In the Mood for Love…Of God
Dear friends,
I write this newsletter article on Valentines Day, so I have the topic of love on the brain.
In Judaism, the greatest love story every told is not between two people, but between the Jewish people and God. Every Friday night, we celebrate the wedding of human and divine by singing “Lecha Dodi Likrat Kalah, Come, my Beloved! Meet the Bride!”
In the Song of Songs, the Bible imagines in luscious detail a romantic dialogue between humanity and God.
I sleep, by my heart is awake A sound. It is the voice of the beloved knocking. [He says,] “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is drenched with dew, my hair with droplets of the night.” (Song of Songs, ____,___)
To those unfamiliar with the common Jewish metaphor of God as our romantic partner, it can sound shocking. Isn’t it illicit to connect God to the sinfulness of sexuality? Well, actually, unlike in some religions, Judaism is grounded in the connection between the physical and the spiritual. Jewish tradition views sex not only as kosher, but encouraged and even holy.
With this positive and holy view of sexuality, it becomes less surprising that Jews imagined romantic relationships with God. So, in this season of love, perhaps we can learn some new ways of relating to God through our own love relationships, and/or new ways of relating to our partners as we explore images of God as our beloved.
Learning from Our Human Relationships
Most of us grow up imagining God as an all-powerful parent, perhaps idealized versions of our mothers and fathers before we got old enough to realize that they are only human. In seeing God as a parent, we are able to pray to God to help us and save us from our pain, to fix the problems that we cannot fix ourselves.
So why would we want another image of the divine? What might it mean for our relationship with God to see God as our beloved?
First, seeing God as beloved opens the possibility of relating to God as a partner. Jewish texts are rife with the notion that we are God’s partners in creation. In this view, God started the world, but it is our job to complete God’s vision. One midrash (rabbinic legend) teaches that God created the world to make a home for Godself in “the lower realms,” i.e. on earth, rather than in heaven. Drawing on this image, the mystics teach that when we do mitzvot and fulfill one of God’s commandments, we create more space for God in the world.
Second, relating to God as our beloved also can mean experiencing deeper closeness to God. Where many think of the Jewish God as remote, imagining God as our beloved helps bring God nearer when we need someone to be present with us through our struggles and love us unconditionally, even if God doesn’t fix all of our problems for us.
Learning for our Human Relationships
What can we learn in our human relationships from our understandings of the Jewish people’s relationship with God?
First, the human divine relationship in the Bible is no fairy tale, where soul mates meet and live happily ever after. There is initial care and passion, but the deeper love comes through shared experience and struggle. As the Israelites mature, they come to love God not as they pictured God in the moment of Exodus, as a strapping warrior and savior. Instead, they love God for staying with them through the trials of wandering in the wilderness, the painful exiles.
Second, when God forgives the people for straying to worship other Gods, God repeatedly refers to it as forgiving the people for adultery.
Yet, if I am honest, I can only take this metaphor so far. The metaphor of divine-human romance in the Bible is based on a non-egalitarian relationship, where the man sets the rules and punishes the woman for violating them. As we create loving AND egalitarian human relationships, I hope we can take with us the Biblical values of loyalty, forgiveness, partnership, and love shown in God’s relationship with the Jewish people, and leave behind the imbalance of power.
However you imagine God, as a person, a force, a myth, or something else, I hope that engaging with our tradition and exploring what our ancestors believed can expand our perspectives and possibilities today.
Warm regards,
Rabbi Margie