A Love Supreme
Shabbat Hol Hamoed Pesah 5777 / 15 April 2017
Once, when asked to research the origins of playing dreidel on Hanukkah, I discovered that it is possible to date the origins of the game fairly precisely: toward the end of the 16th century, we suddenly find a large number of rabbinic rulings about the terrible disgrace of gambling during Hanukkah, emphasizing unequivocally that no one should play games of chance at any time, and least of all during the holiday.
We all know how well that worked out for the rabbis. Indeed, this is but one example of a systemic problem for rabbinic authority: it’s very hard to reshape culture once it has established itself. The Song of Songs presents a similar challenge. As Dr. Elsie Stern points out, its tone and content set it apart from other Biblical works:
The Song of Songs is the Tanakh’s only extensive discourse on human, erotic love… While both lovers speak within the text, the woman is the more active and articulate character. Her experiences, feelings, and perceptions are the central content of the poem… The Song’s positive focus on human, erotic love, its silence regarding the central theological and historical themes of the rest of the biblical text, and the centrality of its female character, make it unique within the biblical canon.[1]
How did a collection of erotic love poetry, with focus on the female experience, end up among our sacred scriptures? We often comment on God’s invisibility in Megillat Esther, but at least that book deals with clear national and religious themes. What justifies adding Song of Songs to the Bible?
If we read between the lines, it seems like Song of Songs may have been held “canonical” by the Jewish masses for so long that our Rabbis of Blessed Memory could do little, if anything, to change it it. I’m not sure it’s good life advice in general, but when faced with a book that seemed out of place in the canon but which could not be supplanted, the Rabbinic attitude seems to have been, “When in doubt, double down.” Not only is the Song of Songs a holy book — it is the most holy book:
תנינן: אמר ר’ עקיבא, חס ושלום לא נחלק אדם אחד מישראל על שיר השירים שלא תטמא את הידים, שאין כל העולם כולו כדאי כיום שנתנה בו שיר השירים. למה? שכל הכתובים קדש וזה קדש קדשים.
It was taught: Rabbi Akiva said, God forbid any Jew ever disputed the sanctity of the Song of Songs; For the whole world is nothing compared to the day on which the Song of Songs was given. Why? Because all the scriptures are holy, while this is the Holy of Holies.[2]
Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein, in Torah Temimah, offers a particularly telling interpretation of this midrash:
משום דאותן השירות, אף כי יש בהן גם רמזים וסודות, אך על כל פנים אפשר לכלכל ענינן גם בפשטות גמורה על פי חיצוניותן. משאין כן שיר השירים – חלילה להבין הדברים כמו שהן בפשטותן וחיצוניותן, דברי אהבים.
Because [other Biblical] poems, although they contain allusions and mysteries, can nevertheless be understood simply according to their surface meaning. However, this is not the case for the Song of Songs — God forbid a person would understand its words as they are simply and on the surface, as love poetry.[3]
We understand the true nature of the Song of Songs in comparison to other Biblical poems,[4] such as the Song of the Sea.[5] All poems have a deeper, hidden religious meaning; but where other poems also teach religious morals through their surface content, the Song of Songs can only be understood through allegory and allusion — not its plain text.
Notice what he does here: this reading forces us into allegorical interpretation and arguably voids the פשט, the plain-sense reading, of the text. The Artscroll edition is a case in point: over the first days of Pesah, my father-in-law complained that the Artscroll “ruins” the Song of Songs because it offers — instead of an actual English translation — an “elucidation” that renders the text according to Rashi’s commentary and the primary midrashim. Rather than love poetry, in that telling, it becomes the story of Moses bringing Torah to the Jewish people and their entering into covenant with God.
Their approach is in line with Torah Temimah’s attitude: we can’t know the true meaning of the Song of Songs from its surface presentation. Indeed, the content of the book merely underscores the danger this text represents:
תנו רבנן: הקורא פסוק של שיר השירים ועושה אותו כמין זמר, והקורא פסוק בבית משתאות בלא זמנו – מביא רעה לעולם. מפני שהתורה חוגרת שק, ועומדת לפני הקדוש ברוך הוא, ואומרת לפניו: רבונו של עולם! עשאוני בניך ככנור שמנגנין בו לצים.
Our Rabbis taught: If a person recites a verse of Song of Songs and turns it into a kind of ballad, or if a person recited a verse in a tavern outside of its appropriate time — he brings evil into the world, because the Torah wraps itself in sackcloth and stands before the Holy Blessed One, and says before [God]: Master of the World! Your children have made me into a lute to be played by jesters.[6]
נראה דהוא הדין גם בפסוק אחר משאר כתבי הקודש, ותפס פסוק של שיר השירים מפני שהפסוקים שלו לפי פשטותן עלולים יותר לעשותן כדברי לצנות וזמר.
The same should hold true for any other verse from the other sacred scriptures; they specified a verse from Song of Songs since its verses, according to the simple meaning, are more likely to be made into revelry and ballads.[7]
No Biblical verse should be turned into a drinking song — but if any book of the Bible was likely to get turned into bawdy romance ballads, it’s this one. From ancient times until today, the prevailing rabbinic attitude seems to be to keep emphasizing the holiness and hope no one asks too many questions.
The Zohar, however, shows a different attitude. Far more comfortable with erotic imagery, the Zohar offers a different explanation for the Song of Song’s primacy among Biblical works:
תא חזי שירתא דקאמר משה סליק לעילא ולא לתתא, אבל לא אמר שירתא כשלמה מלכא ולא הוה ב”נ דסליק בשירתא כשלמה. משה סליק בתושבחתיה לעילא ותושבחתא דיליה הוה למיהב תושבחן והודאן למלכא עלאה דשזיב לון לישראל ועביד לון נסין וגבוראן במצרים ועל ימא, אבל דוד מלכא ושלמה בריה אמרו שירתא >קמה ע”א< בגוונא אחרא, דוד אשתדל לאתקנא עולמתן ולקשטא לון במטרוניתא לאתחזאה מטרוניתא ועולמתהא בשפירו ועל דא אשתדל באינון שירין ותושבחן דגבייהו עד דאתקין וקשיט כלהו עולמתן ומטרוניתא.
כיון דאתא שלמה אשכח למטרוניתא מתקשטא ועולמתהא בשפירו אשתדל למיעל לה לגבי חתן ואעיל החתן לחופה במטרוניתא ואעיל מלין דרחימו בינייהו בגין לחברא לון כחדא ולמהוי תרווייהו בשלימו חדא בחביבו שלים, ועל דא שלמה סליק בתושבחתא עלאה על כל בני עלמא.
Come and see: The song uttered by Moses ascended above and not below, but he did not utter song like King Solomon, and no human has ever ascended in song like Solomon. Moses ascended by his praise above — a praise extolling and thanking the supernal King who had saved Israel and performed miracles and mighty deeds in Egypt and at the Sea. But King David and his son Solomon uttered song [145a] in a different manner. David endeavored to array the maidens and adorn them along with Matronita, so that She and Her maidens would appear in beauty. Therefore he engaged in those songs and praises for them, arraying and adorning all those maidens and Matronita.
As soon as Solomon appeared, he found Matronita adorned and Her maidens beautiful. He endeavored to bring Her to the Groom, and brought the Groom to the canopy along with Matronita, and conveyed words of love between them to join them as one, so that both would abide in one perfection, in perfect love. Thus, Solomon attained praise transcending all inhabitants of the world.[8]
The authors of the Zohar have no problem embracing the Song of Songs’ erotic nature, even as they translate it to a very different plane. “Marriage” is a common metaphor for religious covenant in classical Midrash — but for the Zohar, it is literal: the union of God’s masculine and feminine manifestations. The Song of Songs achieves what no other scripture can: it effects unity among God’s different aspects and creates a harmony in Heaven that reverberates below.
We find a similar idea reflected in a subtle midrash:
שיר השירים – המשובח שבשירים המעולה שבשירים המסולסל שבשירים… בכל השירים או הוא מקלסן או הן מקלסין אותו. בשירת משה הן מקלסין אותו ואומר “זה אלי ואנוהו” ובשירת משה הוא מקלסן “ירכיבהו על במותי ארץ.” ברם הכא הן מקלסין אותו והוא מקלסן, הוא מקלסן “הנך יפה רעיתי” והן מקלסין אותו “הנך יפה דודי אף נעים.”
The Song of Songs — the most praiseworthy of songs, the most exalted of songs, the most elegant of songs… All [Biblical] poems contain either God’s praise of Israel, or Israel’s praise of God; in Moses’ [first] poem they praise God and say, “This is my God, whom I will glorify,”[9] and in Moses’ [second] poem God praises them, “God made him ride on the high places of the land.”[10] Here, however, they praise God and God praises them: God praises them, “Behold, you are beautiful, my love,”[11] and they praise God, “Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved, truly delightful.”[12]
We have many beautiful poems in the Bible, expressing the commitment between God and Israel — but each poem gives voice to only half of the equation. Song of Songs is not our only expression of love and commitment between us and God, but it is the only one that presents that love in a mutual, reciprocal dynamic.
What if all of this was more than metaphor? What if Song of Songs, in all its evocative passion, really was an essential religious text even in its plain sense? Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, a leading Masorti (Conservative) rabbi in Europe, suggests this possibility:
The Song of Songs is a work haunted by mystery and wonder. Just as its pathways lead us to the human beloved, so they impel us toward the elusive presence of God. Where precisely God is remains as inexplicit as the intimate encounter of love; both are ultimately “a locked garden, a fountain sealed.”[13]
As Rabbi Wittenberg points out, love works to express religious devotion where other metaphors and analogies break down. It’s possible that love is the only other human experience as mysterious and inexplicable as our encounter with God. Where does it come from, and how does it work? We can’t fully explain it, and yet we have no doubt when it happens.
For both experiences, we also find it difficult to completely let go and immerse in the feeling. Think about the first time you ever said, “I love you,” or the first time it was said to you. Consider the complexity of love over the course of a lifetime. Love exposes us to considerable vulnerability, asks a great deal of courage — and all of these features hold true in the religious experience as well. On this Shabbat between God’s rescue of us, the Seder, and our praise for God’s deliverance, שירת הים, we turn to love to understand the evolution of our spirit. Song of Songs: the most praiseworthy of songs, the most exalted of songs, the most elegant of songs — our window into our deepest relationship with God.
[1] Elsie Stern, “The Song of Songs,” in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 1564-1565.
[2] Song of Songs Rabbah 1.1.11.
[3] Torah Temimah, Song of Songs 1:1 n.1.
[4] The Hebrew word שיר connotes both poem and song.
[5] Ex. 15:1-18.
[6] Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 101a.
[7] Torah Temimah, Song of Songs 1:1 n.2.
[8] Zohar, Terumah 2:144b-145a; tr. Daniel C. Matt.
[9] Ex. 15:2.
[10] Deut. 32:13.
[11] Song of Songs 1:15.
[12] Song of Songs 1:16; Song of Songs Rabbah 1.1.11.
[13] Song of Songs 4:12; Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, The Eternal Journey (New York: Aviv Press, 2004), 162.
