Falling in Love

Will Herberg - Judaism and Modern Man

The ultimate criterion of justice, as of everything else in human life, is the divine imperative—the law of love .... Justice is the institutionalization of love in society .... This law of love requires that every individual be treated as a Thou, a person, an end in themselves, never merely as a thing or a means to another's end. When this demand is translated into laws and institutions under the conditions of human life in history, justice arises.

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments.

Am I in love? -yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to mplay the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy mysel;f elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

Dr. Ruth Calderon. A Bride for One Night.

Much ink has been spilled on the battle that raged in Rav Rehumi’s soul. He was torn between the study house and his home, between the texts he learned, which took on a life of their own, and the woman who waited for him to return… If Rav Rehumi achieved any fame, it is thanks to his wife, and if he acquired a reputation, it is as a tragic hero. His character seems to be a pun on his unique, extraordinary name: Rehumi in Aramaic means “love” and can be interpreted as either “loving” or “beloved.” Rehumi’s wife loved him. As such it is she who renders his name appropriate for him—she makes him “beloved.” Though nameless, and though described sparingly, she emerges as a character thanks to the skill of an anonymous master storyteller. Her great love enables her to overlook her husband’s failings, though she is not blind to them… This is the story of a loving wife and a husband whose Torah renders him incapable of sensing another’s pain. A romantic reading will view Rav Rehumi as a man who has a poor sense of priorities, who preferred to devote himself to Torah instead of to a woman. A moralizing reading will blame him for sacrificing her good for his own. But I view him as a man who simply did not know what love is. The only area in which he was not mediocre was in his loving wife’s estimation. Only through her eyes was he deserving of his name. She allowed him to trample on her soul and, through this tragic story, to achieve immortality

Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz. The Strife of The Spirit.

She [Rachel] was drawn, as by a magnet, to the sheep pen where Akiva was to be found. She found herself watching him, unable to throw off the superimposed image of the scholar. And he, taller and stronger than the others, and far more youthful and agile than most of those younger than he, seemed to be oblivious of her. In fact, he paid scant attention to anyone, men or women, though many of the latter—shepherdesses and wives of herdsmen—were clearly attracted to him. To be sure, it was not only a physical force that emanated from him, it was a kind of light, something to which everyone joyfully surrendered. She wondered whether anyone else was aware of it as she was. Was she in the grip of a fascination, or a love, that was out of bounds? Or was her feeling of strong certainty something beyond what could be interpreted as womanly passion? It was not a desire to possess or to be possessed. It was rather a need to do something for him, an irrepressible urge to save him from the oblivion to which he was doomed by the circumstances of his life… And so the two were banished to years of poverty and destitution in another village far away [after they were married and her father disowned her]. But Rachel made Akiva abide by his promise. He studied. It is said that he learned to read with his sons. It is said that he made such phenomenal progress in all written and unwritten knowledge that few living men could be compared to him. Most wondrous of all, he became a great leader in Israel—the undisputed head of the Sanhedrin, where the law of the Jews and the vast body of postbiblical literature called the Talmud were formulated. And of all the great teachers of the centuries of the Talmud period, scholars and sages of profound wisdom and purity of life, the greatest of them all was Rabbi Akiva. But that is another, a much longer story. Much of what happened to Rachel remains in obscurity, as she herself preferred. Her joy was in his triumph, which, in barely twenty years, exceeded all that she could ever have imagined. Moreover, since Rabbi Akiva lived to very ripe old age, he managed to impress on the law and wisdom of Israel the power of a unique and rich personality, more so perhaps than any other single individual since Moses, the lawgiver himself.