Shema, Yisrael: Avavah! / Hear, O Israel: Love!
This triptych was created for Four Chapter Gallery's juried exhibition, To Flourish.
For several millennia, the Shema has been an incredibly important scripture that is central to Jewish morning and evening prayer. You can find it in Deuteronomy 6: 4-6, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." The Shema establishes that there is only one God, and then it gives a command to love him with the whole self. The centrality of this prayer in Jewish tradition points to its importance for human flourishing.
Ahavah is the type of love that is commanded in this passage. The word ahavah does not only refer to a feeling that comes upon someone, it also refers to an action, or something that someone does or gives. Ahavah love is not just felt, then, it is done. Fearing or knowing God is a kind of ahavah. Keeping his commands is also a kind of ahavah. We all understand that when someone tells us they love us, that this love must be felt and seen in action. One without the other is emptied of its strength.
In Deuteronomy, the Shema is called the Greatest Commandment. This Greatest Commandment is linked through the arc of scripture in the Bible to Jesus's New Commandment in John 13:33-35: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another."
Leviticus 19:18 commands “love your neighbor as yourself,” and in 19:34, “love the stranger as yourself.” So, Jesus wasn’t commanding something new when he was asking his disciples to love their neighbor. Therefore, he must have been talking about the form or quality of the love, not the person who is being loved. Nowhere in scripture do we see someone display ahavah love with the radical grace of the God-man, Jesus, who loved his brothers and sisters so much that he died a humiliating, bloody death, alone on the cross as a sacrifice for their sins. His new commandment, therefore, clarifies that the love with which we should love one another is self-sacrificing, grace-filled, and that it will be emptied of its ultimate strength if divorced from the all-encompassing ahavah love of God.
When I think about flourishing, I think about ahavah. I think about personal flourishing: this all-encompassing love of God with the whole self: our intellect, emotions, body, capacities, resources, and work. I imagine this love going far beyond the self and transforming our relationships with one another – not just those we know and recognize (the neighbor) but those we don’t know or who don’t look like us, worship like us, or speak like us (the stranger). The kind of human flourishing that follows defies our understanding of the broken world that is so familiar to us. We have all seen and heard versions of these stories of transformation on a personal and communal level. Generativity comes from this kind of love: new things are created, and dead things are resurrected (Romans 4:17). Through these radical acts of love, God brings about his promise from Revelation 21:5: “Behold, I am making all things new.”
Ahavah is the type of love that is commanded in this passage. The word ahavah does not only refer to a feeling that comes upon someone, it also refers to an action, or something that someone does or gives. Ahavah love is not just felt, then, it is done. Fearing or knowing God is a kind of ahavah. Keeping his commands is also a kind of ahavah. We all understand that when someone tells us they love us, that this love must be felt and seen in action. One without the other is emptied of its strength.
In Deuteronomy, the Shema is called the Greatest Commandment. This Greatest Commandment is linked through the arc of scripture in the Bible to Jesus's New Commandment in John 13:33-35: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another."
Leviticus 19:18 commands “love your neighbor as yourself,” and in 19:34, “love the stranger as yourself.” So, Jesus wasn’t commanding something new when he was asking his disciples to love their neighbor. Therefore, he must have been talking about the form or quality of the love, not the person who is being loved. Nowhere in scripture do we see someone display ahavah love with the radical grace of the God-man, Jesus, who loved his brothers and sisters so much that he died a humiliating, bloody death, alone on the cross as a sacrifice for their sins. His new commandment, therefore, clarifies that the love with which we should love one another is self-sacrificing, grace-filled, and that it will be emptied of its ultimate strength if divorced from the all-encompassing ahavah love of God.
When I think about flourishing, I think about ahavah. I think about personal flourishing: this all-encompassing love of God with the whole self: our intellect, emotions, body, capacities, resources, and work. I imagine this love going far beyond the self and transforming our relationships with one another – not just those we know and recognize (the neighbor) but those we don’t know or who don’t look like us, worship like us, or speak like us (the stranger). The kind of human flourishing that follows defies our understanding of the broken world that is so familiar to us. We have all seen and heard versions of these stories of transformation on a personal and communal level. Generativity comes from this kind of love: new things are created, and dead things are resurrected (Romans 4:17). Through these radical acts of love, God brings about his promise from Revelation 21:5: “Behold, I am making all things new.”
the paintings
Shema Yisrael: Ahavah! / Hear, O Israel: Love!
Acrylic ink, marble dust, and gold foil on canvas, mounted on wood
Three 24x36” panels
i. Lev (Heart): to love with the intellect and emotion
ii. Nephesh (Soul): to love with the singular longing of the human person
iii. Me’od (Strength): to love with all capacities and resources
Acrylic ink, marble dust, and gold foil on canvas, mounted on wood
Three 24x36” panels
i. Lev (Heart): to love with the intellect and emotion
ii. Nephesh (Soul): to love with the singular longing of the human person
iii. Me’od (Strength): to love with all capacities and resources
LEV / HEART: seat of intellect and emotional capacities // SOLD
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NEPHESH / SOUL: literally means "throat" and refers to the entire human person
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ME'OD / STRENGTH: all capacities and resources
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details
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