Shabbat Parashat Va’Etchanan

Sefer Devarim is comprised of a series of Moshe’s addresses to the Jewish people that he delivered before they entered Israel. In Parashat Va’Etchanan, there is one such address which Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman refers to as the ‘address of mitzvot’ where Moshe tells the people to keep the mitzvot (beginning with verse 4:1). In this address, Moshe warns the people, "But you shall greatly beware for your souls, for you did not see any likeness on the day God spoke to you at Chorev, from the midst of the fire. Lest you act corruptly and make yourselves a carved image . . ." (beginning with verse 4:15) and this stretched over a few verses. The practical impact of these verses is the prohibition against making images. But beyond that, we have an emphasis of the fact that at Sinai, we didn’t see anything – we only heard; what is the significance of this that it has to be emphasized?

To address the question above, we have to think in terms of how we contemplate or understand something. When you see someone, you have a clear frame of reference as to what it is and how to define it. But when you can only hear someone, there is an inherent lack of knowledge about the person – a barrier between you and the person. The emphasis here is that we can never ‘see’ God – i.e. to know what he is or to be able to define him.

With this background, we have to deal with a command later in the Parasha to love God, "You shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources." The Ibn Ezra on 6:5 explains that 'halev hu hada'at' - the heart is the intelligence. The reference in the verse to 'your heart' refers to one's intellect. Ramban there likes the explanation and quotes a prooftext for it from verse 6, "And these words should be . . . on your heart;" one can't talk of words being on one's heart but one can talk of them being in one's thoughts. This connection of the heart and the mind lies at base of what love really is. To love means to have knowledge of someone. The Torah introduces love to us with the first relationship between man and woman – Adam and Chava. When Adam is intimate with Chava, the Torah uses a language of ‘v’yadah’ – and he knew her. Why does the Torah use a language of ‘knowing’ when talking of intimacy? The answer is that the Torah is recognizing that a true relationship of love must stem from knowing the other person. True love can’t be because of a need or a benefit or some other reason; it must simply be from knowing, understanding, and appreciating the person for what the person is. Love must be a disinterested emotion where there is nothing in it for you, per se. The only cause for love can be love itself.

Here we have a command to love God but loving someone or something by definition means having knowledge of it. This leaves us with a question – how can we be commanded to love God when we cannot understand/know him? Midrashim talk of the extent of this love. One midrash tells of Rebbe Akiva who was happy only when he was able to fulfill this command with actually giving up his life for the love of God. Other midrashim emphasize the all-encompassing nature of this love – all of our desires and all of our resources are to be going to this love. Which still leaves us with the question – how can we achieve this if love requires a knowledge of that which you love and we can’t know God?

The Rambam dealt with this and developed an approach – ‘Derech Hashlilah.’ What this says is one must first understand all that one can about what God is not. One develops one’s intelligence, understanding more and more of the world until there is nothing left to know. [In the way of thinking at the time, ‘intelligence’ is more than just your repository of knowledge. It is a part of you that is meant to be active at all times in growing, never passive]. At that point one can refer to that base of knowledge and reflect – "I know this is not God, now what else is there?"; one’s context of what is not God gives a better context for now asking the question – what is God? The Rambam understands the references to ‘maaseh breishit’ and ‘maaseh hamerkavah’ as to refer to knowing all the knowledge there is to know – including physics and metaphysics. According to the Rambam’s interpretation, this relationship gets captured in Parashat Ki Tisah where Moshe asks God to see Him. God says no one can see His face and live; but he will allow Moshe to see ‘achorai’ – my traces. Meaning, Moshe can see the effects or results of God in this world but never the Cause, never God Himself.

This approach of the Rambam was certainly not accepted by the mainstream. There have been many Jews who have not studied physics and the like, but who have nevertheless talked of the love of God. How do they do it? R Levi Yitzchak M’BarDetchev in his Kedushat Levi offers two approaches to developing a love of God. He first brings the Rambam then he offers a second route where one has to be ‘mistakel el ha’ayin’ – to look into the ayin. Ayin is a kabbalistic term, which refers to the source of all, and it’s something that one can never know. Rav Levi speaks of embracing this ‘ayin’ and then the love of God coming upon you.

One can see the Rambam and Rav Levi coming to the same endpoint. You come to this abyss where beyond it lies all that you cannot comprehend and you leap into it. To get a sense of what this leap entails, one can look at how the Rambam describes it. It almost seems an obsession wherein all that you do, you have God in mind. What we can do is to try to fulfill the verse in its fullest – putting all of our energy and all our resources into our love for God.

HG