Parashat Nasso

Upon my couch at night, in a dream

I sought the one I love—

I sought, but found him not.

“I must rise and roam the town,

Through the streets and through the squares;

I must seek the one I love.”

I sought but found him not. Song of Songs 3:1-2

I think we have all been in relationships where when we felt most in love, the other person seemed to disappear or retreat, and when we felt past that love or had forgotten it, the person shows up and is ready for connection. Often this dynamic is a romantic one, but it can be our mother, our father, our brother, our sister, or our child.

I think in most marriages, including very healthy ones, there are times of hide and seek, times where the love we feel for our spouse seems distant, hard to access, seems hidden from us, and times when we feel that love so strongly but the other person is not available to us.

This hide and seek can appear very clearly and dramatically, but to some degree, I suspect it is part of every relationship we have. Perhaps a long relationship is one in which we find the other often enough for moments of communion that it helps us trust our connection at all the other times when one or the other of us just isn’t as connected or emotionally available.

Scarcely had I passed them
When I found the one I love.
I held him fast, I would not let him go Song of Songs 3:4

This pattern of yearning, searching, finding, and then losing only to yearn and search again is perhaps in the nature of love. As Yehuda ha Levi, wrote 1000 years ago in a poem I have often read in services,

It is a fearful thing to love,
hope, dream: to be —
to be, and oh! to lose.

A thing for fools this, and
a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.

It is a holy thing to love, and so it makes sense that love, the experience of searching, finding and losing love finds a place in Jewish thinking of our relationship with God. We yearn for God, we yearn to feel connected to something larger, and yet it seems that often God hides from us when we seek God the most. This sense of God as hiding while we seek is a key concept in Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Nistar, the hidden universe or meaning in a verse of Torah. We sense sometimes there is a hidden secret, a sod nistar, that is just beyond our perception, just out of our reach and yet sometimes when we are least looking for it or in need of it, God suddenly seems very near, very easy and we have access to our spirituality and sense of connection in a way that earlier had seemed inaccessible. This idea finds its most poignant expression in Exodus, when Moses begs to see God’s face and God tells Moses to hide in the cleft in the rock. Then God covers Moses so that he can not see God directly, but only as the divine moves away from him. There is both beauty and heartbreak in this.

Spirituality is to some degree the practice of opening ourselves to the yearning for something we can never fully have, never fully experience. Our spirits sense an infinite expansive love, Ahavat Olam, Ahava Raba, and we occasionally experience our own hearts capable of feeling love much greater that what we can live with on a daily basis

Judaism teaches us that such moments are precious; they are the Burning Bushes, the Love at First Sight moments, but we can’t live our lives if we are always wide open to that wattage of love. We can’t make our beds or fight for justice or build an economy if we are always filled with overflowing boundless love. It’s not sustainable, and so we are taught to find meaning and beauty in the hide and seek of love and spirituality. We find holiness in the seeking.

There is a famous Chassidic story about Yechiel, the grandson of Rebbe Baruch of Medziboz. Yechiel was playing hide-and-seek with another young friend. He hid himself well and waited for his friend to search for him. After waiting for a long time, he came out of his hiding place, but his friend was nowhere to be seen. It suddenly dawned upon the young Yechiel that his partner had not sought him out at all. The distraught child broke into tears and ran to the study of his grandfather. As the boy complained about his unkind friend, tears began to roll from the eyes of the Rebbe, and he said, "Indeed. That's exactly what the Almighty Himself says: 'I hide myself but nobody wants to look for Me.'"

Shabbat is a day in which are particularly asked to look for God, to open ourselves to God’s presence, even if we don’t always experience that. Shabbat teaches us that if we show up, if we regularly open our hearts despite disappointment, sometimes when we least expect it, we will fall in love all over again.

And so we read the Song of Songs on Shabbat, about lovers yearning, seeking and then for a moment, finding one another. And so we sing Lecha Dodi, we sing to the Sabbath Bride to come out of hiding and join us that we might, for a day, experience at least a taste of divine love. Or, perhaps Shabbat teaches us to stop seeking, and instead to stop, to be still and instead of running after God’s love, simply open ourselves and call out in song and prayer for God’s love to come to us.

As Yehuda HaLevi wrote in his poem Yah Anah:

Where can I find You,

Your place is both exalted and hidden.

Yet where would I not find You,

Your glory fills the universe.?

My heart cries out to You:

Please draw near to me.

And the moment I reach out for You,

I find You reaching in for me

In these times of such cynicism and disconnection, we come together to sing in Shabbat, to sing out to that in us that is capable of experiencing love, and to let ourselves yearn for divine and human love even when it seems to be hiding.