“Do you love me?
Do I love you. With our daughters getting married and there’s trouble in the town, your upset, your worn out, go inside, go lie down.
Maybe it’s indigestion.
Goldie…I’m asking you a question. Do you love me?
You’re a fool.
I know.
For 25 years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cows, after twenty five years why talk about love right now.”
Milked the cows is where I drew the line. You know, he had a dairy farm in the UP.
But…love…we don’t talk about it enough. We assume, like Goldie, it’s there. That it will always be there. That’s a mistake.
Love needs to be nurtured. Love comes in different forms. There is the old love, like Tevye and Goldie. Like Isaac and Rebecca which is the first mention of love, ahava in the Bible. It’s comforting. It is comfortable. But maybe it is just too easy to take for granted.
Then there is the love between G-d and the people of Israel. Between G-d and each of us individually. We know G-d loves us because it says so in the second blessing of our service. G-d show love, like a loving parent, by giving us Torah, a set of rules that provides structure and boundaries.
On Shabbat Pesach, if it were an intermediate day and not the last day like today, then we would have read about G-d hiding Moses in the cleft of the rock and all of G-d’s goodness passing before Moses. Moses, hidden, would have heard that essential truth—Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v’chanun, erech apayim, v’rav chesed v’emet. Noseh chesed v’alaphim, noseh avon, v’pesha, v’chatata v’nakeh. The Lord, The Lord G-d is merciful and gracious, patient, and full of lovingkindness and truth. Extending lovingkindness to the thousandth generation…forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin.
That is an Eternal truth. An Eternal love.
But today we talk about another kind of love. Today we read –and hopefully sing—the text the Song of Songs. It’s a pretty racy text. And it was my Bat Mitzvah haftarah. I told my rabbi then, that I wasn’t going to read it in English—as was the custom there—I would read it in Hebrew. Not going to read that text in front of my 13 year old classmates. Especially not those boys. Yuck!
The rabbis included it in the cannon even though it is one of two books in the Bible that never mention G-d. The other book is Esther, where G-d is hidden. (Esther is a word that means hidden as well.)
They saw the text as an allegory of the love of G-d for G-d’s people Israel
That’s nice. And thank G-d Rabbi Akiva felt that way and became the champion for its inclusion. “while all of the sacred writings are holy, the Song of Songs is the holy of holies!” (Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5).
The allegorical nature went on to fuel later commentaries, like the Zohar, the Jewish mystical text and Maimonides who said:
“What is the proper form of the love of God? It is that he should love Adonai with a great, overpowering, fierce love as if he were love-sick for a woman and dwells on this constantly… And it is to this that Solomon refers allegorically when he says: ‘For I am love-sick’ (Song of Songs 2:5) for the whole of Song is a parable on this theme.” (Hilchot Teshuvah, 10:3) “
OK, still nice. But not enough.
Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, the first rabbi of this congregation, and Simon’s father’s rabbi at Congregation Sinai,
Wrote the original Jewish Encyclopedia article on the Song of Songs. Where he explores the Mishnah and Rambam and points out that the allegorical interpretation passed over to the Christian Church as well. Which is the way it has been until almost the last 100 years.
He also looked at the dating of the text. Was it really Solomon who wrote it? That’s nice but probably not true. Was it later? Probably. We’re Jews after all, so we debate everything, even in scholarly circles. So date estimates range from the 10th century BCE to the 2nd century BCE. A careful look at language and syntax as well as surrounding literature puts it most likely at 3rd century
Again that’s nice. Does that really add anything to our understanding?
Was it a metaphor of a rustic wedding? A week-long festivity celebrating the bride and groom with a complicated, carefully orchestrated sword dance? Or a love poem between Tammuz and Ishtar? Hirsch thinks maybe.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13916-song-of-songs-the
What if we read it as a dialogue—between young lovers. Then how does it read?
When I first read this in Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s book, Godwrestling, I was blown away. But it works. Many of us recited these words as part of our weddings. It hangs in my bedroom and it encircles my wrist.
Let’s try it. Women you read the first line and then men you read the response.
Remember —don’t stir up love until it please.
In a more modern piece, Waskow asks an unasked, fifth question of Passover…”Why is there charoset on the seder plate? No haggadah actually gives us this answer. We pass it down from generation to generation by word of mouth. You know the story. The charoset is supposed to represent the mortar that the Israelite slaves used to build the pyramids.
But Rabbi Waskow argues that it makes no sense. It is sweet. “If it mimics the mortar of slavery, it must also remind us that slavery may taste sweet, and this is itself a deeper kind of slavery.”
I had to think about that for a while. How can slavery be sweet? But remember how the Israelites kvetched in the desert? They wanted to go back to Egypt—for the cucumbers and the onions as the text will tell us—but really for the certitude. They knew what to expect.
Sometimes, we have a similar issue in this country with prisioners who do their time, get released and then commit a new crime because somehow being in jail is easier. Safer. They want to go back. Three square meals a day, heat, a roof over their heads. Predictability. Safety. Security.
The night before Passover began I attended an important program at Gail Borden Library sponsored by Gail Borden and the Elgin Police Department. Called the If Project, the founder, a tough cop from Seattle, Kim Bogucki, asks the question—maybe this is the real Fifth Question of Passover,
“If there was something someone could have said or done that would have changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?”
As their website states: “We are a collaboration of law enforcement, currently and previously incarcerated adults and community partners focused on intervention, prevention and reduction in incarceration and recidivism. Our work is built upon–and inspired by–people sharing their personal experiences surrounding the issues of incarceration.”
Watching this documentary and learning from this cop, representing the clergy of Elgin was important. It was a perfect way to spend the night before Passover, thinking about incarceration and freedom.
If there was something or someone that could have said or done something that changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?
After lots of mentoring and classes and writing, it almost always comes down to feeling loved. For me, this was a really important, significant, powerful program. http://www.theifproject.com/
If each of us is to see ourselves as having been led out of Egypt, freed from the narrow spaces of Mitzrayim with a strong arm and an outstretched arm, with discipline and love, each of us needs to confront the If Project’s question.
But back to the Song of Songs. Back to the charoset:
Waskow explains that there is a deeper truth to the charoset, transmitted not by word of mouth by taste of mouth, kisses of the mouth, the very text we read this morning, Song of Songs and he contends that the recipe is in the Song itself. The first time I read this, years ago, it was mind-blowing.
So charoset is not the mortar. It is the sweet taste of G-d’s love for each of us. It is the sweet taste of freedom. It is the sweet taste shared between lovers.
It is the hidden recipe for love. Enjoy! Happy Passover.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s Charoset Recipe, based on the Song of Songs:
“Verses from the Song:
- “Feed me with apples and with raisin-cakes;
- “Your kisses are sweeter than wine;
- “The scent of your breath is like apricots;
- “Your cheeks are a bed of spices;
- “The fig tree has ripened;
- “Then I went down to the walnut grove.”
So the “recipe” points us toward apples, quinces, raisins, apricots, figs, nuts, wine. Within the framework of the free fruitfulness of the earth, the “recipe” is free-form: no measures, no teaspoons, no amounts. Not even a requirement for apples rather than apricots, cinnamon rather than cloves, figs rather than dates. So there is an enormous breadth for the tastes that appeal to Jews from Spain, Poland, Iraq, India, America.
Nevertheless, I will offer a recipe.
Take a pound of raw shelled almonds, two pounds of organic raisins, and a bottle of red wine. On the side have organic apricots, chopped apples, figs, and dates (no pits), and small bottles of powdered cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.
Assemble either an electric blender, or your great-grandmom’s cast-iron hand-wound gefulte-fish chopper brought from the Old Country. If it’s the blender, put it on “chop” rather than “paste” frequency.
Start feeding the almonds and raisins into the blender or mixer, in judicious mixture. (How do you know “judicious”? Whatever doesn’t get the whole thing stuck so it won’t keep grinding.) Whenever you feel like it, pour in some wine to lubricate the action. Stop the action every once in a while to poke around and stir up the ingredients.
Freely choose when to add apricots, apples, figs, and/or dates. Taste every ten minutes or so. If you start feeling giddy, good! — that’s the wine.
Add in the spices. Clove is powerful, sweet and subtly sharp at the same time; a lot will get you just on the edge of dope.
Keep stirring, keep chopping, keep dribbling wine — not till the charoset turns to paste but till there are still nubs of nuts, grains of raisin, suddenly a dollop of apricot spurting on your tongue.
You say this doesn’t seem like a recipe, too free? Ahh — as the Song itself says again and again, “Do not stir up love until it pleases. Do not rouse the lovers till they’re willing.”
Serve at the Pesach Seder, and also in secret on your wedding night. And on every wedding anniversary. And every once in a while, but not too often, on a night when you want to celebrate and embody your love.” https://theshalomcenter.org/node/1265