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     Both the Song of Songs and the account of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds are read during Passover. This is also the first week of the counting of the Omer between Pesah and Shavuot. For Jewish mystics the first week's theme is hesed/love. Love runs through all of the above three elements and is an important quality at this moment.
                                                                              Michael (mjstrassfeld@gmail.com)
                                                                                     
Intention/kavana for this week
This is the first week of the counting of the Omer—the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. For the mystics, each week is associated with one of the sefirot/qualities of God that are reflected in humans. This week it is hesed/love, which reminds us to treasure the various loves of our lives, those present, those lost, and, most of all, those that endure.

Bernard of Clairvaux (a 12th century monk) in his commentary on the Song of Songs wrote;
 
Love is alone sufficient by itself.
It pleases by itself, and for its own sake.
It is itself a merit, and itself its own recompense.
It seeks neither cause, nor consequence, beyond itself.
It is its own fruit, its own object and usefulness.
I love, because I love.
I love that I may love.
Song:
Hashmi-ayni et kolakh ki kolakh areiv
 u-mar’aykh naveh
 
Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face lovely
(Song of Songs 2:14)

In this time of social distancing, we can still hear the sweet voices of those we want to be connected to and with Zoom can see their faces.
 
To listen to the song

 A word of Torah:

      The human story begins in the Garden of Eden but paradise is quickly lost.  After Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of Knowledge, God says to Eve: "For your man shall be your longing and he shall rule you" (Gen. 3: 16). God says to Adam: "Cursed be the ground because of you…thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you…until you return to the ground…for dust you are, and to dust you shall return" (Gen. 3: 17-19).
     What is the cure to the pain, alienation and death that seems to be humanity’s fate? What is the repair to the vision of inequality between man and woman set out here?  A hint might be found in two rabbinic sources. Rabbi Akiva said: All of Torah is holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies. R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus said: The Song of Songs was given to Israel at the Crossing of the Sea. What is so special about the Song of Songs, chanted on the 7th day of Passover?
     In fact, the Song of Songs is the repair of the curses of Genesis. In the Song of Songs, we return to a garden of earthly delights but here nature and humans are not in a struggle; the lovers themselves are the garden. Instead of the thorns and thistles of Genesis, the Song of Songs says: "As a lily among the brambles so is my love among women" (2:2). Instead of work as unceasing toil, it is transformed to love and sexual play.  The woman says: "My lover has gone down to his garden…to graze in the garden and to gather lilies. I am my lover’s and my lover is mine, who grazes among the lilies" (6:2-3). He grazes among the lilies and she is the lily of the valley.
     While the same unusual Hebrew word for longing—teshukah—is used in both Genesis and the Song of Songs, in the latter text it doesn’t only reverse the image of woman longing for the man but presents a mutual love of equals: "I am my lover’s and for me is his longing" (7:10). The Songs of Songs contradicts Genesis and so corrects the inequality created in that first garden scene.
     And what of the most powerful curse in the Garden of Eden---the curse of death? The Song of Songs reads: "Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm. For strong as death is love, fierce as the grave is passion…Great seas cannot extinguish love, no rivers can sweep it away" (8:6-7). The Song of Songs states that love is as powerful as death. Now, in our time, when death feels all around us, the Song of Songs reminds us to hold on to love.
           For the connection between love and this week in the Omer see the Intention/kavana above.

(I want to acknowledge God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality by Phyllis Trible as a source for the comparison between Genesis and the Song of Songs)
 
 
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