The Message, Volume 40, Number 18, May 2005 Page: 2 of 8
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With Rabbi Morgen
God Loves Us
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■ ecently, I was asked to give a lunchtime talk to the
local Catholic Charities organization near downtown
A ^.Houston. The topic (which they chose) was how God’s
love is understood and expressed in our tradition. I welcomed
this opportunity because the classical
Christian view of Judaism is that the
“God of the Old Testament” is a God of
vengeance and retribution, while the
“God of the New Testament” is a God of
love. Moreover, in classical Christian
doctrine God’s love (as expressed
through Jesus and the “New Covenant”)
is contrasted with God’s law (as ex-
pressed in the Torah).
In recent decades - and especially
under the guidance of the late Pope John Paul II - these teach-
ings have been officially abandoned as part of the new under-
standing of the Catholic Church (since Vatican II) that we
Jews have a continuing covenant with God that is eternally
valid and binding. However, I am also aware that these new
teachings have not necessarily been absorbed into the think-
ing of all Catholics, let alone all Christians. So I saw this as an
opportunity to describe the Jewish view of God’s
love for all of God’s creations and for Jews in
particular.
The first paragraph of the Shema that we
Jews recite twice each day commands us to “Love
the LORD your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, and with all your might.” We are to
see our relationship to God as one of love. And
this relationship is reciprocal. In the prayer we
recite right before the Shema, our Sages formu-
lated our belief that God loves us as well. The
form of this prayer as we recite it in the morning
begins “Ahavah rabbah,” while the form of the
prayer in the evening is “Ahavat Olam.” Ahavat
01am is shorter and could be translated as:
“You have loved your people, the house of Israel with an
eternal love. You have taught us laws and commandments,
statutes and rulings. Therefore, LORD our God, when we lie
down and when we rise up we will contemplate your laws, and
rejoice in the words of your laws and commandments forever
and ever. Because they are our life and the length of our days
and we will meditate on them day and night. May You never
take Your love from us forever. Blessed are You LORD who
loves His people Israel.”
That God loves us is found throughout the Torah - es-
tablishing that the God of the “Old Testament” is every bit as
much a God of love. One example is found right after the Isra-
elites sinned by worshipping the Golden Calf (a most griev-
ous sin, especially right after the giving of the Ten Command-
ments which forbade the making of graven images, and a sin
that goes to the heart of our relationship with God). God par-
doned the Israelites after this sin and then spelled out 13 quali-
ties of God’s love and forgiveness that we recite especially on
the Festivals and on Yom Kippur. “Adonai, Adonai, God gra-
cious and compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and
faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, for-
giving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and granting pardon.”
(Exodus 34:6-7)
The Ahavat Olam prayer elaborates that God’s love for
us is expressed in the mitzvot (the commandments) that God
has instructed us to follow. The Jewish view, then, is not that
God’s Laws and God’s Love are opposed to each other, but
rather that they are fused to each other. Just as a parent needs
to instruct a child how to avoid dangers, how to behave ap-
propriately, be nice to other children and respectful of adults,
so too God has given us instructions about how to treat oth-
ers, how to be good people, how to care for God’s creations,
and how to live a holy and meaningful life. A parent’s instruc-
tions to a child are given out of love; and so too
God’s instructions to us, we believe, are given
not out of a rigid and authoritarian posture, but
out of a deep and abiding love for us.
Passover, which we just celebrated, is un-
derstood by our Sages to be the betrothal of the
Jewish people to God. It is the moment when
God called to us to become His treasured people.
That is why the Sages instituted the reading of
the Biblical book The Song of Songs on Pass-
over. It is love poetry, and it is understood to be
the love poetry between God and the Israelites.
We are now in the romance period of the Jewish
people in the Jewish calendar cycle. On Shavuot,
the Rabbis understood that we are married to
God and the Ten Commandments are the Ketubbah that God
gives us.
Every Shabbat is a day for refreshing our souls and re-
newing our relationship with God. That is why the Kabbalists,
the mystics in Judaism, said it is a special mitzvah for a hus-
band and wife to have relations on the Sabbath. Because they
believed that the intimate relationship shared between a hus-
band and wife is symbolic of the kind of intimacy we should
strive to have with God!
So don’t let anyone tell you that Judaism does not be-
lieve God loves us. Nothing could be further from the truth!
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Congregation Beth Yeshurun (Houston, Tex.). The Message, Volume 40, Number 18, May 2005, periodical, May 9, 2005; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1318616/m1/2/: accessed June 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.