Loving God
Recently we helped Susie’s uncle pack up his apartment. He has lived in this New York City apartment his entire life. He shared the apartment with Susie’s grandparents who died many years ago. We tried our best to help him determine what was worth saving and what might be valuable on the antique market. At one point Billy protested that there are no antiques.
Susie retorted that everything in the apartment is an antique as she pointed to the rotary phone still affixed to the kitchen wall. “Mid-century modern is in these days,” she added. We then discovered a drawer in the beautiful dining room piece containing warranties and owner’s manuals to appliances long ago replaced. Among these papers we also found never before seen old pictures and even love letters.
Among these treasures were ten letters written by Susie’s grandfather, Justus, to his then girlfriend, Diane. In July and August of 1939, they spent the summer apart while Diane worked at Camp Woodcliff, and he began his medical practice. On July 3rd, Justus writes,
Darling, I miss you so! Since you have gone, I lead a model life. It would be ridiculous for me to see any ‘babes’ as they would be inconsequential by comparison with you. Please write soon, dear and tell me about yourself, your hopes, your plans, camp, the kids, the food, the water and anything else of interest. Love, Justus.
Sandwiched between this stack of letters is their engagement announcement from October 1939.
The Jewish tradition views the relationship between God and the Jewish people as a loving relation, akin to marriage. It weaves this understanding into its explications of the holidays. Passover represents the beginning of the romance between God and the people Israel. This is why we read Song of Songs, the Bible’s beautiful and lyrical love poem.
Your lips are like a crimson thread,
Your mouth is lovely.
Your brow behind your veil
Gleams like a pomegranate split open. (Song of Songs 4)
The holiday of Shavuot which begins this evening represents the marriage between God and Israel. There is a Sephardic custom that an interpretive ketubah is read. Sanctuaries are sometimes decorated with roses. (The customary foods of cheesecake and blintzes have nothing to do with this theme of romance.) We read the Book of Ruth.
In this book, Ruth not only chooses to become Jewish but pledges loyalty and love to the mother of her deceased husband. Ruth says to Naomi:
Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you. (Ruth 1)
On this holiday we celebrate the Torah as a testimony between God and Israel. In its words one can see the unfolding relationship between the two. God is figuring out how to relate to the people. And the people are struggling with what it means to be devoted to God. At times it goes well. Other times the relationship becomes distant.
The love never wavers. It transcends generations.
“Darling, I miss you so!”