“On His Wedding Day”

Our Sages explain that the phrase “on his wedding day,” found in Shir HaShirim (3:11) refers to the Giving of the Torah.

The fiftieth day after the Exodus from Egypt — the festival of Shavuot — is, as it were, God’s wedding day. On this day, the Master of the universe chose the Jewish People as His bride, and the Jewish People chose God to be their Master forever. On this day, the bride and groom exchanged vows: the Jews swore to be faithful to God Alone, and God swore that He would always be our Master, and we, His People. As it states: “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”[1]

The marriage contract that testifies to this relationship and to this unwavering love is the Torah.

After forty-nine days of yearning, of counting each and every day of the Omer; after purifying ourselves and perfecting our character traits, we are ready to receive the immeasurable love that God desires to bestow upon His People.

Each year, on the fiftieth day of the Omer, God descends to this lowly world — just as He descended and revealed Himself on Mount Sinai — demonstrating His love for His People.

The greatest expression of this love is the giving of the ultimate gift: the Torah, about which the angels asked God: “This hidden treasure which You kept hidden for 974 generations before the Creation of the world — this you want to give to flesh and blood?!”[2]

Rebbe Nachman says:

The attributes of the Torah, which correspond to the 613 mitzvot, are infused with God’s love. …. The attributes are constrictions of His Godliness, to enable us to fathom Him. As it states in the Zohar, without His attributes, it would be impossible to have any understanding of Him. God has such a tremendous love for the Jewish People that He wanted them to cleave to Him and to love Him in this physical world; therefore, He concealed His Godliness in the attributes of the Torah — 613 mitzvot. [3]

Shavuot is a day of purity and elevation. As Rebbe Nachman says: “On Shavuot, when we receive the Torah, we can receive new vitality.”[4] Elsewhere he states: “Shavuot is an aspect of expanded, very high intelligence — Supreme kindness and great mercy.”[5]

On Shavuot, God showers His infinite love down on His beloved People. But in order for us to be able to contain that love, we must prepare ourselves so as to be worthy of it.  

Is there any one of us who can say that he’s truly worthy? As it states in Mishlei, “Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart; I have purified myself from sin’?”[6] Indeed, whose spiritual vessels are large and developed enough to be able to receive this Heavenly abundance?

As Rebbe Nachman says, “No person serves God according to His greatness. If you have some conception of God’s greatness, you will not understand how one can claim to serve Him. The highest angel cannot say that he truly serves God. The main thing is desire. Always yearn to approach God.”[7]

The only vessel that contains God’s love is: returning that love.

There are three types of love: love of God, love of the Torah, and love of the Jewish People. All three are actually one, as our Sages have said: “The Jewish People; the Holy One, blessed is He; and the Torah are one.”

Limitless Desire

Rabbi Akiva said: “The world is not as valuable as the day on which Shir HaShirim was given to the Jewish People. All the other writings are holy, but Shir HaShirim is holy of holies.”[8]

Incredible! All the holy writings, with their words of wisdom and faith, do not come near the greatness of Shir HaShirim — a love song.

When you think about it, intellectual discourses on Torah and ethics can never influence our hearts like the powerful, raw emotions of love, the longing and burning desire described in Shir HaShirim. These emotions penetrate deep into our souls, connecting us to God, with our 248 limbs and 365 sinews,[9] in a way that no intellectual treatise could.

When describing God’s love, King Shlomo is not discussing the concept of loving God but pouring out an all-encompassing emotion, to the point where he declares: “I am sick with love.”[10]

Lovesickness is a state in which a person constantly thinks and dreams about his beloved. Nothing else interests him; all his senses are tensed for the moment when he can meet his beloved and make her happy.

King Shlomo ends his song with:

For love is strong as death; jealousy is as cruel as the grave; its flashes are flashes of fire, the flame of God. Many waters cannot extinguish the fire of this love, nor rivers wash it away. Were any man to offer all the treasures of his home for your love, they would scorn him to the extreme.[11]

The Malbim explains:

“Strong as death” — the Jewish People are willing to die for the sake of their love for their Beloved.

“Many waters” — all the temptations of the evil inclination cannot eradicate the love of the Jewish People for God.

“Rivers” — the vicissitudes of time and events won’t wash away that love.

“Were any man to offer all the treasures of his home” — Rashi explains: in order to detract from that love.

“They would scorn him to the extreme” — the value of this love cannot be measured in earthly terms; it is so precious that we are willing to give up our very lives and souls for it.”

Earlier in Shir HaShirim, it states, “With what does your beloved excel all others, O’ fairest of women? With what does your beloved excel all others that you dare to adjure us?”[12] Rashi explains: “The nations of the world ask the Jewish People, ‘How does your God excel all other gods, that you are willing to be tortured and crucified for His sake?’ ”

This question would be asked many times in the course of the blood-drenched history of the Jewish People. What is the secret of their tenacity? Of that Jewish stubbornness? How can generation after generation, facing powerful, violent nations, be willing to die horrible deaths for the sake of His Name, on behalf of even a minor commandment? What is the source of their strength?

*    *   *

Since our love for God is so strong that we are willing to die for His sake, Rebbe Nachman tells us that we should also be willing to live for Him:

One should be willing to do things that appear insane, for the sake of service of God. As it states: “You will always be intoxicated with her love.”[13] For the sake of your love for God, you should even do things that make you appear mad. … For one must roll in all kinds of filth, for the sake of service of God and His mitzvot — but not just mitzvot, anything that involves fulfilling God’s will and gives satisfaction to our Father in Heaven.

There is a son who loves his father so much that for the sake of that love he acts like a slave, doing things that a simple servant must do. He’ll even jump into the bonds of war  in order to give his father pleasure. When his father sees the powerful love of his son, to the point where the son is willing to enter utter slavery for the sake of that love, the father will reveal to him things that he normally wouldn’t give over even to a son.[14]

We learn from the above that love of God isn’t some abstract, philosophical, noble feeling, like a person who espouses a certain idea. It’s an all-embracing, profound emotion, which can drive a Jew to make the ultimate sacrifice.

We might think that to attain such a degree of love of God, one must be a great tzaddik, like those of previous generations, but the fact is, this applies equally to everyone. Rebbe Nachman states: “The burning flame in the heart of the Jew reaches to infinity — because there is no end or limit to a Jew’s desire.”[15]

All Jews possess an inborn, deep, burning love for God — a love that is so strong, it gives them the will, at any time, to sacrifice their lives for His sake.

Some people might react to this statement with skepticism, saying that they’re not aware of this love. But I think there’s no Jew in the world who hasn’t felt this burning desire in his soul.

We all have something for which we’re willing to sacrifice all our energy. Don’t we work day and night, striving to obtain our various “loves”? This burning desire is an innate characteristic of our souls; is there anyone who has never felt it?

Most of us channel that power into the pursuit of base delights: wealth, materialism, physical pleasure, honor. … We take our holy, inner desire for the genuine, eternal vitality of God’s love and exchange it for trivial, passing enjoyment. As Kohelet mockingly describes the petty desires of mortals: “Their love, their hate, their jealousy have already perished.”[16]

The world is a reflection of God’s glory. Our pleasures are likewise a distant echo of the One Who is the Source of all pleasure. As the Malbim states: “Just as a rainbow is nothing more than the sun’s light refracted and reflected on the clouds — in the same way, all of our multihued reality is a reflection of God’s light, as it is revealed within it.”

Nevertheless, our hearts continue to harbor burning desires. Those who desire this passing world and what it has to offer end up burning up their time, money, and their health; whereas those who desire the King of the world burn up their negative traits. Spiritual desire leaves a person cleansed and purified, elevated and holy. That is the nature of love and desire for God.

As soon as we identify that desire in our souls, we’ll be able to transform our petty desires into a declaration of “My soul thirsts for God”[17] — for God and nothing else!

This is the vessel that we must build during the festival of Shavuot, the day of our wedding, the day when we are joined with our Beloved. On the strength of that love, we remain awake all night studying Torah, like someone who is anticipating the dawn of his wedding day. Like a bride who is waiting to see her groom in all his glory. Like the Jewish People at Mount Sinai, before God revealed Himself, when they said: “We want to see our King!”[18]

God Wants the Heart

To love God means to love His Torah. The Torah is the “garment,” the manifestation of God’s love. “Due to His great love for the Jewish People, and because he wanted them to cleave to Him and love Him within this material world, He “dressed” His Godliness in the attributes of the Torah,” says Rebbe Nachman.[19]

We find in the Gemara: “Rabbi Yochanan Didiya said: ‘Anochi [I — the first word of the Ten Commandments] is an acronym for Ana nafshi ketivat yahavit.’ ”[20] God said: “My Soul I wrote and gave.”

The Torah is not just another book of knowledge, ethics, or philosophy; nor is it a history book or work of literature. Like a person who puts his soul in something, his whole self, the best that he can offer, God gives us His very Self, as it were, through His Torah. Therefore, whoever studies the Torah cleaves to the Godly light that shines from among the Torah’s letters and verses. Can there be any greater delight in This World?

Rebbe Nachman states:

Torah is God’s Name, [God’s Names can be found in the combinations of letters within the verses of the Torah]. Just as we call a person by name, in the same way, when we need to call on God, the Source of life, for vitality and long life, we must call Him by His Name. His Name is the Torah. …

Therefore, it is important to study Torah specifically by enunciating the words orally. Just as when one wants to call someone, he must call out his name, not just think it, it’s the same with learning Torah. One must utter the words; scanning the text visually is not enough.[21]

This is also the reason we learn Torah all night on Shavuot — in order to express our love and call out to God through the hidden Names in His Torah. As stated above, the Torah is not just a text of stories, morals, and ethics; it’s a most wondrous “wedding gift.” Those who sense this will undoubtedly fulfill the verse, “You will always be intoxicated with her love”[22] —the love of the Torah will burn in their hearts.

Like one who truly loves his beloved, God wants nothing from us but to return His love, as it states in the Gemara, “The Merciful One wants the heart.”[23] God doesn’t want us to serve him coldly, from a distance, fulfilling the mitzvot by rote and without thought. He wants us to be connected to Him and to His Torah from the deepest, most intimate part of our hearts!

“The Torah, in its entirety, is called lev (heart) since it begins with a beit and ends with a lamed,[24]” Rebbe Nachman teaches,[25] alluding to the fact that the Torah emanates straight from God’s Heart, as it were.

What could be more humiliating than to bare your heart and reveal your deep love for someone, only to have the object of your love remain indifferent and cold? This was the reason for God’s great anger, when after He “gave us His Heart,” the Jewish People did not respond with corresponding joy.

This explains the verse: “Because you did not serve Hashem, your God, amid gladness and goodness of heart, when everything was abundant. So you will serve your enemies … ”[26] From here we learn that the love of the Torah and the feeling of awe and gratitude toward its Giver are the definitive vessels we must cultivate in order to be able to receive and contain the Torah. Without those feelings, even if a person knows the entire Torah by heart and is stringent to fulfill all the mitzvot, he is missing the main ingredient.

Like One Person, With One Heart

The Torah wasn’t brought down to the world at large for everyone; it was revealed specifically to the Jewish People, God’s beloved children. Only their hearts were sufficiently clean and worthy of containing it.

Rebbe Nachman states:

The world and everything in it was created only for the sake of the Jewish People. God’s main intention was so that the Jewish People would do His will and cleave to their root, so that they will return to their original status and be incorporated within Him.[27]

We find this mentioned in the commentary to the first verse of the Torah: “In the beginning [Bereishit], God created the heavens and the earth.” Rashi explains, quoting the Midrash Rabbah: “For the sake of the Torah, which is called “reishit darko[28]” (the beginning of His way), and for the sake of the Jewish People, who are called “reishit tvu’ato[29]” (the first of His crop).

In other words, the purpose of this tremendous enterprise that we call “the world” is Bereishit — for the sake of Reishit. Reishit refers to the Torah, and it also refers to the Jewish People who fulfill that Torah. From before Creation, it was planned that when Jewish souls would come down to the world and begin studying God’s Torah, they would justify the existence of the entire Creation.

In Rebbe Nachman’s story of “The Seven Beggars,”[30] he relates: “Everything has a heart. … The world as a whole also has a heart.” The Zohar teaches that the Jewish People are the heart of the entire world, since the life and vitality of all Creation depends on them and their actions.

Therefore, it’s not enough just to love the Torah and to love its Giver. In order to be worthy of receiving the Torah, we must also love our fellow Jews, those who receive and transmit the Torah, in this lowly world.

Each individual Jew is not only a carrier of the Torah, he is also an integral part of it. As Rebbe Nachman explains: “For the Torah consists of sixty thousand letters,[31] corresponding to the sixty thousand [roots of] souls. All the souls have a root on High, in God’s holy thought.”[32]

If each Jew has his root in the letters of the Torah, that means that his soul is literally a “piece” of Torah, dressed in flesh and blood.

Rabbi Natan explains:

This is the meaning of “Love your fellowman as yourself — Rabbi Akiva said that this is a major principle of Torah.” The entire Torah depends on this. The Torah and the Jewish People are one, because the Jewish souls make up the letters of the Torah; therefore, when there is love between the Jews and they are bound together … the Torah is whole. ...

It’s impossible to fulfill the Torah and its commandments without desire [for holiness]. The most important aspect of serving God is desire. Each individual merits to draw close to God, His Torah, and His commandments according to the extent to which he accustoms himself to strengthen his longing for God.

When a Jew moves up from level to level, as a Jew must constantly strive to do, it is commensurate to the strength of his desire. The only way to be included in this desire is through unity, love, and peace. All members of the Jewish People must unite in love and harmony. They merited to receive the Torah on Shavuot, through the wondrous unity that existed among them at that time.
[33]

The above is illustrated in the Torah by the verse, “Yisrael encamped there, opposite the mountain.”[34] The Sages explain that the word for “encamped,” used earlier in the verse in the plural (vayachanu) is now in the singular (vayichan): Because “At that time, they were all like one person, with one heart.”

Unity and love among the Jewish People are the crucial prerequisites, the one vessel that enables them to contain the Torah and its great light. A deficiency in love among the Jewish People leads to a corresponding deficiency in love of Torah and love of God, since they are interconnected

Rebbe Nachman states 

If there is a defect in a single Jew [meaning that a fellow Jew sees a deficiency in him], it is also a blemish in the Torah, which is the root of all Jewish souls, and it is certainly impossible to love the Torah completely. But if you are careful not to speak against or find faults in any Jew, you will also find the Torah without fault or blemish and you will then have a deep love for the Torah. … This is the meaning of “God’s Torah is perfect; it restores the soul.”[35] When God’s Torah is without fault or blemish, meaning when people neither seek out nor speak of the flaws in their fellow Jews, each of whom represents a letter in the Torah, then, the Torah is perfect, with neither flaw nor blemish, and it “restores the soul.” When people have this great love for the Torah and can sense its true sweetness, “it restores the soul,” since it has no flaw.[36]

*   *   *

These three loves: love of God, love of the Torah, and love for one’s fellow Jew, are the cornerstone of the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, who passed away on Shavuot. The Baal Shem Tov wrote: “I came to this world to teach a different path [from that taught by Torah luminaries in the preceding generations], and that is: that a person must imbue himself with these three things: love of God, love of Yisrael, and love of the Torah. There is no need for self-mortification.”[37]

This path is a direct, precise continuation of the teachings of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, both of whom taught and wrote extensively about the Final Redemption. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Efrayim of Sudlikov, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, states: In the verse: “The Children of Israel were going out with an upraised arm,”[38] the Aramaic translation for “upraised arm” is “b’reish galei.” The letters of b’reish stand for Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem, while galei (revealed) alludes to when the Baal Shem Tov’s teachings will become revealed — at that time, the Jews will be redeemed from Exile.”[39]

The Torah-Prayer Connection 

Since King David also passed away on Shavuot, it’s customary to recite the entire book of Tehillim on the night of Shavuot. What links King David and his psalms specifically to this day?

Although the Torah comes from God, it also contains an element of danger. As our Sages said about Torah study: “If a person merits, it becomes for him an elixir of life; if he doesn’t merit, it becomes poison for him.”[40] From here we learn that if a person doesn’t purify himself, even the Torah’s great wisdom can prove harmful, increasing his self-importance and distancing him from God and His holiness. Our Sages have warned against such a scenario, saying, “Whoever says ‘I have nothing but Torah’ has nothing, not even Torah!”[41]

Rabbi Tzadok HaKohein of Lublin explained that the above refers to a lack of prayer. When a person studies, his intellect is at the center; but when he prays, center stage is occupied by the One Who created the world. Prayer, therefore, is the crucial ingredient needed to balance the risks of Torah study. In this way, we bear in mind that the purpose of Torah study is to draw closer to God; it is not simply a tool for our own knowledge and self-development.[42]

The five books of Tehillim correspond to the Five Books of the Torah. Torah plus prayer equals the perfect balance between the brain and the heart. This also teaches that if it were not for Divine assistance, we’d never be able to fully understand the Torah’s secrets.

Rebbe Nachman states: “When a person studies Torah for the sake of observing and fulfilling it, the letters of that Torah constitute the sparks of souls. They become "dressed" within the prayer and are renewed and “reborn.”[43]

Although we have little understanding of what Rebbe Nachman is discussing here, we can grasp a fundamental concept, linking the Torah that we learn to the prayer that we offer.

Torah, in its nascent form, can be found within the “womb” of prayer. Just as the child grows and develops inside its mother — in the same way, prayer influences a person’s ability to study Torah, enabling him to dig deeper and come up with original insights.  Likewise, Torah influences a person’s prayers by giving them enthusiasm and meaning, just as the unborn child provides it mother, by virtue of its existence, with vitality and enthusiasm.

The above applies all the more when we pray to be able to understand and fulfill what we have learned. Rebbe Nachman says that nothing is greater than this:

It is good to make prayer from Torah. When you learn or hear some teaching from a true tzaddik, you should turn that lesson into a prayer — ask and beseech God to be able to attain everything in that teaching; cry to God about your present distance from that teaching. This type of prayer rises to a very high place. When you create a prayer from the Torah you have learned, this causes great delight on High.[44]

Not Just Another “Joe”

The Gemara relates (Pesachim 68b) that Rav Yosef would make a tremendous feast on Shavuot. He would say, “If not for this special day [(on which the Torah was given], look how many Yosefs there are in the market place.” Rashi explains Rav Yosef’s words: “Because I have studied Torah and become elevated.” In other words, if not for the precious gift of Torah, Rav Yosef would be “just another Joe,” just another one of the thousands of people, milling about the marketplace, who live to eat, without any thought to their souls.

What is it, then, that differentiates Rav Yosef from the typical “Joe”? Only the Torah, which refines a person and elevates him above the mundane details of life. If so, how profound must our joy be at having merited to receive such a gift!

This passage contains an additional message, relating specifically to the malaise of our present generation: the fact that we are increasingly unable to focus and achieve true depth and precision — in our interpersonal relationships, and with ourselves.

“Look how many Yosefs there are in the marketplace” — each person, each Yosef, is split and subdivided into endless shards. We’ve each become myriad, tiny, scattered pieces of “Yosef in the marketplace” — a little bit here, a little bit there. The multitude of temptations that this world has to offer constantly draw our attention here, there, everywhere, until our minds wander and we lose ourselves among the minor details, ultimately missing the main thing.

But there is “the special day” that leads us to a different purpose: the day of the Giving of the Torah. On this day we have the opportunity to receive the precise, refined vessels that enable us to focus our gaze, and concentrate our energies and thoughts so that we will be able to achieve depth and quality in all aspects of our lives. On this day, we can merge all those scattered “Yosefs” into a single, meaningful, precise, beautiful being. We have the opportunity to change from “Yosef of the marketplace” into an exalted, refined Rav Yosef.