If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend Sally Jenkins’ beautifully written article about the unlikely—but deep and enduring—friendship between tennis rivals Martina Navartilova and Chris Evert, published this summer in The Washington Post. A powerful reflection also on sport and feminism, I was struck by this quote, to which I returned this week, thinking about our tradition’s teaching(s) on love:
Friendship is arguably the most wholly voluntary relationship. It reflects a mutual decision to keep pasting something back together, no matter how far it gets pulled apart, even when there is no obligatory reason, no justice-of-the-peace vow or chromosomal tie.
Tu B’Av has, over time, come to be associated with romantic love and partnership—with roses and rainbows and chocolate. But, encountered in the Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 31a), we read the following:
As on them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in white clothes, and on the 15th of Av they would go out to the vineyards and dance. The Sages taught this tradition in greater detail: The daughter of the king borrows white garments from the daughter of the High Priest; the daughter of the High Priest borrows from the daughter of the deputy High Priest; the daughter of the deputy High Priest borrows from the daughter of the priest anointed for war, i.e., the priest who would read verses of Torah and address the army as they prepared for battle; the daughter of the priest anointed for war borrows from the daughter of a common priest; and all the Jewish people borrow from each other. Why would they all borrow garments? They did this so as not to embarrass one who did not have her own white garments.
We do not know why they went out in a vineyard to dance—maybe to attract a partner, maybe to let off some steam, maybe to rejoice in the beauty of a soft summer night, to laugh and celebrate and experience joy together. More important than the why, however, might be the how; the Talmud places an emphasis on the lending and borrowing of clothes, on a system of mutual aid and vision of equity. Even, or maybe here especially, “when there is no obligatory reason, no justice-of-the-peace vow or chromosomal tie.”
As I have taught countless times—possibly to you—the Torah commands love towards only three entities: the stranger, God, and our neighbor. Some teachers argue that there is a fourth, that the commandment to love the neighbor as ourselves requires us to love ourselves as well. But either way, we are not commanded into romantic love, not into marital love, not into filial or parental love. To quote myself for a moment, in an article published on MyJewishLearning.com:
Not your partner. Not your parents. Not your children. You shall love: Neighbor, God, stranger … We are commanded to love people—and a Being—we may never meet, never know, never touch. We are commanded to love not just those with whom we share hopes and dreams, not those with whom we share the joys and challenges of everyday life—but, in fact, those who can seem most distant, most different.
Love is, in our tradition, an active verb—not just an idea or a feeling. It is, perhaps, as Jenkins writes: a mutual decision to keep pasting something back together, no matter how far it gets pulled apart. So, as this week begins, how can you act on love for a stranger, a neighbor, a friend, the Divine?
—Rabbi Sari Laufer
