On the third Friday of the month we have a Kabbalat Shabbat service called Shabbat Zimrah, the Sabbath of Song. Our music director is a highly talented and creative jazz pianist. He also directs our choir. He has written a number of liturgical pieces including a haunting Adonai, Adonai for the High Holidays. He has written a bridge between Debbie Friedman’s Ahavat Olam and the Sh’ma and often times our introduction about Ahavat Olam is that it is the ultimate love song between G-d and the Jewish people. For years in this bridge I can hear the heart beat. For me it is a very spiritual moment in the service and often it will produce chills.

I have been taking a class since the beginning of January called “Receiving and Extending Love” by the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. It has focused on meditation around three of our central prayers, Ahavah Rabbah, S’ma and V’ahavta. I like to say the Sh’ma, the proclamation that G-d is One is blanketed by love, G-d loves us and then we love G-d.

Last night he began by playing the theme song from the movie Exodus. Earlier in the week the book group met to discuss the book Red Sea Spies. A fascinating look at how the Mossad rescued thousands of Jews from Ethiopia by setting up a luxury dive school resort on the coast of the Sudan. A big part of it was set in 1981, the year I lived in Israel and was dating my first finance, an Israeli soldier who was killed in the incursion into Lebanon in January of 1983. I had already been thinking about times that we were swimming in the Mediterranean off the coast of Haifa. We spent a lot of time swimming that fall.

The Barchu we do during Shabbat Zimrah is one I learned bouncing on a bus in Israel as part of a NFTY summer program. I was already thinking about the power of love when we got to Ahavat Olam. Ahavat Olam has a line in it: . כִּי הֵם חַיֵּינוּ וְאוֹרֶךְ יָמֵינוּ, Ci hem hayyeinu, Because they (the commandments) are our life and they lengthen our days.

For some reason, this line was very powerful last night. My word for the year is Hineini. I am here. I am still here. The Torah has lengthened my life. It is a sign of G-d’s deep love not just for the Jewish people but for me personally. Some might argue that it isn’t fair. That Yuval didn’t have to die. That may be true. But last night, this prayer provided a deep connection and a deep sense of love. And there was a sense that I was in the right place and the right time and that somehow Yuval approved. Henieni. I am here. Ahavat Olam. Ahavah Rabbah. A great love.

The feeling is ephemeral. Impossible to hold. But it was there. However fleetingly.

This is the music that we used in our class last week that I found to be very moving. https://shiryaakov.bandcamp.com/track/we-are-loved