Parashat Shof’tim Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9

Dear TBE Community,

The month of Elul is traditionally understood as a month of intensified soul-searching, a month where the longing to be closer to one’s inner nature as well as to God manifests itself more starkly, and in a more vulnerable manner. Related to this understanding is the perception of Elul as a month of love.

Love encompasses sensations like desire, the longing for closeness with a loved-one, as well as a readiness for vulnerability, an openness to reveal at least some of one’s secrets.

The rabbinic sages liked to imbue even the most mundane appearing thing with meaning, to interpret it in a way that would resonate with how they saw the world: a world infused, in every tiny nook and on even the thinnest layer, with Judaism, with love for Judaism, and with love for God. All these things were one. Love for Judaism could not exist without love for God and vice versa.

אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי

Ani le dodi ve dodi li – I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.

Because the rabbis were so enamored with love for God, with love as the essence of Judaism, their midrashic force knew no bounds: Look, they said, isn’t it beautiful, how the spelling of Elul – אלול – is like an acronym for this verse from the Song of Songs, that collection of erotic poems of longing for a beloved! (Maybe the rabbis established the propensity for acronyms in the Jewish professional world?!)

While the poems in the Song of Songs are unambiguously centered in a sensual here and now, the Talmudic commentators and following generations of commentators chose to read them as an illustration of the loving relationship between God and Israel, effectively merging the realm of piety and earnest Torah study with the down-to-earth realm of longing and desire. (Christian commentators alike chose to read it that way, merely emendating their interpretation to refer to God/Jesus and the Church.)

In our Rosh Chodesh session recently, some participants didn’t so much resonate with the anthropomorphic image of God as a beloved, desired king. I can relate; there is a potentially unhealthy power dynamic in such a constellation. And yet, the blending of desire to be close to God with the desire to be close to a beloved has been over the years a poetic inspiration for me, and it has allowed me to reflect more honestly about the human longing to see behind the secretive veil of the often-indifferent feeling universe.

There are limits to human understanding and human knowing, as well as to the human capacity of expression. The closest most intense experience humans arguably might know is love – be it love for a partner, a parent, a child, or a very dear person. So, when we want to describe feelings for God, turning to love language seems the next accessible vocabulary.

As I mentioned above, one theme of Elul is the longing to come closer to God. When people love, they have a sense of knowing, but they also long to know the subject of their love better, in an ever more intimate way. Seeing the face of a loved-one may be what we long for always – the face of our mother or father, our partner, our child, our friend. Thus, it might seem relatable that generations of rabbis and Torah commentators have expressed their desire to know God with an image from the human realm: To seek God, to try to come closer to the Divine, is like longing to see a beloved face up close.

Psalm 27, the psalm traditionally recited through Elul until the end of Sukkot, contains verses that express just that. Here are the verses familiar from the communal chanting:

אַחַת שָׁאַלְתִּי מֵאֵת־יְהֹוָה אוֹתָהּ אֲבַקֵּשׁ שִׁבְתִּי בְּבֵית־יְהֹוָה כׇּל־יְמֵי חַיַּי לַחֲזוֹת בְּנֹעַם־יְהֹוָה וּלְבַקֵּר בְּהֵיכָלוֹ׃

One thing I ask of God

only that do I seek:

to live in the house of Adonai

all the days of my life

to gaze upon the beauty of God

to visit Adonai in Adonai’s temple.

These verses already express a desire to be close to God, to behold God’s presence as if beholding a beloved face. And the psalmist continues a few lines below:

לְךָ אָמַר לִבִּי בַּקְּשׁוּ פָנָי אֶת־פָּנֶיךָ יְהֹוָה אֲבַקֵּשׁ׃

For You my heart says:

“Seek My face!”

Oh Adonai, I seek Your face.

To seek God’s face, the face of a loved-one, is a recurring image in Biblical language and poetry. It connotes a desire for intimacy, a longing to see God’s true, inner nature.

Showing one’s inner nature is a vulnerable act. “Let me see your beauty broken down, like you would do for one you love,” Leonard Cohen sings in “Take this Longing.” Like in Elul, like in “Ani le dodi ve dodi li,” there’s a reciprocity expressed in this title: Take this longing, receive it – this longing that I want to give you.

The topos of “seeking God’s face” is to me one example of how masterfully and poetically the Jewish liturgical and literary tradition plays on the keys of love, vulnerability, desire for the divine unknown as it explores the human need to draw close to the secrets we may never fully uncover. And yet we try, every day.

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch
rabbiknobloch@bethelsp.org