesh, describes God as our soul mate. We are literally love sick, pledging our eternal devotion in exchange for just a taste of our beloved’s radiant magnificence. Of course, Kabbalat Shabbat culminates in the jubilant singing of Lekha Dodi, enshrining the precise moment when we welcome our royal beloved in all her splendor overwhelmed with joy in anticipation of our reunion. These poems are just as profusely and unabashedly romantic as any great contemporary love song. 

Surrounded by a predominantly Christian culture that has a very different understanding of intimacy, we might think that romantic love does not have a place in our religious rituals. But Judaism revels in the sacred splendor of experiencing profound devotion. On the outside, I might be a cynical New Yorker, but my neshamah (soul) is absolutely a hopeless romantic. I can’t help but be enamoured with this weekly celebration of bold, brazen love and pray that one day I might be worthy of a partner who stirs this kind of passion in me. I sing the words of Yedid Nefesh, “Maher ahuv, ki va mo’ed—Hurry Beloved, the time has come to illuminate the world with your glory.”

With love, Shabbat shalom,

Jessica