Vaeschanan: Declaring Hashem’s Oneness in Love

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Vaeschanan: Declaring Hashem's Oneness in Love

“Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One” (Devarim 6:4). This pasuk is the source of the mitzvah of Yichud Hashem (God’s Oneness). We are commanded to “unify” Hashem in our minds: to know that He is Absolutely One in every sense of the term, and to continually strip away all notions of contingency, multiplicity, physicality, and temporality from our conception of Him (Hilchos Yesodei ha’Torah 1:7-12).

“You shall love Hashem, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources” (Devarim 6:5). We are also commanded in the mitzvah of ahavas Hashem (love of God): to contemplate the infinite wisdom in His wondrous creations, which will result in a state of bliss (Sefer ha’Mitzvos: Aseh #3) and fill us with an overpowering desire to seek even more knowledge of Him (Hilchos Yesodei ha’Torah 2:2).

Yichud Hashem is logically prior to Ahavas Hashem. After all, how could a person have “a tremendous desire to know the great Name” (ibid.) without knowledge of who Hashem is (and who He is not)? Indeed, the Rambam explains that ahavas Hashem “is based entirely on knowledge, and the love will be in proportion to the knowledge: if little then little, if a lot then a lot” (Hilchos Teshuvah 10:6).

However, in his commentary on Ahavah Rabbah / Ahavas Olam – the berachah which we say in Shacharis before the Shema – the Abudirham indicates that ahavas Hashem is, in another sense, prior to Yichud Hashem:

You will find that this berachah includes many themes: that Hashem loves us more than all the other nations, that He gave us the Torah, that He instilled within us belief in His Oneness, and that He is the Lord of all – but the berachah concludes with [the theme of] love, not with [the theme of] Oneness, because the declaration of His Oneness is ineffective (lo yo’eel) unless it is from love and from a whole heart.

What does this mean? Presumably, the Abudirham would agree that there is inherent value in knowing Yichud Hashem, both because it is a fundamental truth and because such knowledge is a mitzvah. The Torah’s value system of avodah me’ahavah (serving Hashem out of love) and Torah lishmah (learning Torah for its own sake) is predicated on the idea that knowledge is intrinsically valuable, as the Rambam writes: “the only purpose of truth is to know that it is true” (Intro to Perek Chelek). What, then, is the Abudirham referring to when he speaks of the “efficacy” of our declaration of Yichud Hashem? “Effective” in what sense? And what makes a “loveless” proclamation of His Oneness “ineffective”?

According to the Abudirham, it is our declaration of Yichud Hashem that has a purpose beyond merely reviewing the idea. Ahavas Hashem is the motion of the yearning soul in its quest for knowledge of reality. Yichud Hashem is the (ultimately) unattainable destination of that quest. When we affirm our belief in Yichud Hashem from a place of ahavah, we strengthen our conviction that behind this multifaceted reality is a Unity. In other words, a “wholehearted” Shema will have the beneficial effect of reinforcing the synergistic relationship between Yichud Hashem and ahavas Hashem. But if God’s Oneness is nothing but an abstract theoretical construct which resides in our intellect, disconnected from our passionate truth-seeking, then our declaration of Yichud Hashem is reduced to a dry, ritualistic, “ineffective” catechism.

Now we can understand what we mean at the end of this berachah when we ask Hashem to help us “yachedecha be’ahavah” (lit. “to unify You in love”). We are asking that our conviction in His Oneness not only inform but also enflame our quest for knowledge, and that our seeking of truth be oriented towards the ultimate Truth. The conclusion of the berachah teaches us that Hashem’s love towards us is based on our love towards Him.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you. 

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Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"  For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here. 

Haftarah of Mattos / Masei: Divine Love as the Foundation of Rebuke

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Haftarah of Mattos / Masei: Divine Love as the Foundation of Rebuke

Sefer Yirmiyahu is filled with messages of rebuke, catastrophe, and tragedy. Yet, the very first prophecy Yirmiyahu is sent to deliver has a markedly different character from the rest of the book:

Go and call out in the ears of Yerushalayim, saying: “Thus said Hashem: I recalled for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your wedding [ceremony], your following after Me in the Wilderness, into an unsown land. Israel is holy to Hashem, the first of His crop; all who consume it will be held guilty; harm shall befall them - the word of Hashem” (Yirmiyahu 2:2-3).

Rav Hirsch (Commentary on Haftaroth) notes this thematic discrepancy:

The first Word which the young prophet has to bring to his people in the name of God, as the beginning of his mission, is no stern rebuke, no prophecy of the impending disaster, but a message of love, of encouragement, a Word that looks beyond all the precipices, pierces through all the dark clouds of the gloomy fate, to the bright outlook on the ultimate sun-bathed goal of the undying People at the zenith of their destiny intimately united with their God. No more intimate or more glorious Word has ever flowed from the lips of any prophet. A Word which embraces the most distant past with the most distant future, and thereby demonstrates the wonderful continuity of the Thought of God which comes to be developed in Jewish history.

Why does Yirmiyahu preface his prophecies of rebuke with this message of love? I would like to suggest an answer based on the words of the Rambam (Moreh ha’Nevuchim 3:28) and a quotation cited by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2015).

The Rambam maintains that the doctrines taught by the Torah fall into two categories. The first is “beliefs through which the ultimate perfection may be attained,” including “the belief in Hashem’s Existence (exalted is He), His Oneness, His Omniscience, His Omnipotence, His Will, and His Eternality.” The second category is comprised of “beliefs which are necessary for the sake of societal welfare, such as our belief that He (may He be exalted) is violently angry with those who disobey Him and that it is therefore necessary to fear Him and to dread Him and to take care not to disobey.” The belief in Hashem’s enduring love for the Jewish people belongs to this second category, since Hashem has no actual emotions and “love” is only ascribed to Him by way of metaphor.  

Van der Kolk begins the section of his book “on the minds of children” with the words of Diana Fosha, PhD, known for her work on the psychotherapy of adults suffering the effects of childhood attachment trauma and abuse: “The roots of resilience ... are to be found in the sense of being understood by and existing in the mind and heart of a loving, attuned, and self-possessed other.”

Perhaps Yirmiyahu opened his rebuke with a message of Divine love for this reason. He knew that in order for the Jews to endure their impending destruction and exile with the type of resilience that leads to teshuvah, they needed to feel seen and loved by Hashem. It is known that a baal teshuvah is “cherished and beloved” by Hashem (Hilchos Teshuvah 7:6), but that knowledge is not enough for the sinner. The sinner must also know that “the one whom Hashem loves, He rebukes” (Mishlei 3:12) – that the rebuke, itself, is from love, and reflects a confidence in the intrinsic worth of the sinner, despite their sins.

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If you've gained from what you've learned here, please consider contributing to my Patreon at www.patreon.com/rabbischneeweiss. Alternatively, if you would like to make a direct contribution to the "Rabbi Schneeweiss Torah Content Fund," my Venmo is @Matt-Schneeweiss, and my Zelle/Chase QuickPay and PayPal are mattschneeweiss at gmail.com. Even a small contribution goes a long way to covering the costs of my podcasts, and will provide me with the financial freedom to produce even more Torah content for you. 

If you would like to sponsor an article, shiur, or podcast episode, or if you are interested in enlisting my services as a teacher or tutor, you can reach me at rabbischneeweiss at gmail.com. Thank you to my listeners for listening, thank you to my readers for reading, and thank you to my supporters for supporting my efforts to make Torah ideas available and accessible to everyone. 

Be sure to check out my YouTube channel and my podcasts: "The Mishlei Podcast", "The Stoic Jew" Podcast, "Rambam Bekius" Podcast, "Machshavah Lab" Podcast, "The Tefilah Podcast"  For the full guide to all of my Torah content, click here.