Shabbat Parshat Vaetchanan, 5769

Parashat V’etchanan has a recurring emphasis on ‘loving God,’ the most well-known example being the verse of loving God with all your heart, your soul, and your ‘meod’ (taken as money – for one who loves his money more than his life).

Our Sages have dealt with the question,”how can one love God if we cannot know what He is?” The Rambam put forth an answer to this question that has become accepted through much of Jewish thought. The Rambam describes how while we cannot know what God is, we can understand the world He has set up. The rules of science reflect how God chooses to order the world and in effect – how God ‘thinks.’ This knowledge and the knowledge of God’s Torah are the closest we can come to knowing or understanding God. From this understanding – we can have a love of God.

Rabbi Granatstein raised the question that this type of path to loving God isn’t available to the masses. You need someone who can master the sciences and the Torah, before that person can truly love God. The question remains then, how can someone who is not going to master the sciences and the Torah fulfill his /her obligation to love God?

Here, Rabbi Granatstein turned to some concepts in the kabbalah. The kabbalah refers to the ‘ayn sof’ as the unknowable aspect of God. The next level down is ‘yesh.’ Yesh m’ayin – the concept used to describe the original creation – refers to God’s putting forth the aspect of Him that is knowable. In the kabbalistic terms, then, our knowledge of God is tied to His creation and His works on earth.

What we can do is see the work of God here on earth. We can appreciate what He does and through this sensitivity, we can come to love God. [Clarification from after the talk: This doesn’t rely on God doing ‘good’ things or trying to address concepts of bad things happening to good people. Rather, this is developing a sensitivity to how everything in the world comes from God and depends on Him.]