LOVE OF GOD
Four Types of Love
The love of all beings precedes everything else.
Afterwards comes the love of all humanity.
After that comes the love of the people of Israel, who encompass everything, for it is the people of Israel who will one day rectify all creation.
All these types of love express themselves in activity: loving others to do good for them and to improve them.
But higher than all these is the love of God. This is love complete in itself, which does not in itself cause an effect-except that it fills the heart with the most exalted contentment.
Musar Avichah, Ahavah II
Clinging to God
by Simchah Raz
Five days before Rav Kook passed away, Rabbi Shabtai Bernstein met Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Charlop on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem. Rabbi Shabtai asked about Rav Kook's health. Rabbi Charlop replied, "What can I say to you, Reb Shabtai? I am now coming from visiting Rav Kook. I found him in great pain. I asked him how he is feeling, and he said to me, 'I have nothing to say about the pain itself, but what is difficult for me to bear is that it causes me at times to cease clinging to God.'"
Malachim Kivnei Adam
Do You Feel the Same Way?
by Simcha Raz
Rabbi Yaacov Moshe Charlop, a rosh yeshiva and faithful student of Rav Kook, told the following:
One winter evening, the cold froze the blood in the veins. Everything was frozen. Ice glazed the windowpanes. It was dark, and clouds covered everything with gray. I went to Rav Kook's house under a dark sky. Everyone was asleep except for Rav Kook. He was walking back and forth in his little room enthusiastically, and for a long while he did not look at me. Afterwards, Rav Kook came to me and gave me his hand. It was like a piece of ice. But with a fiery warmth, with his eyes sparkling and shining and his face aflame, he asked me, "Tell me, is it the same for you?"
"What?" I asked.
"I am entirely burning up with love for God. Do you feel the same way?"
Malachim Kivnei Adam, p. 72
The Love Of All Beings
The love of all beings precedes everything else. Afterwards comes the love of all human beings; after that, the love of Israel. [The love of Israel] includes everything, for Israel is destined to rectify all beings.
All these types of love are love expressed in action: to love these beings, to do good for them and to lift them up.
Higher than everything else is the love of God, a fully developed love. This love in itself does not draw anything else after itself, except that the heart is filled with it, which is the highest happiness.
Musar Avichah
It Is Impossible Not To Love
It is impossible not to love God. It is impossible that this power of a sweet and necessary love will not blossom into actuality, a love engaged in actually accomplishing with deeds everything that occurs for good in terms of attaining the light of God.
It is impossible not to love the Torah and the commandments, which are so much connected to the goodness of God.
It is impossible not to love decency and justice, a good and elevated order that brings good to all, that is closely connected to the true nature of reality and to the thought of the heart on its highest level-[the heart that] we refer to on its plane of greatness and beauty, and in which appears the will of God, [a will] that is higher than and uniquely separate from all this. [This divine will] spreads sweetness to the soul of every living being in a manner that no thought can rise [to understand].
It is impossible not to be filled with love for every creature, since the flow of the light of God shines within everything, and everything is a manifestation of the beloved sweetness of God.
"The lovingkindness of God fills the earth" (Psalms 33:5).
Musar Avichah
The Nature Of Being
The torch of holy fire of the love of God constantly burns within our soul, warming our spirits and illuminating our lives.
Its delights have no end. Nothing finite describes its pleasantness and sweetness.
How cruel a person is to himself when he remains immersed in the dark shadows of life, "troubling himself with many accountings" (Ecclesiastes 7:29), removing from his heart the Life of life, the Edenic basis of life-in consequence of which he retains no portion of it (cf. Sanhedrin 10:1). Because the oppressive hand of coarse physicality has gained ascendancy over him, he walks hunched over, without light and without radiance.
Such a state is in opposition to the entire nature of the spirit and the entire nature of existence. A supernal lovingkindness must break forth from its bonds, and the holiness of life will create paths by means of which Edenic existence will stream down, appearing in the entire array of its colors (cf. Judges 5:30) and with the entire thundering glory of its powers (cf. Job 26:14, Psalms 145:12).
"No eye besides Yours, God, has seen what You do on behalf of the person who awaits You" (Isaiah 64:3).
Musar Avichah
Deeply Implanted
A love for God is deeply implanted within each healthy soul. When any civilized person who is well-acquainted with the historical record and with how the Jewish people have so positively affected divine thought in all humanity is inspired as a result of his love for God to shake off the drunken confusion of his senses and their coarse proclivities, a love of Israel is aroused in his heart. If he is a Jew, his inclination bonds with a love for the Source and as a result, it becomes a patriotic, warm, and shining flame.
Jewish divine thought has not allowed the world to merely [remain] immersed in metaphysical thought about the knowledge of God and the concept of Oneness in its purity. Rather, it has broadened the process of ethics and civilization under the umbrella of divine thought, in a form so significant that it cannot be forgotten throughout all the many changing eras. As a result, the ethical sense, which is deeply implanted in the heart of anyone who has not perverted his way comes and arouses us to a love of Israel that comes from the aesthetic aspect of ethics.
And since history teaches us clearly that the people of Israel attained these mighty accomplishments via their unique land, this love must spread as well to the land of Israel.
Orot
A Most Edenic Yearning
Who can withhold the light of the divine, supernal love that pulses in the heart of the elite, the holy masters of piety and straight-heartedness? Like a pure wind filled with the scents of Eden, yet storming and wailing like the roaring waves of the sea, so does the soul storm as a result of the great breadth of pleasure [it receives] from the sweet, supernal radiance.
This, a most Edenic yearning, increases and broadens all spiritual qualities and soulful traits, until every soul is consecrated. Whoever has [even the most] distant connection to the light of the radiance of the holy souls of these warriors of God is elevated.
All Torah, ethical instruction, commandments, deeds and learning come to clear away the road barriers, so that this eternal love can spread upon all the breadth of the valleys of life.
These are the roots of a holy love. And the many branches [that come forth from them] are all good and straight traits: particular ones as well as all-encompassing ones, individual and communal, until the [time will come that] the world is judged fairly and the nations with straightness.
Musar Avichah, Ahavah 12
What I Love Has No Name
I am filled with love for God. I know that what I seek, what I love, has no name. How can you give a name to that which is greater than everything-greater than goodness, greater than any quality, greater than being? And I love, and I say that I love God.
The light of the Infinite dwells within the expression of the Name-within the expression of "God," and in all the names and titles that the heart of man indicates and expresses when his soul is lifted higher and higher.
I cannot satisfy my soul with the love that comes from the bonds of logic, from the way that the world seeks light-through being, penetrating into our eyes.
Within our souls are born divine lights, many divine forces, so that our soul may gaze at one true Truth. And before oneness in the depth of its truth, God is revealed. He rules within us, He conquers all of our spirit, the spirit of existence. Wherever there is ideation, feeling, thought and will, where there is the most refined spiritual life, the divine light is sovereign, rules, conquers, sparkles, grows in beauty, beautifies and makes lovely, enlivens, lifts-all out of the clarity of the light of being. The finite sovereignty reigns and dies, as long as it comes from the world, from being.
At times the light is in the ascendancy. One's desire wishes a light that is more refined, more inward, more true to itself, more mighty in its very core. The light appears over the vessel, thought over being-the structure cannot continue to exist. The inner content is not in resonance with it. The vessels shatter, the kings die, the gods die, their souls rise from firmament to firmament, the bodies descend to the World of Separation, being stands naked, alone, torn, scattered, gathered into itself, hidden and concealed. The eternal desire for the supernal light, the eternal love has placed in the broken vessels its light, its sparks-in every movement, in every content of life, in every quality of being, there is a spark, A spark of a spark, ever more refined and fine.
