From Hadesh Vol. I, Issue No. 4 - Love
By: Joshua Black
Judaism is not a religion. Rather, it is a lost civilization. Ancient Israel had law and sacred rituals, like a religion, but it also had poetry, music, art, cuisine, agriculture, and more, all the pieces which comprise a civilization.
When the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed by the Babylonians, we lost all that. Only the law remained. Every civilization has its own versions of law, poetry, music, etc. It’s what differentiates China from Rome, and vice versa.1
Love is not something one would categorize as an aspect of a civilization. After all, love is part of the collective human experience. Everyone experiences love, whether it is the love between spouses, parents and children, or siblings. So, how could love differ between civilizations?
While love may not be experienced differently across civilizations, the way each civilization expresses love, manifested by its laws and customs, are unique. Controlling and regulating love may sound strange, but that is exactly what marriage is. It makes the relationship exclusive and in-so-doing, one is able to build something that spans eternity.
Traditional systems regulating love are more than necessary– they are integral to civilization. Nearly every culture ever recorded has had some version of marriage.2 In the West, we are currently witnessing what happens when we don’t regulate these forces. A civilization that commodifies love rather than sanctifies it, faces a strong possibility of depopulation.3
Traditional marriage institutions are a civilizational means of directing and channeling love, allowing us to transform a selfish urge, our own hedonistic pleasure, into something positive, a partnership rearing the next generation, who will continue to build up the world. The nuanced differences between these control mechanisms are what distinguishes love between civilizations.
In the Israelite civilization we have unique laws that channel the emotion of love between husband and wife. The laws of Niddah4 prohibit physical contact during specific times. This creates an ebb and flow within a Jewish marriage: a time of closeness followed by a time of separation. In fact, when the laws of tum’ah and taharah were more strictly kept, the wife would often have an entirely separate building to herself, so as not to impure the regular household items. That has a massive impact on the nature of the love and connection between a Jewish husband and wife. This is an aspect of the civilizational structure of Israelite love, and is arguably one of the untouched aspects of our civilization.
The topic of Israelite civilizational love must include a discussion on the love between Hashem and Am Yisrael. One of the ways the Jewish people relate to Hashem is through the intimate relationships we have in our own lives. He is referred to as our Father, our Husband, even our Son.5 Although Hashem, being infinite, is beyond any of these roles, we cannot conceptualize a relationship with infinity; we therefore emotionally relate to Hashem through these roles, while intellectually understanding that He is beyond any single one of them. We will focus on the idea of Am Yisrael being Hashem’s wife.
In discussing the idea of Am Yisrael being Hashem’s wife we must understand the interplay between a husband, a wife, and a home.
The Bayit is the place of the relationship between a husband and wife; an intimate relationship requires an intimate space.6 This is one of the reasons that Jews are married beneath a Chuppah. A Chuppah is symbolic of a Bayit, where the relationship happens. The Beit Hamikdash is also referred to as a Bayit. It is where we engage in an intimate relationship with Hashem. Inside the Beit Hamikdash lay the Tablets, the ketubah between us and God,7 outlining the parameters of our relationship. When we discuss the idea of love in the Israelite civilization, we think of ourselves, Am Yisrael, in the Bayit, the Beit Hamikdash, with our husband, Hashem, engaging in an intimate relationship.
Post-destruction, the nature of that relationship has shifted drastically. We entered a state of impurity, and we were sent out of our home. A husband and wife need a home, a place for their relationship. We have lost that space.
Not only did we lose the Beit Hamikdash, but we also lost all those other aspects of civilization. Those aspects were tools used by Am Yisrael to engage in our relationship with Hashem. We don’t have those tools anymore, so we adapted to express our love differently. For example, we bring tefilla instead of korbanot. We are a husband and wife without a home. The relationship is different. There is a greater distance between us and Hashem than previously.
We do however have our land back, and this represents an opportunity to renew aspects of our civilization.
We currently stand in a strange time and place. We have our land back, yet exile is not over. We have Jews running the land of Israel, yet we have no Sanhedrin and no king. The Baal Teshuva movement has taken the world by storm, and there has never been more Torah learning, yet most Jews today remain disconnected. We hold the Temple Mount in our hands, yet we are not with our husband, and our home is still in ruins. We are in a time of contradiction, an unprecedented time where the state of our relationship with Hashem has shifted into the murky grey area between exile and redemption. We have finished our count of clean days, and we just need to immerse ourselves.
The Talmud Bavli in Niddah states that on the night of a Jewish wife’s ritual immersion, her husband feels the same love he did for her on the day of their marriage.8 Love does not change. Is there a distinction between the nature of ancient Israelites’ relationship with Hashem and our relationship with Hashem? Yes there is, but only in the expression of love. They had a close, intimate connection in the home, whereas we long for that connection, pining from a distance.
This article began with a statement that there is a base form of love that all people have, and that it is civilization which causes distinction. So too, there is a base level of love between Hashem and the Jewish people, and whether it manifests in the intimate actions within Hashem’s Bayit or in the longing of exile, the base level of love does not change.
For more on the concept of civilization, you can read A Short Introduction to Civilization, which will be on our website.
Human Relations Area Files. Marriage and Family. Explaining Human Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2021. https://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/assets/summaries/pdfs/marriage-and-family.pdf.
Jordan B. Peterson and Louise Perry. 2023. “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.” The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, episode 331, February 13, 2023. DailyWire+.
Though these laws are not strictly unique to Israel, these laws so dominate the regulation of love in Judaism that an exploration of these laws will provide significant insight into the Israelite concept of love.
Shir HaShirim Rabbah 3:11:2
For more about the concept of the sacred space, please read Redeeming the Temple Mount, from the Hadesh issue of the month of Av.
Rashi on Shemot 34:1
Niddah 31b