Chapter 44: The Love Every Jew Inherits

Each of these two levels of love, “great love” (ahavah rabbah) and “eternal love” (ahavat olam), branches out into countless degrees and gradations, varying from person to person with what each can hold. So the holy Zohar says, commenting on “Her husband is recognized at the gates” (Mishlei 31:23): “That is the Holy One, blessed be He, Who becomes known and attached to every individual in the measure he estimates in his heart….”

For this reason love and fear are termed “the hidden things, which are the L‑rd our G‑d’s,” while the Torah and its mitzvos are “the revealed things, which are ours and our children’s, to carry out…” (Devarim 29:28). When it comes to actually performing the Torah and mitzvos, a single Torah and a single law apply to every one of us. Love and fear are different: they depend on how far each person knows G‑d in mind and heart, as said earlier.

There is, however, one love that holds within it a share of every degree and gradation found in “great love” and in “eternal love” alike; it lives equally in every Jewish soul, an inheritance handed down to us from our forefathers.

The Zohar speaks of it on the verse “With my soul I have longed for You in the night” (Yeshayahu 26:9): “One ought to love the Holy One, blessed be He, with the soul’s love and the spirit’s love, just as they cling to the body, and the body holds them dear….” Here is the sense of “with my soul I have longed for You”: because You, G‑d, are my real soul and my life, I long for You. I crave You and thirst for You as a person craves the life of his own soul. When he is faint and worn out, he craves and thirsts to have his soul revive within him; and when he lies down to sleep, he craves and thirsts for his soul to come back to him on waking. In the same way I crave and thirst to bring into myself the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, Who is the Life of all true life, by engaging in Torah when I rise from sleep at night. For the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are wholly one.

As the Zohar continues in that passage: “Because he loves the Holy One, blessed be He, a man should get up each night and labor in His service until daybreak….”

There is a further love, greater still than this one, likewise hidden in every Jewish soul as a legacy from our forefathers. Raaya Mehemna describes it: “Like a son who toils on behalf of the father and mother he holds dearer than his very body, soul and spirit…,” for “Is there not one Father to us all?” (Malachi 2:10).

One may object: what man exists, and where is he to be found, who would dare in his heart to draw near and reach so much as one part in a thousand of the love of “the faithful shepherd” [Moshe]? Even so, a small portion and spark of his immense goodness and light glows upon all of Israel in every generation, as the Tikkunim teach: “An offshoot of him is present in each generation, to illuminate them….”

The difficulty is that this glow lies buried and concealed very deeply within the souls of Israel. Yet drawing this hidden love out of its hiding place and into revelation, so that a person feels it in heart and mind, “is not out of your reach, nor is it far off; no, the thing is very close at hand, on your lips and in your heart” (Devarim 30:11, 14). In practice: one makes it a regular habit of speech, of his tongue and voice, to awaken the focus of his heart and mind and reflect deeply on the Life of all life, the Ein Sof, blessed be He, how He is in truth our actual Father and the root of our existence; and thereby he awakens love for Him, as a child loves his father. When he trains himself in this all the time, the habit turns into second nature.

Should it seem to him at first that this is mere fancy, he need not be troubled, for in its essence it is entirely true, thanks to the “hidden love.” Yet the reason for bringing it into the open is to translate it into deeds: the Torah he studies and the mitzvos he performs on its account, aiming to bring G‑d satisfaction, as a child serves his father.

Of this it was taught: “The Holy One, blessed be He, attaches a good intention to the act” (Kiddushin 40a), lending it “wings” to soar upward, as discussed earlier. And the satisfaction itself resembles the delight of a king when his son returns home released from captivity, the parable used earlier; or it lies in His having a dwelling among the lowest of beings, as discussed earlier.

Likewise, the love of “with my soul I have longed for You,” described above, can be drawn out of hiding into revelation without much difficulty, by steady practice in speech and in the heart together.

And even if he is unable to make it felt in his heart, he can still devote himself to Torah and mitzvos “for their own sake” (lishmah) by keeping the idea of this love before his mind’s eye; for “the Holy One, blessed be He, attaches a good intention….”

These two loves are a legacy from our forefathers and something like an innate nature of our souls, and the same holds for the fear bound up in them, the dread of being severed, G‑d forbid, from Him Who is the root of our life and truly our Father. Even so, they are termed “natural” fear and love only so long as they stay purely in the intellect and in thought, hidden away in the heart. In that state they belong to the ten sefiros of Yetzirah, where they lift up the Torah and mitzvos they gave rise to.

Once they are revealed in the heart, however, the Zohar names them re’usa d’liba, “the heart’s desire,” and they belong to the ten sefiros of Beriah, raising to that level the Torah and mitzvos that grew out of them. For they emerge from the heart’s concealment into revelation only by way of daas: firmly fastening the mind and focusing intensely, from deep within the heart, with great force and without letup, on the Ein Sof, blessed be He, and how He is our actual life and our real Father, blessed be He.

It is also well known that the Tikkunim say: “The supernal Mother [Binah of Atzilus] makes her nest in Beriah,” and Binah means contemplating the light of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, the Life of all life; as in Eliyahu’s discourse: “Binah is the heart, and through it the heart comprehends.”

What is more, these two loves contain a quality of love higher and more exalted than fear and love born of the intellect, the love that was termed above “eternal love.”

Still, a person must exert his mind to understand and attain the level of “eternal love” as well, which, as described above, grows from understanding and knowing G‑d’s greatness. The aim is to intensify the fire of love into glowing embers, a mighty flame, a blaze that reaches toward heaven, so that “vast waters will be unable to put out the love, and rivers will not sweep it away” (Shir HaShirim 8:7). For a love like glowing embers and a mighty flame, arising from understanding and knowing the greatness of the Ein Sof, blessed be He, has an edge and an excellence over those two loves when they lack that burning intensity, just as gold surpasses silver, as will be clarified below.

Beyond this, “this is all of man” and the reason he exists: to know G‑d’s glory and the majesty of His greatness, each person to the extent he is able, as Raaya Mehemna writes on Parshas Bo: “So that they should know Him…,” as is known.