How Do You Love Hashem When the Heart is Shut? A Collection of Tips to Renew Love

One of the commandments in the Torah is to love Hashem. There are various beautiful and poetic sources for this in the books, illustrating to what extent we should be engulfed in the love for the Creator. There are also wonderful allegories (for example: the Book of Song of Songs), and fortunately, it's a mutual love. Hashem also loves us, made us His chosen people at Mount Sinai, and twice a day, we declare His oneness by reciting, 'Hear O Israel.' The numerical value of 'one' (echad) in Hebrew is love (ahavah), and just before, we finish the blessing that He chooses us, in love. This is a positive commandment constantly obligating us to love the Creator, blessed be He.

But we need to understand something basic here, and commentators have asked this before. How can you command the heart? We know well that you cannot compel the heart to love someone or something. Love cannot be forced, which is why this commandment needs clarification.

The question becomes even more significant considering the principle found in the book Ohr Sameach (in the laws of Torah Study), that even the lowliest person can observe every commandment in the Torah. There is no commandment that only a person of a certain stature can observe. Thus, the Torah didn't explicitly command character traits, as you cannot command someone to be humble, etc. The commandments always pertain to actions or thoughts that anyone can perform at any given moment. Hence, the commandment to love Hashem should be possible to observe at any moment. We need to understand exactly how to do this...

Indeed, in the writings of the sages, it’s explained that there are many levels and layers to loving Hashem. Although it’s not always possible to reach the higher levels at any given moment, our goal in life is to elevate ourselves and reach deeper, more genuine levels of love for the Creator according to our soul’s abilities. If a person seeks advice and consistently acts to elevate themselves and make love settle in their heart, even at higher levels, then even these actions are included in the commandment: "And you shall love your God." May His name be praised. There is hope. By trying to awaken the love, that itself is the commandment. Our sages offered several pieces of advice for fulfilling the commandment to love Hashem. I will try to briefly list 9 pieces of advice found in the books on how to attempt to love Hashem and thereby fulfill the commandment.

1. Reflect on the world (Rambam, Chapter 2 of Fundamentals of Torah).

2. Contemplate the Torah (Rambam in the Book of Commandments, 'Shem Olam for Chafetz Chaim, Chapter 12).

3. Reflect on Hashem's kindness to us (SeMaG, also mentioned in Duties of the Heart).

4. Pray for the merit to achieve love for Hashem (As our rabbis established in the blessing of Ahavah Rabbah, saying 'Unite our hearts to love and fear Your name').

5. Learn from the allegory of the love between man and woman, and apply it to the love for Hashem (Reishit Chochmah, Chapter 5, and Rambam, Chapter 10 of Repentance).

6. Remember that blessed be He loves us and desires our reconciliation before Him (Sfat Emet, Deuteronomy 1901-1903).

7. Address the difficulties we face and never suppress them, as this harms the love and connection with Hashem. Instead, talk about them with Hashem, as one speaks to a friend, simply putting them before Hashem, and try to return to the heart the belief that everything is for the best, even if not understood (Path of the Just, Chapter 19).

8. Seek out good points for myself, in myself, not just as knowledge but as a daily practice to mention a few good things I have done and acknowledge them. Be grateful for them. Give myself a pat on the back. It's not arrogance; it’s a necessary tool for awareness and connection (According to LiKutHei Halachot, the law of Rousing in the Morning A).

9. Do not fixate on vain material matters of pleasure and seeking honor, which nullify His love (Explanation of the Law, Section A, according to the Book of Education).

I presume you are familiar with these pieces of advice, at least some of them, and strive to implement them. Those who aren't are invited to make 'work' out of each of these wonderful pieces of advice, studying them in depth, and trying to ascend this precious ladder of love for Hashem.

However, I still dare to ask a hard question. How much do we actually succeed in living this? How much do we truly feel the love? Our workspaces are filled with stories of troubles and issues, disasters, and illnesses. Our hearts are closed, and love has turned into a theoretical concept we can discuss but find difficult, truly difficult, to live by.

At this point, I think those of us who are "Baal Teshuvas" have something unique. Our connection with Hashem, at least at the start of our return to faith, was not a relationship of coercion or external obligation. If it had been, it’s likely that we wouldn’t have developed or progressed it. It began as a relationship of love—intimate, special, felt, and experiential. There is no scientific explanation for it, and it’s hard to pinpoint a specific moment or reasons that led to it. Perhaps it was some remarkable ancestral merit, Hashem opened a door for us and shone a special light, an intimate light of love. Baal Teshuvas know what I am talking about. We all felt it. Maybe we didn't know many laws then, and perhaps we were slightly delusional, maybe we didn't know how to take it in a balanced way, and maybe there were a thousand more falls along the way. But it was something real. We felt the love of Hashem.

In real-time, we didn't define things like that to ourselves. But it caused us to change our lifestyles, break habits and fixations, enter a different, unfamiliar world in an entirely new society with a million different cultural codes. It wasn’t easy, and the power for this change, an identity change with so many side effects, came from these moments when we felt the love of Hashem. These moments made us "lovers."

The world does not understand us. Not the secular world we left, looking at us with compassion, nor the world we've entered. They too have their own entrenched codes, our enthusiasm is strange to them, perhaps rightly so. Even our children do not understand us. They call us "enthusiastic Baal Teshuvas." It's noticeable. They catch on that we haven't managed to balance these lights into normal, stable everyday life. We are in high spirits. We don't even understand ourselves. And that's okay. That's how we are. Enthusiastic. It's recommended to listen to the song by Adi Ran, "I Love Hashem," to understand the context of this article. And there are so many more examples. Those who are not Baal Teshuvas simply do not talk this way.

It took me time to understand that not everyone is like this. Not everyone is blessed with it. I am not saying this from a place of arrogance. I admit: even I am not blessed with this to such degrees anymore. Certainly not with such intensity. Without a doubt, it’s an unnatural grace from Hashem, because of some hidden ancestral merit, not by merit. It's a gift that Hashem gave us so that we can leave our previous world. So that we can dedicate ourselves and do the unimaginable, return to faith.

Not All Sacrifice is Desirable

Despite my strong desire to end this article on a high note, this is the point where I must qualify, and spoil the idyllic image for the younger Baal Teshuvas among us. There is a parasha in the Torah about dear people who also sacrificed for Hashem. The Torah calls them 'ma’apilim.' After the terrible decree of the spies in the desert, they understood that the true will of Hashem was for them to enter the Land of Israel. So they repented according to all its definitions: confession, regret, and acceptance for the future. They committed to sacrificing themselves to do what they believed was Hashem’s true will and immediately began their act of repentance, entering the land. The Ohr HaChaim explained their sin. That they actually wanted to fix it, according to the principle: "Whatever the master of the house tells you, do—except go out," the principle of the Heavenly voice that declared "Return, O backsliding children—except Acher," thinking here they needed to sacrifice themselves.

The sad lesson is that not all self-sacrifice is desirable before Hashem. The 'ma’apilim' didn't follow Hashem's word and thus did not succeed (a general rule in all matters). Similarly, anyone who neglects basic natural efforts. He who does not place a railing on his rooftop, despite his righteousness and strong faith in the Creator, and although everything truly comes from heaven and everything is overseen by divine providence, and everything is also for the best, he has a problem.

You must take the engine of enthusiasm, try to preserve it, but fit it into the frameworks of Torah life. You must have ‘flesh’ of learning, understanding the laws, understanding who opposes whom, what is the principal and what is secondary, what is from the Torah and what is rabbinical, what is a nuance and a stringency, and what is piety. Only this allows you to balance your way over time, not by incorrect understanding from hagiographies and stories of self-sacrifice on matters of piety that cause immense damage to those around us. Understanding our duties, our obligation to make natural efforts in every area. The area of physical pleasures, the area of investing in marital harmony, the field of investing in children’s education. There is so much to learn, so much to accept, guidance that suits us.

It would have been so nice if we could be 'freelancers' in religion, engaging in outreach, being some 'Great Holy Grandfather' who only attracts the distant, earning admiring glances from secular men and women approaching, admiring the quotes from Pirkei Avot, the wisdom of the Torah, stories of miracles and providence. What a sweet pose. "Pose of holiness." Without the burden of payments and rent, without children’s diapers and lice, without arguments with a spouse, without educational institutions with annoying external bylaws, without all these annoying technical things that go on and fill our day.

But apparently, it's unavoidable. High lights need to be learned how to elevate to the routine of life. A routine full of trials. And it is specifically walking this path that brings true elevation. It’s not so glitzy and shiny. It has ‘unspiritual’ situations, by any standard, but this is apparently the way to reach true and authentic Jewish spirituality.

There is something comforting in knowing that there are no personal failures here that caused me to deviate from the utopia of 'constant love' with the Creator of the world. The failures are inherent, they are unavoidable. The tests, the daily struggles, and the fact that the utopian love undergoes hardships along the way. We at the 'Maa'ne' organization advise people across a fairly wide spectrum of the Jewish social spectrum, and we see this time after time, how broad the common denominator is, how similar the troubles and challenges are for everyone. It doesn’t matter where you came from or where you arrived, what Chasidut you are, or what sector you belong to. None are insured against this. It arrives after a few years, and it’s not a specific failure, so you don’t need to look for culprits here. This is the process. It's tiring, it's challenging, and to pass it, you must fill up on love. Also further along. Not to rest on the thorny laurels of the status: ‘Baal Teshuva,’ but to renew it, to search for this love, without which no strength can be found for everything else. You need to return to the pieces of advice listed earlier, pray for this, have solitude on this, contemplate, bring up difficulties, everything, just to awaken the love. If you awaken and awaken the love. For those who have a community from birth, many external obligations, as this is their world and the landscape of their native land, the beautiful talks about love can be a sweet bonus, but for us, Baal Teshuvas, it is not a luxury, it is the obligatory, it is the life force, because that’s why we are here, and therefore every charge is critical and essential so that we do not despair. We mustn’t. Never let the survival battle of life numb us and make us forget the most precious thing in the world. Invest in love.

LOVE LOVE LOVE.

That's the whole story.

Good luck!

Published at Maa'ne