Torah Portion: Va’etchanan; Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11

D’var Torah
This week’s Torah portion contains one of the most well-known sections of the Torah—the Sh’ma and V’ahavta prayers.  For many of us, these are words we can recite as easily as the Pledge of Allegiance, but we rarely take the time to deeply think about what they mean.  These prayers, this Torah portion, essentially command us to love God.  This is not an easy thing to do.  What does it even mean to love, let alone love God?  How do we show our love for God?  And perhaps the most critical question of all, how can we be commanded to feel something?  Are emotions really “commandable”?

Jewish commentators have wrestled with this question for generations.  One answer that has great appeal for me comes from the Jewish mystic, the S’fat Emet, who says that love for God is not really something that we can command; instead, it is embedded within us almost as part of our DNA.  The love is always present, just sometimes lying dormant.  The words of “thou shalt love the Lord your God” does not refer to an emotion, but rather to the actions we take that bring this built-in emotion to the fore.  As to what these specific actions are, the words of Torah itself tell us: “Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”  In the words of our prayerbook Mishkan T’filah, this means we love God with “every conscious act.”  It is a challenge, to be sure, to bring this kind of love-through-action to the fore of our lives.  Yet when we just attempt to rise to this challenge, we find our hearts, our spirits, our might deeply touched and changed.  We find connection—to our own deepest selves, to our community, and to God.

For more insight in this week’s Torah portion, visit urj.org/torah.

Shalom, Rabbi Annie