This week’s Torah portion contains some of the most profound words in the Torah – the Shema and the V’hafta.

The V’hafta has a simple theme, and when we sing it together in our communities, there’s a sense of peace, a sense of connection. The words seem to call out to us, urging us to lead softer, more gentle lives. 

The V’hafta reminds us that life is about love, that life is about opening up to God and opening up to others . And life is about gently teaching our children, so that they too will know how to love. 

“How do we love God?” asked one Chassidic master. And he answered by looking at all of the places where the Torah commands us to love.

First, he noticed, the Torah commands us to love our neighbors. Then it commands us to love the stranger, and finally it commands us to love God. The order, he taught, gives us the answer to how to love God. We love God by loving God’s children.

We love God by hearing the cry of the stranger, by comforting the mourner, by celebrating with the bride and groom. We love God by caring, by helping the other. And perhaps, most importantly, we love God by listening.

Open up a Torah, and look at the V’hafta. And then look at the verse just before it. “Hear O Israel,” it says, “Adonai is our God. Adonai is One.

We think about the Shema as a prayer about oneness.  But the Shema also urges us to listen.  In the words of one song,  “When you’re lost, you feel afraid, and you don’t know what to say, then listen, listen, to our God.”

Other religions are visual, teaches Jonathan Sacks. They build idols and Cathedrals. But Judaism grew up in the desert, a place where there were no monuments. There was only the sound of the wind. And when we encountered God at Mt. Sinai, there was no face. There was no vision of God. There was only a voice.

And so we learned to see the world more deeply – to listen to the cry of the stranger and the orphan. And over millennia, we learned that listening has the power to heal. Listening, recognizing the holiness inside every person, is the greatest form of love.

“Each of us has a point of holiness,” wrote Nachman of Breslov, “a helpful word that no one else can say, a word that can bring light into the lives of those around us and stir up the hearts of our friends. And our friends need us to say those words.”

“When we stood at Mt. Sinai,” adds Rav Nachman, “God placed the power to heal in the hands of every Jew.” All of us have the power to heal, just by listening and by saying the words that others need to hear. And together, we can end all the loneliness in the world.

We love God by listening to others, by letting them know we care, and by ending their loneliness. That is what it means to love God.

Shabbat Shalom,
Art