The mystics of our tradition saw great meaning in the counting of the Omer, which is marked each night between Passover and Shavuot. In its cycle of seven days, counted seven times, they saw a parallel to the sefirot, the system by which the Kabbalists understood the Divine attributes. Each week is dedicated to a particular attribute, and each day of that week focuses on the intersection of two Divine attributes. This week, the first of the Omer, we focus on chesed: lovingkindness or compassion.
Today is the fifth day of the Omer
Hod she-b’chesed: Splendor in lovingkindness
On a recent podcast episode, the hosts were lamenting our language limitations in talking about relationships. How is it, they asked, that we can use the same word for someone whose posts we occasionally “like” on Facebook, someone we might wave to from the carpool line, and the person who walks through life—thick and thin—by our side? How, they asked, can we call all of these friends?
The same might be said of love: Is what we feel for our spouse the same as what we feel for our parents? For our children? For our friends? According to the Torah, we are commanded to love God, our neighbor, and the stranger; the same verb is used each time. Are we meant to feel the same for each of them?
When I prepare a couple for marriage, I talk about the language of the marriage ceremony, the language of kiddushin. Kiddushin—like other words related to it (kiddush, kaddish)—means “holy.” In Hebrew, though, “holy” also means “set apart.” When we stand with our beloved under the chuppah, we are saying to them, in front of the world, ”I am setting you apart. What I have with you, what I feel for you, is different from my relationship with anyone else.”
My children recently asked—as children are wont to do—which one of them is my favorite. Unlike our Biblical ancestors (I’m lookin’ at you, Jacob), I knew better than to answer. But, perhaps that is the splendor of love. We are unique, and so are the people we love. And because of that, each of these relationships is unique—even if we use the same verb for all of them.
Rabbi Min Kantrowitz taught that when we recognize the many ways endless compassion and caring and love are manifest in the world, we open ourselves even more to loving relationships, and to love.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer