Nitzavim
Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20
Isaiah 61:10-63:9
Love is surely a tough emotional state to prescribe by law. Yet Deuteronomy dares to do that time and again.
It is the first book of the Torah that orders us to love God. It introduces the theme early and returns to it often.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might”(6:5). And a few chapters later, “If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul”(11:13).
These verses should sound familiar because they are the key passages of the first two paragraphs of the Shema prayer, recited daily in the morning and evening services.
In this week’s portion, near the end of the book, Moses takes up the subject again with renewed urgency. In a few verses, he emphasizes three times the supreme importance of wholehearted love (30:6, 16, 20).
Moses even speaks boldly of God performing a circumcision of the heart (30:6) to remove the impediments that have precluded an enduring covenantal relationship. To choose a life of observance requires an emotional impulse of unconditional love.
But there is more to this psychological substratum of faith than love. Deuteronomy balances it with fear. Our relationship with God must also turn on awe and reverence.
Merged emotions
Again the demand is raised early — “Revere only the Lord your God and worship Him alone”(6:13) — and often — “May they always be of such mind, to revere Me and follow all My commandments”(5:26).
Still further, Deuteronomy envisions girding our fidelity to praxis with a combination of fear and love: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love Him”(10:12).
The idea, then, is to merge these emotions into a single magnetic force binding us to God. It is for that state that we petition God each morning: “Unite our hearts to love and revere You [ahavah rabbah]”.
In truth, we need God’s help, because love and fear are conflicting emotions. God’s transcendence and sublimity inspire in us feelings of utter insignificance. We tread with caution, subdued by the chasm that separates the human from the divine.
The grandeur tarnishes our reverence with a touch of coercion. We pay homage out of fear of a presence beyond our ken and control.
Love, in contrast, attracts rather than repels. Nothing is prudential or calculating about it.
Adoration of God is its own reward, an end in itself. The experience of God’s immanence draws us near of our own free will. We offer our allegiance voluntarily and wholeheartedly. If fear provides a measure of protection from the demonic, love envelopes us with purpose and holiness.
Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nachmanides, 13th century) wrote a commentary to the Torah noteworthy for its mystical strains. In his discussion of the fourth of the Ten Commandments in Exodus (20:8) dealing with Shabbat, he drew distinctions between the dispositions of fear and love.
The occasion is a variation in the first word of the commandment. In Exodus (20:8) the text reads, “Remember [zakhor] the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” In Deuteronomy (5:12), it reads, “Observe [shamor] the Sabbath day and keep it holy.”
Nachmanides felt that to remember is the more proactive verb and related to the Sabbath’s positive commandments. The impetus for performing these rituals flows from love, and their goal is to elicit God’s compassion. A master, after all, is pleased if his servant heeds his instructions.
Contrastingly, the verb to observe is less forceful, implying only not violating the prohibitions that set Shabbat apart. The impetus for heeding these negative commandments is fear, and compliance is meant to pacify God’s anger.
Fear to love
Nachmanides then generalizes that acting religiously out of love is more meritorious than out of fear. The will power, energy, and cost required of us are greater.
Accordingly, when a positive and negative commandment conflict, the positive takes precedence. To save a human life, for example, always overrides resting on Shabbat.
Conversely, the punishment for transgressing negative injunctions is harsher than for failing to fulfill the positive ones. In the former, we incur God’s wrath because our acts are evil; in the latter, our inaction simply disappoints.
It is not for naught that our High Holy Days are traditionally called the Days of Awe. With their emphasis on God’s sovereignty and our waywardness, they are designed to fill us with dread and remorse. Are we worthy of having our lives extended for another year?
But God is in no rush to issue our sentence. We are granted a short stay to muster evidence of a change of heart. Nothing is predetermined. An outburst of contrition and resolve could move God from convicting to absolving us.
As we sense God’s empathy for our plight, we ascend from fear to love. We grasp that living Jewishly offers us a rudder and refuge in an unpredictable world. Fear is only our point of embarkation.
A taste of eternity awaits those of us on the journey ready to seize the rhythm and ritual of Judaism without ulterior motive. In due course, we are destined to discover that the gratification comes in this doing.
Rabbi Ismar Schorsch is the previous chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary.
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