God Wants Our Hearts

This is the last portion of the Torah. The very last word is ‘Yisrael’. The last letter, thus being the Hebrew letter ‘Lamed’. The first letter commences with the Hebrew letter ‘Beis’ comprising the Hebrew word ‘lev’, or heart, when you put them together.

Interestingly, it is as if the whole Torah is summed up by ‘lev’. What is the purpose of the Torah? It is to be contained in our hearts. God tells us again and again throughout the entire Torah that He wants our hearts. (In the last two paragraphs of Shema prayer alone, God mentions our hearts five times.) What is it about the heart that is so integral to the entire Torah?

Lesson:

The Torah is not a history book, recounting generations, chronology, and genealogy, nor is it a story book spinning tales of conflict and triumph. Contained within the Torah, from the very first letter to the very last letter, is the heart of the Jewish people, that not only defines who we are, but keeps us alive.

God lovingly gave us the Torah as a guidebook how to fulfill our purpose and answer all questions one might have. Why were we created? What is my mission? How do I respond in certain (or every) situation? How do I obtain the most pleasure? How do I figure out who I am and who I can be? How do I fulfil my potential? How do I get to know myself? How can I have deep and meaningful relationships with others? How can I have a relationship with my Creator?

God gave us everything. He gave us our lives. He made every detail of us just so –every cell in our body is known and working properly because God made it so. As parents, we love our children, but we do not decide anything about them. We have them and love them because they are ours. But God created every single detail of them. Every detail. Their physical features, the spacing of their facial features, their emotional make-up, their strengths and talents, their weaknesses, etc. God created all of us out of love for us. He created us and gives us life for our pleasure and benefit.

But how do we know how to respond? What to do? God gives us the Torah to tell us. God wants a relationship with us. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that the Creator of the World cares about little old me, but He created you because He loves you1 Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. He wants us! He loves us! He tells us again and again that He wants a relationship with us – and that takes heart.

Not the type of relationship that we just do things out of rote. Ok, God, I do mitzvot, commandments, isn’t that enough? No! God wants our hearts! He wants us to actually be in a relationship where we feel it. We don’t want a child to just follow rules because a parent said, but not care about the parent. We want our children to trust us and know and feel that we love them and that’s why we give them rules. We want them to love us because we love them.

God is the same way. He loves us and thus wants us to love Him. God doesn’t want to just throw a bunch of rules at us and expect us to blindly follow them like robots. God gives us the Torah out of love for us for our benefit. When we are able to truly feel that – to hold the Torah in our hearts – then we fulfill the purpose of the giving of the Torah, please God.

The next level is to feel it with our body. Often, things start high and get lower, from the head and then we have to hammer it down to our hearts. But once our hearts get it, we can work on having it be incorporated into every cell of our body. Even the lowest parts of ourselves. Yaakov – whose other name is Israel, and the last word of the Torah, is derived from the word ‘heel’. Maybe he was able to incorporate and synthesize the point of the Torah and Judaism into his entire being – that even his lowliest parts, his heels, were radiating with holiness. This is the level. To permeate every fiber of our being – first with our head, next our hearts, and then our body so it can pulsate with the knowledge and feeling that there is nothing beyond God, that the Creator loves me, cares about me, and wants a relationship with me.

Exercise: Think of something that you can do to strengthen your relationship with God. Give it from your heart!