It’s time to fall in love. Not the kind of love that makes you prance in the fields in a white flowing dress – we have Tu B’av for that – but the kind that spurs you to clean crumby jacket pockets and scrub greasy oven tops. The kind that empties your wallet and pushes you to research ingredients that can’t enter your home. The kind that pushes you to your limits, tests all of your organizational abilities, and makes onlookers wonder if this time you’ve gone too far. In short, it’s the kind of love that’s about who you’re willing to do anything for.

Though it may not sound romantic, Pesach is also the holiday when we stay up into the wee hours of the night to sing Hashem’s praises and proclaim, “I am to my beloved and my beloved is to me.” Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, which many have the custom of chanting after the Seder and which we read in shul on Shabbat Chol Hamoed, is the official love song of Hashem and the Jewish People. It is a song of deep affection between a maiden and her suitor, which Rabbi Akiva referred to as the holiest of all scriptures (Masechet Yadaim 3:5). We recite this song on Pesach because it’s now that we rekindle a love that may have waned, or perhaps ignite it for the first time.

The couples I work with have taught me how easy it is to fall out of love, and how hard it can be to climb back into it. The same is true in our marriage to Hashem. We read every day in Shema about the love we ought to have for Him, one that includes “all your heart, all your soul, and all your resources” (Devarim 6:5). That love can feel very far away sometimes, maybe most of the time, maybe all the time. We think of it as a beautiful experience that someone else will hopefully enjoy. Pesach gives us a chance to change that by presenting a window through which we can access a degree of connection with Hashem that is out of reach the rest of the year. We can feel love in a way we never thought we could.

What happened on Pesach that engenders this love to the point that we’re ready each year to give just about everything we have to prepare for it?

Pesach: Hashem stepping in

The story of Pesach is one of Hashem deciding to pull back the curtain of nature and step onto the world stage in a way that clearly shows how much we mean to Him. For 400 years He had been watching us develop, first as a small family and then as a growing people, until the time came to make His affection for us known. He had chosen us centuries ago and was waiting for the moment to say so, the moment we would finally call out and say we were ready. He’d had His eye on us for a while.

Hashem’s intervention in Egypt was an announcement: The Jews are the people I want to be close to. I desire them as my partner forever. Together, we will build a home (Beit Hamikdash) and lead the world towards its ultimate destiny. From now on, “I will take you to be My people, and I will be your G-d” (Shemot 6:7).

This declaration of devotion came when we were but a shell of ourselves. We had lost nearly all semblance of our Jewishness and were about to collapse into historical nothingness. Hashem reached into our lives and pulled us close to Him, revealing our status as His most cherished people. Being treasured breathed life back into us – because that’s what love does. It picks you up from wherever you have sunk to and lets you know you are the center of the world.

A personal touch

Hashem’s entrance onto the scene was personal as much as it was powerful. He didn’t delegate this job to a divine emissary but instead chose to do it Himself, as we read in the Haggadah, “I and not an angel… I and not a messenger.” Because no one can love someone for you. Love only travels directly, from one being to another. It may take a circuitous route, but it can’t be delivered by an intermediary. You can’t let someone know how much they mean to you through someone else’s actions.

Hashem also performed miracles in a way that was uniquely crafted for each person’s circumstances. Each Jew watched Hashem punish the Egyptian taskmaster who had tortured them, and in the specific way it had been done, middah k’neged middah, measure for measure (Midrash Tanchuma Va’era 14:3). Hashem wanted each of us to know that He had been paying attention, and that every wrong inflicted upon us mattered to Him. Because for love to flourish it must be personal.

We feel the most seen when the details of our lives matter to someone else. Hashem’s aim was for us to feel cared for by knowing that none of the details had gone unnoticed. We each felt cradled by strong hands with the power to hold us close and protect us from further harm (yad hachazaka). He made it known that He was seeing us then, and He hasn’t stopped seeing us since.

Loving through knowing

Hashem also wanted us to know Him, which, according to the Rambam, is the primary pathway to loving G-d (Rambam Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:2, Hilchot Teshuva 10:6). Whereas it took Avraham Avinu 40 years to know G-d (Hilchot Avodah Zara 1:3), our introduction happened in the span of twelve months (Mishna Eduyot 2:10). In contrast to Purim, where Hashem made sure to stay hidden while orchestrating events, on Pesach He made His presence abundantly clear. The doors of reality were flung open, and His existence was unmistakable. He wanted us to know He’s here – and He still does.

Our sages teach that as you get to know Hashem, you realize, as Avraham did, that behind every divine action is a plan, and behind every plan is a loving Being Who guides everything for your benefit, even if you don’t immediately understand how. You learn that you can trust that Being entirely and that it’s ok to fall back – or forward into the desert – because He’s always there to catch you. He wants you to realize that there’s only one thing driving everything He does, from smiting Egyptians to handing you your first breath this morning: the desire for you to have everything good (even if often you don’t know what that is). A better definition of love would be hard to find.

To love someone you have to know them. And to know someone you have to think about them. Hashem wants us to understand what He’s about, much like our spouses want us to do the same for them. Without occupying our minds with each other, we can live side by side but remain disconnected because our heads will not be here even if we are. Loving someone means not only deciding to hold them in our arms but in our thoughts as well.

Loving Him back

Is all of this enough? Sure, Hashem has selected us and professed His commitment, paid attention and made Himself known – but is that sufficient to engender love? Why did four out of five Jews in Egypt decide not to leave, not to accept Hashem’s open embrace? The answer is that receiving love is not enough to feel it back. As profound as Hashem’s love is, we also must unlock our hearts and decide to give love a try.

There’s a cover over the heart called orlat halev that blocks us from feeling togetherness (Devarim 10:15-16), a state referred to as timtum halev, a closed heart (Rashi Bereishit 26:15). Not coincidentally, one of the only things asked of us before leaving Egypt was to perform a brit milah, a ritual circumcision, in which a physical orlah is removed from the human body. The commandment to do a brit milah was Hashem’s invitation for us to remove the barrier, the orlah, that obstructs connection. Having suffered through years of enslavement, it was understandable that our vulnerable side was barricaded shut. Yet, despite what living in survival mode can do to the human heart, a fifth of the Jews in Egypt decided it was high time to pry it open.

What emerged was the first of two acts involving blood – brit milah and korban pesach – that were performed just before leaving Egypt, as we read in the Hagaddah, “When I passed over you and saw you surrounded by blood, I said to you, ‘By your blood shall you live! By your blood shall you live!” (Yechezkel 16:6). In the Torah, blood represents the soul, the essence of a living thing (Devarim 12:23). The Jews who decided to open their hearts and lean into a relationship with G-d had nothing of their own to offer Him – nothing, except for everything. They put their whole selves into the connection. They gave their blood, their lives, because that’s the only way a loving relationship can work. With love, there’s no going halfway.

The hard work of love

The Jews in Egypt who made it out were those willing to give everything they had in return for a committed, loving relationship with Hashem. It really can’t be any other way. We know from ourselves that marriage thrives when both sides are two feet in, ready to roll up their sleeves and follow each other into the wilderness if that’s what it takes. And sometimes it most certainly will. “You followed Me into the desert, in a land not sown” (Yirmiyahu 2:2). We tie ourselves to each other despite where it may take us because we realize that once we commit to a life with one another, we find that one another is really all we need.

What the Jews discovered is that hard work is both the cause of love and the result of it. The more they devoted themselves to Hashem, the more they wanted to. It’s not that they weren’t scared to leave what they knew, but rather that their desire for closeness overrode all that would have held them back. They were ready to follow Hashem wherever He would take them. “Pull me after you and I will run” (Shir Hashirim 1:4). Hashem extended His outstretched arm (zeroa netuya), and they took it.

The truth is that we’re the same way. Commitment is scary, but we do it because we sense the potential for a connection that will develop and deepen over time. We do it because falling in love is not actually what we want, as if it were something we could stumble our way into. We do it because we realize that pouring ourselves into someone else’s life is the only way to bring about the type of closeness we crave, the kind we can’t experience anywhere else on earth. Some of the best moments in couples therapy happen when each partner realizes that beneath the anger, defensiveness, and hurt is someone who wants the same thing I do – a way back together.

Coming home

Our sages teach that Shlomo Hamelech wrote Shir Hashirim at the inauguration of the Beit Hamikdash. After centuries of living in temporary places (like all young couples do), we had finally arrived at our permanent home. In his introduction to Shir Hashirim, Rashi explains that this song was written as one of longing, because Shlomo knew that galus would come, and along with it, our longing for the days of young love we once had. We would need to remember the words of the maiden who hasn’t given up on having it again.

We are now living through the galus that Shlomo envisioned. For most of us, exile has never been more complicated than it is today. Hostility and hatred surround us, driving us back towards each other. We feel the need for the safety and security – the love – we once had, the kind that can only be found at home with our Beloved.

Pesach teaches us that young love doesn’t come on its own. In fact, hard work and young love are two sides of the same coin. This lesson is what too few people understand: young love only lasts if hard work is put into it. Working to clear your schedule. To remember the little things. To stretch yourself where you’re uncomfortable. To listen when you want to yell. To find patience when you’ve run out of it. To see all the good (and there’s always more). To love someone the way they need it. Young love comes from deliberate choices.

And the result? The experience of looking across the table and seeing your whole life in someone else’s eyes, seeing everything you’ve built together, and realizing that this is what home feels like. Love is therefore the ultimate paradox: We work hard in love in order to experience a love that feels like it takes no work at all. It is this love that we feel the night of the Seder. We’ve worked for weeks to prepare ourselves inside and out. We’ve given everything we have. Now, we bask. We sing and praise and connect with Him all night because there’s nowhere else we’d rather be and no one else we’d rather be there with.

Pesach doesn’t happen on its own. Love doesn’t either. But if we’re willing to open our hearts and give it all we have, we can find One another. If we do, Shir Hashirim this year may turn out not only to be something we yearn for but also something we have.

 

Let me be a seal upon your heart,

Like the seal upon your hand.

Vast floods cannot quench love,

Nor rivers drown it. (8:6-7)

There he stands behind our wall,

Gazing through the window, peering through the lattice. 

My Beloved spoke to me and said,

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” (2:9-10)