D'var Torah
April
2006
Nisan 5766
Kol Dodi
Dofek:
My Beloved Knocks
Shir Ha-shirim [Song of Songs] 5:2
As part of my doctoral coursework at the Jewish Theological Seminary,
this semester I am enrolled in “The Song of Songs: Medieval
Interpretations of the Erotic.” For millennia, Jews and Christians
have viewed this most passionate of love poems as an allegory of
love, indicative of the passionate attachment between God and God’s
people. Over the centuries, we saw our connections to God as being
not unlike the intimate bonds of love that can exist between two
humans. Traditionally, Sephardic communities recite the Song of Songs
every Friday afternoon just before the onset of Shabbat; within our
community, we read the Song of Songs as part of our celebration of
Passover, this year on Shabbat Hol-Ha-moed. The sensual and sexual
overtones of the poem are understood to refer to our leaving Egypt,
arriving at Sinai, receiving Torah, turning away from God through
the sin of the Golden Calf, and then re-entering into God’s
good graces.
In any solid, loving relationship we learn how to demonstrate the depth
of our affection. Not only do we proclaim, “Ani l’dodi v’dodi
li, I am my beloved’s and He is mine,” but also we learn
how to show and respond to love—what gestures we employ, what signs
do we exchange, what words do we use. We learn how to argue with one
another, how to grow the relationship, and how to expand on the promise
of the first moments of our devotion to one another.
In rabbinic imagining, the exodus from Egypt at Passover marked the beginning
of the procession of the bride, Israel, to the marriage chamber of the
Groom, God. Sinai was the huppah, at which the ketubah, the marriage
contract, was read for the first time. That ketubah, the shared promise
of obligations and responsibilities, we know as Torah.
Asked how to we demonstrate our commitment to loving relationships, some
would be hard-pressed, while others would find it easier to describe
what is done and not done to keep love vibrant, alive and passionate.
Most probably would agree that love is a work in progress. So, too, is
it with our relationship with God. And yet, in understanding the Song
of Songs as one of the ways in which we can more deeply and more fully
understand the vitality of an ongoing connection with God, perhaps we
can cleave to God ever more strongly. This year, in advance of Passover,
take down your copy of the Song of Songs, read it aloud, seek to understand
its multiple meanings—see it as a love song to God:
I was asleep,
But my heart was wakeful.
Hark my beloved knocks!
“Let me in, my own,
My darling, my faultless dove! [Song 5:2]
Copyright © 2006, Barry A. Kenter