V’ahavta

V’ahavta

We humans tend to fray at the edges.  We become distracted and conflicted, desiring many things at once, torn between ideas, thinking and feeling chaotically, and suffering from our own disintegration.  V’ahavta is a call to integration and wholeness, three times insisting on bechol: “with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.”

The Talmudic sages further developed the theme of integration with their explanation of the unusual double vet of the word levavcha, “your heart.”  Love God, they interpreted, with both of your hearts:  with your yetzer tov or “good heart,” of course, but also with your yetzer ra, the dark chaotic heart.  This heart is not to be denied or destroyed, but befriended, and brought to the love of God. [Mishnah Berachot 9:5]

The way to whole-heartedness, we find in the v’ahavta, is through regular, simple expressions of love: daily recitations, conversations, bindings, and inscriptions.  With these acts, taught a Hasidic sage, we set the words “love your God” upon our heart, and there they sit patiently, ready to enter when the doors of the heart swing open. [Menachem Mendl of Kotzk, quoted by Buber, Tales of the Hasidic Masters]