MarCheshvan 24, 5776/November 6, 2015
Love. Where does it come from? What is its source? The first time love - ahavah in Hebrew - is mentioned in Torah is in last week's parasha, in which G-d , speaking toAvraham, refers to Yitzchak as "your son, your only one, whom you love." (Genesis 22:2) And the second time love is mentioned in Torah is in this week's reading of Chayei Sara, in which we read, "And Yitzchak brought her to the tent of Sara his mother, and he took Rivka, and she became his wife, and he loved her." (ibid 24:67)
Both mentions of love are connected to Yitzchak, but is it truly possible that love was not an element of human relations throughout the first twenty generations that precededYitzchak? In the account of the creation of man and woman we are told that "a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife," (ibid 24:2) yet love is not mentioned as the cause for the marital bond. Most certainly Avraham and Sara, who worked side by side in the service of HaShem, suffering years of barrenness and ultimately basking together in the birth of their son Yitzchak, loved one another. Yet Torah never tells us so.
What is different about Yitzchak? The answer to this puzzle is not to be found inYitzchak, per say, but in the context in which love is mentioned concerning Yitzchak. When G-d describes Yitzchak to Avraham as "your son, your only one, whom you love."(ibid) the context is G-d's instruction to Avraham to take Yitzchak to Mount Moriah and make of him a burnt offering in the place of the future Holy Temple. When Torah tells us that Yitzchak "took Rivka, and she became his wife, and he loved her," (ibid) the setting, our sages explain, is the place of the Holy Temple. As Midrash teaches us, when Yitzchak "went forth to pray in the field towards evening" (ibid 24:63) just before seeing Rivkaapproaching from afar, the field in which has was praying was in reality the place of the future Holy Temple. Yitzchak was visiting the very place where his father had bound him and was tranquilly praying at the site. Whether we accept this Midrash as being literal, or as investing a spiritual reality and energy into the moment and location where Yitzchak'sprivate meditation merged with his union with Rivka, the message of the Midrash is clear: the place where the Holy Temple stands is the place of our most personal, our most private and our most intensely shared experience, as individuals, as friends and lovers, as a nation and as the family of nations.
Not simply does the word for love - ahavah - appear in Torah for the first time in connection to the place of the Holy Temple, but the very reality of love - of oneness and completeness, of unity of body, soul and purpose, of peace and wholeness with oneself and with another, with oneself and with G-d - it all emanates from this place. For this is the place where G-d's love for His creation and for man which He placed at the center of His creation, flows into the world and floods all creation with life, with light and with love.
Our sages teach us that Avraham experienced the concept of the Holy Temple as akin to a mountain, referring to G-d's instructions to bring Yitzchak to "one of the mountains, of which I will tell you." (ibid 22:2) Yitzchak, as we have seen, experienced the Holy Temple reality as a field, and Yaakov, who dreamed of a ladder extending from the earth to the sky, upon waking declared, "This is none other than the house of G-d." (ibid 28:17)
Likewise, love can be a mountain, an upward climb, distant and foreboding, requiring a supreme effort to achieve. Love can be a meadow, a place of peace and comfort, of quiet meditation and the coming together of souls on an equal footing, a level playing field. And ultimately, love is a house, a home, a family, which, in effect, assumes both the challenges of the mountain and the tranquility of the meadow, and unifies and raises up all three ideals of love, infusing them with the ultimate blessing of Divine love and unity by bringing G-d into the holy equation.
This ultimate source of love is the message of the prophetic vision:
"And many peoples shall go, and they shall say, "Come, let us go up to HaShem's mount, to the house of the G-d of Yaakov, and let Him teach us of His ways, and we will go in His paths," for out of Zion shall the Torah come forth, and the word of HaShem from Jerusalem." (Isaiah 2:3)
-The Temple Institute
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