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August 3, 2001/Av 14, 5761, Vol. 53, No.43
Does God truly need our love?
Torah Study
DR. NEIL GILLMAN
Va'etchanan/Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11
This week's Torah reading includes two of Judaism's foundational texts: the Ten Commandments (first recorded in Exodus 20 and now reiterated here), and what has come to be known as "the Shema" (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).
The latter is arguably the most familiar passage in the entire Torah. It is repeated at least twice daily in our morning and evening prayers, and almost every Jew will recognize it and even chant it.
The first verse of the passage, as familiar as it is, is difficult to translate. The conventional translation is "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is One."
But a more accurate translation would probably be something along these lines: "Take heed, O Israel! The Lord, our God, alone is God," or "... is uniquely God." The point is not that God is "one," as opposed to two or more, but rather that the God of Israel is the only God that is uniquely to be worshiped by us.
But the second verse of the passage is even more theologically challenging.
Now we are commanded to love God "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Set aside, for a moment, the problems involved in our being commanded to love. Can humans be commanded to love? Love is an emotion, a feeling. Can we be commanded to feel anything, to have an emotion in the first place?
The deeper problem in this verse is the implication that God wants and needs to be loved by us. But does God need anything? Isn't God perfect, needing nothing, at least nothing that human beings can supply? And doesn't this notion that God needs our love imply that God is imperfect?
These are some of the questions raised in an extraordinary book-length exploration of this biblical passage by Rabbi Norman Lamm. Titled "The Shema," the book is a rich treasure-house of commentaries on the passage as a whole.
The most fascinating chapter in Rabbi Lamm's book is the chapter titled "Does God Need Our Love?"
Lamm proceeds cautiously - because the weight of the tradition would seem to suggest that the answer to that question is a resounding "no" - but his own answer is a tentative "yes."
He acknowledges that all of our images of God are human projections, for no human being knows anything objectively about God. God is surely beyond human comprehension. But Rabbi Lamm also acknowledges not only the inevitability of these humanly crafted images but also their psychological value to us.
He concludes with this remarkable statement: "As we meet God, loneliness encounters loneliness; and as each of us offers his loneliness as a gift to the other, we experience relief, as it were, from cosmic loneliness."
I first learned of God's loneliness from my late teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel. I will never forget Heschel's claim that if we read the Bible carefully, we will find that far from having it all together, the biblical God experiences only failure and frustration. But God's frustration is also mingled with infinite hope and yearning. God never achieves the kind of world God hopes for - but God never stops hoping.
This is the first in the seven "Sabbaths" of consolation following Tisha B'Av and leading directly to the High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are around the corner - and God is still hoping.
Rabbi Neil Gillman is professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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