Love Only Love

Love Only Love
YITRO 2025
Senior Rabbi Angela W. Buchdahl

I want to tell you a little rabbi secret: I love Valentine’s day.
I know. It’s technically SAINT Valentine's day, and it’s not a Jewish holiday.
But I have very happy childhood memories of crafting classmate’s cards
with pink paper and glitter, taking home bundles of Valentines
and scrutinizing them for hidden crushes or proclamations of BFFs,
relishing the countless chocolate and candy hearts
that filled my Valentines box to overflowing –and just generally celebrating love.

I felt a little badly that my children completely missed out on the Valentine’s fun, because they went to a Jewish day school – and officially speaking: Jews don’t celebrate.

But I’m going nostalgic because we have a notable confluence
of Valentine’s day with this week’s Torah portion.
Tonight, in parshat Yitro, the Israelites receive the greatest token of God’s love in the entire Torah: (Show 10 C’s Valentine)
The Ten Commandments.

I know. That wasn’t exactly what you were expecting, were you?
But God’s love language for Jews, is MITZVOT.
Now Judaism has been maligned for centuries
as a religion of Laws, as juxtaposed against Christianity,
which positioned itself as the religion of Love.
But tonight I want to underscore how in Judaism, Laws ARE LOVE.

Did you pay attention to the Ahava Rabba prayer,
which means “God’s Great Love,” that we read tonight, right before the Shema?
In its most literal translation it reads:
Everlasting Love you offered your people Israel
by teaching us Torah and mitzvot, laws and precepts.

Our tradition says that God’s greatest love, Ahava Rabba,
is shown through God’s LAW.
Of course, our tradition provides many examples of God’s love
that are more emotional and tender —we say: Adonai Adonai
God is merciful and compassionate, endlessly patient.
God calls us an Am segula, a treasured people
and expresses our special relationship as Chosen.

But it’s clear that God’s love isn’t only shown in emotional support and grace,
but can be found in mitzvot and moral teachings.

I didn’t fully appreciate this form of love until I became a parent.
Giving hugs, feeding my kids nourishing meals, tucking them in at night,
that was the easy part.
But I knew that a soft, fuzzy and warm love alone was not sufficient
without some rules and boundaries –
that being a loving parent entailed other responsibilities to my children –
not only for their heart, but the safety of their bodies and minds,
and the growth of their souls.
Which meant putting some boundaries to their urges,
it couldn't just be unlimited screen time or candy for dinner.
It required reminders for their protection – ride your bike with a helmut!
NO! You cannot kill your brother.
It meant teaching them that love sometimes entailed sacrifice, forgiveness
and always, generosity – and through this kind of love, we expand our souls.

Now think of God as our ultimate parent, who is also responsible
for our emotional health, physical safety and spiritual wellbeing.
God loved us enough to give us our own rules and commandments:
(show commandments)
Don’t kill your brother, or anyone else. Don’t lie or cheat.
Honor your parents. Don’t covet what your neighbor has.
Keep the Sabbath, and the sabbath will keep you.
Of course these 10 are just the tip of the iceberg, there are 613 mitzvot in all.
Together, these laws entail God’s love letter to the Israelites.

Because when you really love someone, you don’t just indulge their every desire,
you help them become the best people they can be,
you teach them that they are responsible not only to
themselves,
but to one another.
You instruct them on how to build decent societies,
with safeguards for the most vulnerable among us.
That’s what the Torah teaches.

Because at its core: Judaism IS a religion of LOVE.
The kind of love that you can command –
and the Torah does command us to LOVE:
Love your neighbor as yourself. Love the Stranger.

God is not commanding us to feel LOVE for our neighbor, necessarily,
but to ACT WITH LOVE for our neighbor.
God knows better than to just leave that LOVE up to chance.
Love, as a feeling or emotion can be fickle and fleeting.
So God spells out the laws that make love realized in the world:
Pay wages on time. Care for the widow, orphaned and poor. Don’t Steal. Free the captive. Don’t put a stumbling block before the blind. Leave the corners of your field for the hungry. Judge fairly.

God legislated the ways we should be kind, decent, generous,
fair and just with one another,
that this should be the foundation of a righteous, moral, and kind community.
We need to enact that love for our neighbor and the stranger right now.
Which means we need to uphold the laws that protect the vulnerable,
that check the powerful, that help us create a more just society.

So I hope I have given enough evidence that this prop was not just a gimmick.
That the LAW, given on Sinai in parshat Yitro, is the greatest symbol of God’s love for us. But how are we to show love for God back?

That can be answered in the prayer following the Shema, the V’ahavta.
If the prayer before the Shema, Ahava Rabbah is about how God loves us (with Torah and Mitzvot, laws and precents) the prayer after the Shema V’ahavta, is about how we love God back –with all our hearts, with all our souls and all our might.

We do so by upholding the law. By teaching them to our children. By keeping the ethics of God on our lips. By thinking of them when we lie down and rise up.

Doing mitzvot is the way that Jews embody our love for God and humanity. And God gave us these laws as an act of great love because love is not just a feeling, but an action. So let us make sure we put more love into the world.