etz hi tdov: choose love
hi,
i'm republishing the piece below (shortened somewhat) in honor of tristen's first yahrtzeit (tomorrow), fern's first yahrtzeit (sunday), and (i suppose..) trans day of visibility.
it was written during parsha vaeschanan.
love with all your heart,
ada
sholem aleichem,
In the Shulchan Aruch Harav, the Alter Rebbe teaches:
שֶׁכָּל הַקּוֹרֵא קְרִיאַת שְׁמַע בְּלֹא תְּפִלִּין – כְּאִלּוּ מֵעִיד עֵדוּת שֶׁקֶר עַל עַצְמו, שֶׁהוּא אוֹמֵר וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאוֹת
all who recite the recitation of "shema" without tefilin-- it is as if they testify false testimony about themselves, because they are saying [in the v'ahavta portion of krias shema] "and you shall bind them [tefilin] as a sign"
Of course, we actually don't wear tefilin during most recitations. There are ways to rationalize this -- most such recitations are at night, for example, and my teacher Binya Kóatz proposes that on Shabbos the day itself is our tefilin. But part of me wonders if the reason we don't wear tefilin every time we say the Shema is simply because being true to yourself all the time is really quite hard.
When we wear tefilin, the tefilin are a sign to guide us. When we don't wear tefilin, their absence is a sign of how easy it is to become lost. With tefilin and without, we testify falsely about ourselves every day.
I wonder if that's because "who I am" does not belong entirely to me.
The v'ahavta opens
ואהבת את יה אלקיך בכל־לבבך ובכל־נפשך ובכל־מאדך
You shall love haShem your G-d with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all מאדך
The last word is often translated as "your might" or "your strength", but Rashi interprets it as meaning "your resources" or "your wealth".
But our wealth isn't ours, a point the Torah makes directly after the v'ahavta (thanks to Liana Wertman and my fellow Torah Studio students for this teaching):
When it happens that haShem your G-d brings you to the land that was sworn to your fathers -- to Avraham, to Yitzhak, and to Yaakov -- to be given to you
great cities that you did not build
and houses filled with everything good that you did not fill
and wells dug that you did not dig,
vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant,
and yet you eat and you are satisfied
guard yourself from forgetting haShem, who brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim, from the house of slavery
Our wealth is not ours. Even our strength and our might, if you think about it, aren't really ours. And this goes further. The word מאד means "very" -- brin solomon translates the first statement of the v'ahavta as follows:
And you will love haShem, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all that makes you you.
But just as my wealth isn't mine, and my strength isn't mine, my עצם/essence isn't mine: it comes from my ancestors, my beloveds, my culture, my enemies, hashem.
So I'm left with the question: how do I love haShem with all of something that doesn't belong to me?
And who, or what, am I loving?
It will not surprise you, I think, that I struggle with the personal god of the Torah -- a god who is angry, a god who kills, a god who chooses one people over others and gives them a land full of cities and houses and wells and vineyards that they did not build fill dig plant.
I'm not satisfied with the standard answers that we can't understand G-d, or that G-d is impersonal, that G-d is void. "The universe is indifferent" is all well and good until you remember that we are part of the universe, and we are only indifferent if we choose to be. Our Torah portion teaches:
כי אל קנא יה אלקיך בקרבך
for your G-d haShem within you is a G-d of passion
G-d is in the universe and beyond the universe. G-d is within us and outside of us. G-d is indifferent, G-d is void. But G-d is also in us and we care, and we love -- if we choose to.
I say Kai Cheng Thom's words when I lie down and when I rise up:
I want to live in love and believe in love. If I have to die, I want to die in love [...] It may be hard to believe in. It will be harder to live. I hope we choose it anyway.
I live on stolen land sustained by wealth that isn't mine. I didn't choose this, but my me is not mine alone.
Can I love G-d with all of that? Can I be the part of G-d that loves with all of that?
Tracy Kidder recounts a conversation with Dr. Paul Farmer z''l (emphasis mine):
Kidder: Your [employee was only saying] that it was a shame you had to spend so much [on a medevac flight for one patient], given what else you could do with twenty grand.
Farmer: Yeah, but there are so many ways of saying that [...] For example, why didn't the airplane company [...] pay for his flight? That's a way of saying it. Or how about this way? How about if I say, I have fought for my whole life a long defeat. How about that? How about if I said, That's all it adds up to is defeat?
Kidder: A long defeat
Farmer: I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I'm not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don't dislike victory.
[...]
Kidder: I like the line about the long defeat
Farmer: I would regard that as the basic stance of [the Preferential Option for the Poor]. I don't care if we lose, I'm gonna try to do the right thing
Kidder: But you're going to try to win
Farmer: Of course!
There's nothing profound I have to say here, sorry.
But we are a piece of G-d that loves -- so we have to choose love. Even if all it adds up to is the long defeat.
Good shabbos,
ada