“I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.” (Song of Songs 6:4)

I took the wrong iPod with me this morning on my hike. I turned it on expecting to hear my father zt”l delivering an advanced Talmud lecture, instead, the Beach Boys blasted my ears with a love song. (I assure you that it was not a good trade!) For completely religious reasons – we are about to enter the Hebrew month of Elul, the month of love, as expressed in the verse above – I decided to listen to the Beach Boys, Elvis, Alabama, Gypsy Kings, Santana etc. sing about love.

I admit that the music added energy and bounce to my walk. I did the three miles in 30 minutes. I was surprised to realize that most of the songs were about love, and I laughed. All the artists sang about love with conviction, passion, and feeling, but, I gotta tell ya’, none of them are people who have succeeded at love. I checked some of them out on the web and most have been married two or three times and have bounced from one “love” to another faster than I can walk my three miles.

They do make a lot of money. People want to hear what these brilliant artists have to say about love. There are always relationship books on the bestseller lists. Classes, lectures and programs about love are usually packed. People want to know about love.

I wonder: What do we know about love? Always an important question; essential to our Elul.

You are not going to read Simcha Weinberg’s expert opinions and advice about love. Whatever I believe is empirical and deeply private. I do know one thing: The Torah often uses “Know” to mean love, as in “Adam knew his wife.”

Perhaps love begins with a desire to know someone, as Maimonides describes the process of achieving love of God: One learns about God, and the more one knows God, the more one loves Him.

Elul is not about love songs. It is about a wish to know God. We will face Him, so to speak, on Rosh Hashana, and we can spend this month getting to know Him. The love will come.

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

“I was friends with one of the crew members on TWA Flight 800. I had called her because she was on my mind. It had been a while since we’d talked and I missed seeing her. I left her a message on her voice mail to call me. A few days went by and I became increasingly irritated that I had not heard back. My husband said just call again or say what you want to say on her answering machine. I knew she was probably busy and was just waiting for some free time to call me back. Even knowing this, I became increasingly angry. I held back my love. I closed my heart to her. The next day her plane crashed. I deeply regret that I did not give my love freely. I was playing a game with love.”

The woman was measuring her love by the moment, by one action,and then closing her heart. We must try to see love in the big picture, not in detail. A detail such as a single phone call can be a distraction from real love.

David Kessler – Life Lessons Page 43.

“And these matters that I command you today shall be upon your heart.” (Deuteronomy 6:6) ‘You should always look to these matters as if they are new, fresh and exciting – as if the Torah were given today – not like a stale, outmoded dogma.’ (Rashi)

Although each individual action matters in a relationship, some more than others, we cannot measure our love for God by one moment or action, nor can we measure God’s love for us by the moment or single action. Perhaps the “Today” in the verse, especially when considered together with the “Alls” of the previous verse; “All your heart, all your soul, all your resources,” means that we look at the entire day, not moment by moment.

Just as with every relationship, there will be moments during the day when our love for God falters. There will be actions that do not reflect attachment. There will be moments during the day when we do not feel God’s love. We will suffer experiences that lead us to question whether God loves us. We strive to live days of love. We want to be able to recite the Shema before going to sleep with a sense that this was a day of love.We measure the day by its “All.” We want to go to sleep feeling, “This was a good day with God.”

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

“My dear one,” said the dying woman to her grieving grandson who refused to let go, “I am complete, my life has been full and whole. I know you must see me not being full of much life anymore, but I assure you, I have brought much life to my journey. We are like a pie: we give a piece to our parents, we give a piece to our loves, we give a piece to our children, and we give a piece to our careers. At the end of life, some people have not saved a piece for themselves – and don’t even know what kind of pie they were. I know what kind of pie I am; this is something we each find for ourselves. I can leave this life knowing who I am.”

“You shall love God, your Lord, with all your hear, with all your soul, and with all you resources.” (Deuteronomy 6:5) God doesn’t want a piece of the pie. He wants the whole pie, but it must come from one who knows exactly what kind of pie he or she is.

God doesn’t ask us to hand over the pie. He asks us to use every slice of the pie to express our love for Him. The slice we give our parents must reflect that love. The slice we give our loves must express our love for Him, as too the slices we give our children and our careers.

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

The husband and wife have been arguing for hours, but they love each other. They both calm down and work things out. Both accept some of the responsibility. Both apologize and they forgive each other. They work harder at ending the argument than they did at arguing.

The husband and wife have been arguing for hours, but they love each other. They look at each other while yelling and screaming and both realize that they love each other so much that the subject of their argument is insignificant. They reconnect in love and the argument disappears.

I picture the former as Selicha – Forgiveness.

The latter scene describes Kapparah – Atonement – as in Yom Kippur: God looks at us and we look at God and we realize how much we love each other, and everything else drops away. The arguments, resentments, harsh words, and anger, all disappear. We only have to remember to look up with love: God is already looking at us.

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone™ is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

My wife wasn’t home this morning when I woke up. I was about to sing my morning blessings when she returned home. She went to the supermarket in order to make my favorite cake for me to eat over Shabbat. What a warm and magnificent feeling! Someone loves me so much that she is constantly thinking of me and finding new ways to spoil me. I was overwhelmed.

I took that feeling of having someone care so much for me, love me and think of me and incorporated it in my morning blessings. God loves me enough to give me the gift of His directions in life – Mitzvot. God gave me a multi-level soul, and a Torah with which to access all levels. God gave me brains to draw distinctions, and ears to hear and, if I so choose, listen. He gave me eyes, clothes, a, somewhat, functioning spine. I have feet and shoes. I am alive and awake.

I was flying with joy and the feeling of loving the fact that Someone, besides my wife, constantly cares for me.

It wasn’t just a cake: It was a lesson in how to Sing a Blessing!

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.

I love asking people if they feel that God loves them. Most respond, “Yes!” I then ask the more challenging question: “How do you know?” That’s when it becomes interesting.

I invite you to join me in raising a toast to God, Who made it very clear to me, once again, that He must really love me: I met my son for coffee late last night, and in the course of our conversation he told me that he decided to randomly ask people whether they have ever experienced God in their lives. I felt that God was hugging me. One of the most important goals in my life is for my children to experience God’s Presence in their lives, and my son was speaking to me about feeling God in his life. L’Chaim, God! Thank You.

And, there’s more: My son described his experience of God in his life: He works with severely mentally and physically handicapped children. (He can’t begin to imagine the intensity of my admiration for him.) He spoke of the beauty of the souls of the severely autistic children for whom he cares. There is one young man who is terribly deformed and cannot move. My son spends an hour each day cleaning his young charge and then carefully stretching the boy’s muscles. He is exhausted, soaked with perspiration and aching from spending an hour bent over a hospital bed working with the boy. When the stretching is finished, the boy, who cannot communicate with others, moves his mouth in a tiny smile and sighs with pleasure. “When I see that smile and hear that sigh, I can see the beauty of his soul. I feel that God has given me a gift to be able to bring such joy to someone else. At that moment, I feel God’s involvement in my life.”

My reaction to hearing anyone, but especially a child, describe such an experience, is to lift my glass to God and say, “L’Chaim. Thanks.” I invite you to join me.

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Learn & discover the Divine prophecies with Rabbi Simcha Weinberg from the holy Torah, Jewish Law, Mysticism, Kabbalah and Jewish Prophecies. The Foundation Stone is the ultimate resource for Jews, Judaism, Jewish Education, Jewish Spirituality & the holy Torah.