Constructing a Life of Meaning, Part Two: Love
Kol Nidre: October 5, 2003/5764
Rabbi Jeffrey Summit

The rabbis tell the story of a sophisticated Roman woman who once came to one of the great rabbis of the generation and posed a problem. She said: "I understand that God created the world and made the earth and sun and the moon but if your God is so great, just what has your God been doing ever since that time, during all those years since creation?" The rabbi thought for a moment and answered, "Ever since creation, God has been busy arranging marriages." The woman scoffed and said, "Arranging marriages! That's simple to do. I could do that!" She assembled all of her servants and paired them up and the next evening all the couples were married. The next day, couple after couple came to her unhappy and complaining. One woman was crying, one man had a black eye, everyone had problems. The woman returned to the rabbi and said, "I stand corrected. If your God has been able to arrange successful marriages, indeed you have a powerful God."

We come to college to learn so many things. We learn how to write, we learn how to organize our time, we learn an academic discipline, we learn how to live together with diverse people but how will we learn about love? How do we learn to form that special link between two people that brings joy and strength into our lives, that is so strong that it lasts over time, a partnership that sustains and nurtures us? If we are very fortunate, we come from families where parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, have modeled mature, loving relationships. If we have that, we truly are fortunate. But so many of us come from families where parents have had a harder time, where good people have worked on their relationships but marriages have ended in divorce or haven't yet attained the level of love the partners wish to achieve. Now it's up to us to take those lessons, successful and unsuccessful, and do the best that we can to build the foundation and possibility for love in our lives.

The Days of Awe, this time between Rosh Hashanah and the end of Yom Kippur, is a time when ideally, we go deep into ourselves, to examine our actions over the past year and honestly try to assess who we are and who we are in the process of becoming. What are the things that are really important to us and are we living in accord with those values? This evening I want to consider some perspectives that the Jewish tradition can teach us about love. I believe that the process of self-examination and personal change, of teshuvah, can open the gates in our lives wider so that love can enter.

While there are many things that are quite wonderful about America, our culture does a particularly poor job of teaching about the nature of love. Open a magazine, even a good one like the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and the messages we get about love are seriously off base: If I drive this car, she will be drawn to me. If I wear this tank top and a sultry look, he can't stay away. And perfume ads? Don't even get me started on perfume ads. We are constantly told that we can't be loved if we are too fat or too thin or not cool enough. Of course, on some level, we know these merchandizing promises aren't true, but we have to reject a lot of cultural messages before we can examine some deeper truths about love.

Before I go on, I just want to note that while traditionally the Jewish tradition privileges heterosexuality, I understand everything I'm talking about now to refer to relationships between two people of all sexual orientations seeking to build a loving relationship. So what does the Jewish tradition have to teach about love?

First, I should talk about the spark because God knows what makes that chemistry that attracts two people together. It's clear that the spark needs to be there. We learn that very early in the Torah. I'm thinking of the story when Rivka first saw Isaac, the text says "vatipol m'al hagamal" which I like to translate "she fell off her camel." Rivka asks "mi haish halazeh?" "Who is that guy?" with more than passing interest. For two people to come together, there's got to be that spark but if your goal is to build deep love, chemistry might bring you to the relationship but it won't keep you in the relationship.

Some people here are already married: the majority of people here might not get married for a while. Still, I think that marriage is an important place to start in order to understand the Jewish tradition's conception of the ideal relationship between two people, a relationship that can bring holiness into our lives. The Hebrew word for marriage is kidushin from the word kadosh, holy. While the English word "holy" sounds very Christian and outside our regular experience, the meaning of the word kadosh in Hebrew is quite straightforward. Kadosh means truly unique, not like other things. In kedushin, two people thoughtfully assess one another and then commit to take a relationship and work to bring it to a level that's truly on a higher plane.

Kidushin is taking abstract concepts like love and trust and commitment and forgiveness and making them real by how you act day by day. Holiness isn't found in proclaiming your eternal love, or doing stupid Romeo and Juliet "dying for love" moves. It's easy to die for love; living love takes a lot more work. It's found in everyday thoughtfulness and kindness when school and work become pressured, when money is tight, when parents are exerting the pressure that parents tend to exert, when you are angry or when you are tired. Kidushin is found in the way you treat another person when life takes unexpected turns, when you confront life as it is, not as you fantasized it might be. By definition, when you have decided to move a relationship into the realm of kidushin, the game (to use a basketball metaphor) is one on one; in the Jewish tradition, one person uniquely committed to another. You can't have a number of intimate relationships at the same time and expect to establish a unique bond of trust, love and commitment with another person.

Now that I've spoken about the end point, marriage, I want to go back to the beginning. I don't think that love starts from your connection with another person. Love starts with your connection to yourself. You have to have a pretty good idea of who you are before you can fully love another person. If you look to another person as a mirror, to tell you who you are, you will constantly write a script for confusion and conflict. In truth, the classic questions we ask during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are key. What is really important to me? How do I think it's important to treat other people? Down the line, what do I want my home and family to be like? How do I feel it's important to relate to my community, my culture and religion?

A friend recently told me a story that, while simple in its example, goes to the heart of this matter. She said she had been interested in a certain guy who seemed very nice. They were just getting to know one another and maybe there was something there. They were having dinner at a friend's apartment with a whole group of people and after dinner, everyone jumped in to clean up. She said, "I tried not to let it bother me, but while we were all cleaning up, this guy just sat and talked with one of his guy friends. It's not like we really needed his help; there were plenty of people to clean up but I was always taught that you jumped in and helped after dinner. Is it right that I should be upset about such a little thing?" I told her that I didn't think it was such a little thing. Maybe one time you overlook it but that is exactly what you pay attention to in relationships. How does a person act in the world, with friends, with their family, with the folks who work in the dining halls? Does the person share the same values that you share about what is important and meaningful in life?

Many people get confused about this, but I am convinced that love is much less about shared interests than it is about shared values. Shared values are a prerequisite for building the trust that's the basis of a strong relationship. There is that wonderful line in the High Holiday prayers about the importance of "the yes that is really yes, and the no that is really no." So when you say on Thursday, "Things are so crazy this week but Sunday night sounds great. I'll look forward to spending time then." You can't turn around on Sunday afternoon and say, "Oh, I'm really sorry, something came up. I need to change our plans." Oh, everyone can do that once or twice but if it's a pattern, that will strain the trust between two people. And what sometimes makes things more difficult is that when you love someone, you have a tendency to say, "It's all right, I understand." Many people are hesitant to call the person they love on a misdeed. They often think that the "loving thing" to do is to be understanding, to let them off the hook. Our tradition holds a different view.

There's a quote in the midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 54) that teaches "Love without admonition is not love." When you really love someone, you have to be strong enough to criticize them, to give tohahah, rebuke meant to help someone be better. The rabbis taught that you should only rebuke someone after you carefully consider and plan out what you have to say. Then you say it gently and in private to that other person. This demands honesty and courage and sensitivity. When we are on the receiving end of that rebuke, it demands that we do our best not to get defensive and to listen carefully to what the other person has to tell us. When you receive rebuke from someone you love and value, it's often a good idea not to try to answer and defend yourself right away. It's better to wait a day, consider the person's words and let things sink in before you try to respond. You can't change just because someone wants you to be different. You should only change because you value and agree with what they are telling you. The best relationships help us grow into the people we most want to become.

Often we work so hard in our lives that it's difficult for us to listen to criticism and admit that we aren't perfect but no one here is perfect. The people who love us don't expect us to be perfect; they want us to listen to them, to take them seriously, to hear them out. We all make mistakes, even with the people we care about the most in our lives. Yom Kippur teaches that teshuvah is possible; we can change, we can grow. The New Year comes with the possibility that we can be forgiven. We can come to a deeper understanding of why we act the way we do and determine to do better in the coming year.

The Jewish tradition stresses that if you are mad with a person, if you are upset with how they are acting, you don't go running to friends to talk about them or complain. You have an obligation to speak to them directly and then to stand by them and be open for them change and grow. A relationship is a balance, a two-way connection. In effect, if you don't say anything, you are letting go of your end of the relationship. That is actually one category of sin that in our tradition is called pesha. Pesha means a breach, a tear in the fabric that holds us together. Not being able to talk and listen pull a relationship apart and erode the trust that is so important in a love relationship.

While I'm talking about trust, this would be a good time to talk briefly about sex. It's difficult to talk about love without at least sharing a word about sex; hopefully they are connected. Traditionally, the Jewish tradition sees sex as a mitzvah, a good thing, even a commandment, within the context of marriage. Even through our culture makes it seem like everybody is constantly having sex, I believe it is a valid choice for people to wait until they are in a committed, loving relationship before becoming sexually active. Still, if you set up the discussion with people in college on two ends of the spectrum, either sex in marriage or no sex, for many people, the conversation is over. I think there is a middle ground. We can learn what the Jewish tradition has to teach about the values connected to sex through the terms that the Torah uses and then people can apply these terms to their own decisions. I want to specifically acknowledge my friend, Rabbi Steven Cohen who first gave me the idea about applying these different terms from Torah to how we think about sexual ethics in our lives.

I want to point out four terms the Jewish tradition uses in regard to sex. The highest level is represented by the word our tradition uses for sex in the context of marriage, that is yihud, from the word ehad (one). This signifies coming together with a deep commitment that's more than physical, binding hearts and souls through bonds of love and trust. Yihud is something that partners aspire to and even in marriage don't always achieve. On the next level, there is sex that is called yidiah, knowledge, from the verb ladaat, to know, as in "Adam knew Eve." Sexual relations signified by yidiah imply having an intimate knowledge, and thus a certain power over another person. You make yourself vulnerable and that vulnerability can be either good or bad. It's important to ask if you trust that person to take care of you and treat you appropriately once they know you that intimately. On the next level lower would be the word lishkav, to lie with, to sleep with. This might imply a casual, consensual relationship. It's a long distance from the higher levels where you really know and can trust another person. On the lowest level is the term gilui arayot, to uncover a person's nakedness. This is always negative, sex that makes us feel unsafe, taken advantage of, bad about ourselves. Now, in reality, each person will come to their own understanding about the role of sex in their lives but I believe that it's important to think about these levels as we make decisions about relationships and intimacy. Sex is so powerful and so distracting that that we have to be very thoughtful when we make sexual decisions. While the Torah recognizes that there are many ways to approach sex, our tradition has no problem making a value judgment. We clearly believe that sex on the highest level, with commitment, love and trust, that brings two people together in many dimensions, is the ideal towards which to aspire.

If only love would be easy. I've been blessed with having a wonderful marriage for twenty-eight years but in truth I have to say that being married is one of most difficult things, and one of the best things, that I do in my life. It takes so much work but the rewards are so profound. I hope that this Yom Kippur gives us the opportunity to think deeply about what is truly important in our lives. I hope we will have the courage to talk with the people we love in a way that is sensitive, supportive and helpful. I hope we'll have the strength to listen to what those people tell us so we can formulate our own plans for change and growth in this new year. May it be a sweet, peaceful and loving year for us all. Gemar tov. May we be sealed for a blessing in the book of life.