Opening

- Story of listening to the Beatles for the first time

- ‘Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust.’ What caused the phenomenon of Beatlemania?
Why do people still hold up the traffic at Abbey Road? Keep that question in mind, we will
return to it.

Exposition of the Problem

- What is love (end of music quotes), and how can we even love others (‫ )ואהבת לרעך כמוך‬let
alone God (‫?)ואהבת‬

Thesis: Love is an action, not a feeling

- Erich Fromm: After marriages began to be decided upon feeling, not through familial or
other arrangement, love became a feeling instead of a faculty.
- Torah’s first presentation of love, first time felt necessary to use the word, was Yiṣḥaq and
Ribqa. Only after commitment did he engage in the actions of love.
- In our relationships, there are actions we take which are motivated by our commitments –
this is love. Pushing oneself to do more than one otherwise would.

Love of Others

- Prologue: Before we can discuss love of God, a being to whom it is impossible to relate, we
must discuss love of one’s fellow, and extrapolate from there – as God tells us to do.
- The rabbis connect the root of the word love, ‫אהב‬, with the Aramaic root ‫יהב‬, which means
to give. You do not give to those you love; rather you love those to whom you give.
- As Benjamin Franklin remarked, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to
do you another; than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
- Giving to others within the context of the framework set out in your relationship with them
is an act of loving.

Love of God

- First, God loves us. That will set the bedrock upon which our love for God can be built
- Love of God, Maimonides writes, comes from acknowledgement and contemplation of His
creation.
- “At the time that a person contemplates God’s wonderous and great actions and creations,
thus seeing from them His inestimable and never-ending wisdom – immediately they love,
praise, glorify and desire a great longing to know His great essence.”
- Evidently, we are meant to perceive creation as a perpetual, foundational act of love on
God’s part. For how could it be possible to view creation as anything but an act of love?
- In fact, denial of this love, or the fundamental goodness of being, leads to death and
destruction. Those who choose to view the world through a cold, cynical lens, where the
existentialist façade crumbles away and the emergent nihilism reigns supreme, have no
choice but to hate being and hate goodness.
- Job’s wife quote – “Curse God and die.” Author of Job links the bitter, pessimistic response to
suffering of cursing God/existence, to death=absence of God’s creativity, His act of love.
- It is so significant to see within creation, and the perpetual creative act, God’s love, as
through God’s actions we can begin to appreciate God himself.
- One can perceive the artist through their art. There are millions of fans of thousands of
creative artists, none of whom have ever personally met the artists themselves, but have
 been touched by their creative output. An artist’s creative expression is their art. (True, there
are artists who are not motivated by their creativity – and you can tell.) God is the same.
- When someone is intensely moved by another’s art, there is a deep human need to be able
to express that to the artist, who has moved them so strongly. You want to go up to them
and say, “Thank you.” When there is no opportunity for this, when it is denied, then people
begin to obsess about this overwhelming amount of fervent emotion they feel towards the
artist, that has been denied expression. And that leads to crazy fans who want to connect,
but more than connect, actually give something back to the Beatles, whose music had such a
profound effect on their life. And that is what gives rise to Beatlemania, and thousands of
people causing traffic jams backing up to the A5.
- Story about Richard Dawkins and other atheist – it is the same with God, and that is natural
and appropriate. But what can we possibly offer God, who lacks nothing?

Action in Love of God

- Let us look back, for a moment, to the idea of love as action. God demands action in our love
of him, as with human relationships. God in fact tells us to model our relationship with him
off of our human relationships, even though they are by necessity only metaphor. (As an
aside, that is why people who are not able to have relationships with other people and treat
them like dirt, are also unable to have a true relationship with God. You think it’s a different
faculty when it comes to God?)
- The actions demanded in our relationship with God – the context of which is Covenant – are
the mitzvot. We are not to sit back in passive acceptance of God’s love for us, but to engage,
in dynamic relationship with Him – call to action.
- Why are the mitzvot the things which we can give God? Does he need them? Of course not!
- Only thing God doesn’t have – is you
- Modelled from Avraham – Go for yourself. God could have easily said for me. Elaborate.
- The action God demands is the act of giving yourself to Him – the mitzvot allow for full
development of consciousness, if you actually engage and switch on when you do them.
Access points to God, thus enhancing relationship. God is the source of all being – the only
necessary, not contingent, being. Your existence, as another conscious agent, is dependent
on him, but you are a separate, created being. Give of your consciousness to God.

Message

- Don’t sit through mitzvot because you always have done, or because you feel like you have
to. Use them as a chance to engage – respond to the act of love God constantly engages in
towards you, that of creation, with an act of loving God back. Give him your consciousness
and your focus – yourself, the only thing that God does not have.