What is the Jewish view of love?

Valentine’s Day is globally celebrated as a special time in the year when people show their affection for another person by sending cards, flowers or chocolates with messages of love.

The word “love” is highly overused but also widely misunderstood and abused. The concept of love is central to marriage. But what exactly does it mean to be in love? Does it just magically happen (“to be lovestruck”) or is love something to work on? What is the secret of how to enter and successfully remain in a relationship?

And is there a Jewish formula for love?

Contemporary society often considers love to be exclusively “matters of the heart”. In the Western world, love is that self-seeking pleasure which emerges through the attraction or temptation to connect with another.

Love is often confused with lust. Being a rollercoaster of emotions, there is no magic formula to love. It is something that either ‘happens’ to you or doesn’t.

You can "fall in" love or just as easily "fall out" of it.

There is no rhyme or reason to explain why the chemistry works or any assurance whether a relationship will last in the long-term.

There is a different angle in the traditional Jewish view of love. Here the focus is on the process of how to build a relationship. Naturally, the basis is how one party gets to "relate" to another. But this, of course, depends upon how much time and effort you invest into this enterprise. What is a Torah definition of love?

I heard in the name of a saintly teacher the following unforgettable statement: “Love is the depth of connection that exists within a relationship.”

A marriage is the within which the relationship between husband and wife can be experienced and developed. Instead of a non-committal partnership or casual encounter, the essence of a marital union sets up husband and wife as inseparable soul-mates.

It is not enough for there to be a meeting of bodies without there being a meeting of minds. In the mystical tradition, a married couple are likened to two parts of one soul inhabiting two bodies but which come together to fuse as one.

Love is the unconditional acceptance of the other by accepting who the person is and not what the person has.

A marriage is a long-term project within which to deepen the connection, and by extension, the love.

But it does not just “happen”; it is up to the married couple to “make it happen”. Love cannot be exclusively emotionally-led but must be realised in action-based behaviour.

Both are prepared to go outside their comfort zone to experience a transformative shift – one where “me” becomes “we”. The selfishness of youth is replaced by the selflessness of adulthood. Instead of "give and take", the parties’ focus is to "give and give".

The hallmark of such relationship is characterised by acts of kindness and generosity. To “give” leads to “love” rather than vice-versa.

Here the overwhelming desire to give, in Hebrew hav, will result in love, the related Hebrew word ahavah. The ideal manifestation of love is achieved through the deepening of the connection between husband and wife as they jointly weather all sorts of challenges together in their experience of married life.

Through this, one’s love for one’s spouse will grow and be strengthened over a lifetime of commitment – with beauty and real depth.

In Jewish thought, the long-term commitment to marriage in the enduring love between a man and woman can be used, by extension, as a prototype and ideal template and springboard for man to develop a deep love with God.

This is the allegorical meaning of the great love story in King Solomon’s Song of Songs. And the forum of marriage teaches that this love, too, doesn’t magically happen but must be fostered with zeal and enthusiasm.

Being in love – whether in love with one’s spouse or by extension with the Master of the Universe, is to be blessed by having the most beautiful and real relationship imaginable.
 

Rabbi Levene is author of The Time of Your Life