(א) אַהֲבָה רַבָּה אֲהַבְתָּֽנוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ חֶמְלָה גְדוֹלָה וִיתֵרָה חָמַֽלְתָּ עָלֵֽינוּ:
(1) [With] unbounded love You have loved us Adonoy, our God; [With] great and abundant compassion have You empathized with the suffering we experience.
What is Divine Love, in your opinion?
What is Divine Compassion, in your opinion?
Visualize love and/or compassion...what does it look like?
A word about God that captures the essence of God's name - יהוה - a verb, not a name...like יהיה - "that which will be."
Given that understanding,
God is the Future.
Alternatively, or adjacently - consider this poem by Octavia Butler:
God is Change
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ יְהֹוָה אֶחָד:
(יש להפסיק מעט בין אחד לברוך כי עיקר קבול עול מלכות שמים היא פסוק ראשון. ויאמר בלחש:
בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד:)
Listen, Israel: Adonoy is our God, Adonoy is One.
The following line is to be said silently:
Blessed Is The Honorable Name, The Lord's Dominion is Eternal
Shema by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
שמע ישראל יהו"ה אלהינו יהו"ה אחד
Y"Listen up, y'all," says Shekhinah
who looks today like a teacher
in corduroy dress and sedate boots.
"Let the smartphone rest a bit,
or learn how to hear My voice
coming through its speaker.
Let your love for Me well up like
unexpected tears. Everyone serves
something: give your life to Me.
Let the channel of your heart open:
My abundance will pour through.
But if you prefer profit, if you pretend—
if you're not real with Me
your life will feel hollow
and your heart be embittered.
I won't punish you; I won't need to.
Your hollowness will be punishment enough,
and the world will suffer for it.
So let My words twine 'round your arm,
and shine like a headlamp
between your eyes to light your way.
Teach them to everyone you meet.
Write them at the end of your emails
and on your business cards.
Then you'll remember how to live
with the flow of all that is holy —
you'll have heaven right here on earth."
יהו"ה אלהיכם אמת
.emet eloheichem יהו‘‘ה
Your God is a true God.
From "Faith as the Leap of Action: The Theology of Abraham Joshua Heschel"
by Jacob J. Petuchowski
Whereas theology (thought and definitions of what God is and is not, how God works) is usually concerned with “the content of believing,” Heschel is primarily concerned with the “act of believing.” As I have already indicated, the starting point of Heschel’s approach is his refusal to regard God as the object of human cognition. Speculation, therefore, is ruled out a priori. “Long before we attain any knowledge about God’s essence,” writes Heschel, “we possess an intuition of a divine presence.”.....
Quoting the Rabbi of Kotzk, Heschel—who has mastered the whole of Jewish literature but who is fond of citing as his “clincher” a bon mot or parable of a Hasidic rebbe—interprets the verse in Exodus [נעשה ונשמע/we will do and we will understand] as follows: “The grasp, the understanding, comes with the deed and through the deed. When we fulfill a mitzvah and perform an acceptable deed, we grasp man’s attachment to God. If it were possible to say so, God is revealed in our deeds, in the depths of our being we perceive the divine voices.”
...This is what Heschel calls the “leap of action”: “To surpass his needs, to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does. In carrying out the word of the Torah he is ushered into the presence of spiritual meaning. Through the ecstasy of deeds he learns to be certain of the presence of God.” Mitzvot, being the sphere where man encounters God, are therefore no mere ceremonies or symbols. Heschel is particularly severe in his condemnation of those who would regard them as such.
אֲדֹנָי שְׂפָתַי תִּפְתָּח וּפִי יַגִּיד תְּהִלָּתֶֽךָ:
My Master, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.
How does one use both the standard liturgy of the Amidah and open one's lips, mouth and heart to pray authentic, personal and essential prayers during the Shmonah Esreh? If the liturgy is like a ladder then it raises us off the normal terrain of our lives and helps us ascend to a higher plane, to reflect on our existence and the choices we will encounter after any given prayer. If the words we say are like familiar paths we hike, we may notice one or another of the passages blossoming or demanding attention. Another may become an overlook for us. What do these words and ledges make us pray from the heart and soul? How shall we use Hebrew or even the language we are most comfortable with to utter the prayers we need most to say, to thrust before the Divine Presence, to express our deepest fears or gratitude?
Amidah by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
The wash of dawn across the sky
reveals your signature.
Cicadas drone your praise
through the honey-slow afternoon.
The angular windmills on the ridge
recite your name with every turn.
And I, who can barely focus on breath
without drifting into story:
what can I say to you,
author of wisteria and sorrel,
you who shaped these soft hills
with glaciers' slow passage?
You fashioned me as a gong:
your presence reverberates.
Help me to open my lips
that I may sing your praise.
יהו"ה s’fatai tiftach
ufi yagid t’hilatecha.
יהו"ה שפתי תפתח ופי יגיד תהילתך
Eternal God, open my lips that my mouth may declare Your praise.
Being Created in the Image of the Divine
ברוך אתה יהו"ה אלהינו מלך העולם שעשני בצלמו/ה
(27) And God created humankind in the divine image,
creating it in the image of God—
creating them male and female.
(1) בצלם אלוקים, when the word אלוקים appears as a description, i.e. in the nature of an adjective, it refers to creatures who are spiritual in their essence, not just that they possess spiritual potential. Such beings are devoid of such physical matter, are totally disembodied. This is what makes them basically infinite. This is the reason why such an adjective, attribute, is applied to G’d as well as to His angels. The term is also used in connection with judges, i.e. describing the predominating intellectual function they must perform if their decisions are to reflect true justice. Whereas it is an undisputed fact that the human intellect operates without direct dependence on any part of the body, that it does not age along with the remainder of the body it inhabits, but, on the contrary, sometimes improves while the body ages and becomes barely able to sustain the soul which inhabits it, and while it is also a fact that exercise of the intellect does not result in fatigue, etc, it is still not called אלוקים, something divine, but only צלם אלוקים, “something which mirrors something divine.” Until this intellect has acquired חכמה, i.e. a reverence for G’d and love for Him, its Creator, it is completely imperfect. It follows that it is man’s task to perfect his G’d given intelligence by acquiring the knowledge and insights which can be provided only by the study of Torah and by the practice of the laws of the Torah. If man, i.e. religiously atheistic intellectuals, do not use their intellect in the manner G’d meant for them to use it, it actually becomes a negative asset, a hindrance, so that in the end it turns out to be completely vain, as pointed out in Psalms 49,21 אדם ביקר ולא יבין נמשל כבהמות ידמו, “if man does not understand the divine gift his intellect represents he is comparable to the beasts which perish.” This entire lesson is condensed in the two words בצלם אלוקים.
Goal: Mature God Thoughts
From Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor, Activist for Shining the Light of the Jewish People into the World:
God,
I no longer ask you for either happiness or paradise; all I ask of You is to listen and let me be aware of Your listening.
I no longer ask You to resolve my questions, only to receive them and make them part of You.
I no longer ask You for either rest or wisdom, I only ask You not to close me to gratitude, be it of the most trivial kind, or to surprise and friendship. Love? Love is not Yours to give.
As for my enemies, I do not ask You to punish them or even to enlighten them; I only ask You not to lend them Your mask and Your powers. If You must relinquish one or the other, give them Your powers. But not Your countenance.
They are modest, my requests, and humble. I ask You what I might ask a stranger met by chance at twilight in a barren land.
I ask you, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to enable me to pronounce these words without betraying the child that transmitted them to me: God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, enable me to forgive You and enable the child I once was to forgive me too.
I no longer ask You for the life of that child, nor even for his faith. I only beg You to listen to him and act in such a way that You and I can listen to him together.
--One Generation After (1971)
And in 1999
Protest
What I try to do is speak to God. Even when I speak against God, I speak to God. And even if I am angry at God, I try to show God my anger. But even that is a profession, not a denial of God. . . . . I have never abandoned God. I had tremendous problems with God, and still do. Therefore I protest against God. Sometimes I bring God before the bench. Nevertheless, everything I do is done from within faith and not from outside. If one believes in God one can say anything to God. One can be angry at God, one can praise God, one can demand things of God. Above all, one can demand justice of God.
--Interview in Hope Against Hope (1999)