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PDF FormatRabbi Akiva—and most of Judaism along with him—views the matter a bit differently. The kind of love (romantic or otherwise) that he unabashedly recognizes and unreservedly encourages, is one-hundred-percent biased, hopelessly unequal, deeply discriminatory, and incorrigibly preferential distinguishing love: The kind of love that plays favorites, that chooses sides, that confers specialness. As a Jewish luminary, Rabbi Akiva only understood that type of love that blossoms from the ubiquitous Hebrew root “k-d-sh,” which is probably most accurately rendered into English as “to declare special, to set apart as unique.”
When a man marries a woman in Judaism, the institution is called kidushin, because they set one another apart from the rest of humanity, because they (ideally) love each other more than they love anybody else (this is a far cry from the fully internally consistent Pauline-Christian doctrine of marriage, which is: “Try your best to avoid it”). When Jews bless the wine on a Friday night, this is called kidush, because we are setting apart, we are distinguishing the Sabbath day from what surrounds it, and saying: I love this day more than any other day of the week. When Jews do that weird, Wizard-of-Oz, “there’s no place like home” thing three times with their heels, and declaim the words kadosh, kadosh, kadosh in the Amida, this means: “There is none like unto you among the gods, O Lord.” We single you out, we love you best.
This is not a Jewish secret. It’s a human secret. It’s the way we all work, all of us, deep down inside. We all love preferentially, and that’s the only kind of love we value, the only kind of love we want back from the people we love. All those perpetually smiling, lovey-dovey, touchy-feely, Swami-from-Miami types who appear at first glance to be all about love, and nothing else but love, toward every single thing that lives and breathes, are in reality all about stealing this absolutely essential human emotion away from you (they’ve already lost it themselves). It is no coincidence that the first and most indispensable step one takes in order to successfully “deprogram” a Hare Krishna (or member of any other cult) is to rekindle his particular love for a particular someone who was once very special to him.
And this means something else that everybody already knows, but is for various reasons only occasionally acknowledged: Because love is such a major deal in all of our existences, and because the love we’re talking about is invariably distinguishing and preferential in nature, human beings will ever and anon, at all places and all times, prefer hanging out in the company of some people over hanging out in the company of others. They will always form special groups, little groups and big groups, groups to which they feel a special connection, a special sense of belonging. They will always relate emotionally to these groups in the manner of concentric circles, loving the nearer rings more than they love the farther ones. They will always seek to perpetuate these familial, sociocultural and possibly political entities for as long as they can. And they will always distinguish between their own special circles, and those that are special not to them—but to others.
Is this because human beings are small-minded, visionless creatures who can’t appreciate the lustrous loveliness and messianic morality of universal oneness? No. It is because they are (thank God) supremely and congenitally motivated by preferential love, and special groups of this sort are the inexorable consequence and highest, most beautiful expression of such love. It is because loving in this way is the bread-and-butter of authentic human happiness. It is because if they didn’tlove in this way, human beings would have absolutely nothing left to live for. Nothing. This, to my mind, is the underlying meaning of the well-known Talmudic determination: “O hevruta, o mituta” (loosely: Give me society, or give me death). Either you have around you a particular group of people that you especially love (a “hevreh,” as modern Hebrew slang has it)—or you might as well be dead.
(Jesus knew this; he knew it full well. That’s why he continually emphasized that “My kingdom is not of this earth.” He didn’t want to—or at least was aware that he was unable to—bring about the establishment of “universal love” here in the mundane sphere:It just wouldn’t work. Perhaps he even believed it shouldn’t work. So he decided to institute it in the “kingdom of heaven.” That is ultimately the reason why he departed. That is also the reason why there is no parallel in Christianity to Judaism’s 613 commandments and their hundreds of thousands of derivatives, which are all about how to live and act and get along right down here in this world. Jesus, on the other hand, specifically relegated unto Caesar all things terrestrial. Early Christianity, at least, was not interested in creating a system designed for living and loving in this world: It was interested in ushering in the next one.)
Do you know who nearly managed to pull off John Lennon’s vision of no religions, no nations, no countries, one world—right here on earth? Do you know who almost succeeded—even if only within relative geographic and demographic microcosms—in bringing about that beautiful dream of universal love, no barriers, no walls, and no special or distinct human cliques or clans? How about these fine-feathered fellows: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Any of these names ring a bell? Because the only way to stop people from loving preferentially and start them loving universally; the only way to see to it that they do not divide up—as people who love at all naturally do—into distinct sociocultural and sociopolitical communities and associations, is by forcibly ensuring that they all dress, eat, sleep, talk, sing, dance, work, play and think the same—and killing them if they diverge. There’s your “One World,” John, with all the divisions and barriers erased, there’s Ofer and Doron and Shira’s magnificent, imploding, united utopia, where “all hearts are as one heart, all minds are as one mind, so that through the spirit of oneness you may heal the sickness of a divided community.” Feast your eyes.
VI
My grandfather on my father’s side was an Iranian Jew from a little town about a hundred and fifty miles south of Tehran, called Kashan. He told me this story.
Once, in the time of his grandfather’s grandfather, already in the previous century, a Jewish merchant from Kashan allegedly overcharged a local Muslim man of the cloth (oh, believe me, he did it). This complacent clergyman metamorphosed overnight into the Mad Mullah, and swore upon the Holy Qur’an that he’d have his revenge, and then some. He quickly assembled and whipped into a religious frenzy all the be-turbaned ayatollahs in the entire province, and together they proceeded to the palace of the qaim-maqam, the regional governor. By hook or by crook they managed to prevail upon him to issue an official edict requiring the conversion of every single Jewish man, woman and child to Islam by such-and-such a date, upon pain of death.
Well, the appointed deadline was fast approaching, and the Jewish community of Kashan province was in an absolute tizzy. What to do? With two weeks left, the various elders finally buried their long-standing differences and held a solemn conference at the house of Kashan’s chief rabbi. Prayers were offered, psalms were intoned, supplications were … supplicated. But nobody really had any suggestions worth considering. It was agreed by all present that a delegation should be sent to the governor, but no one could figure out what exactly they should say to him. The meeting was about to disperse, when the rabbi’s wife—who had, of course, been bringing in round after round of sweet, samovar-seethed tea for the assembled guests—dared to address the company she had been so dutifully serving. “You leave it to me and my sisters,” she enjoined confidently. “Just come back when it’s time to go to the governor.”
Iranian families are big, and soon the sound of looms hard at weaving could be heard not just at the rabbi’s house, but at most of the houses surrounding it. The seven sisters worked like devils through day and night, scarcely pausing to rest, and when the elders returned one week later—on their way to petition the governor to rescind the evil decree—the Rabbi’s wife laid two enormous, rolled-up Persian rugs, made of the finest Kashan silk, at their feet. “Now, when you are received in audience by the governor, here’s what you will do…,” she explained.
A few days later the delegation of venerable, white-bearded old men—weary from their long trek through the desert on camel- and donkey-back—stood trembling in His Excellency’s august presence. “You have wasted your time in traveling all the way here,” he chided them, right off the bat. “There is nothing that will make me change my mind. You will all be good Muslims in time for next Friday’s public prayers in the mosque. Nevertheless, since you have come all this way, I will go through the motions of entertaining your petition. What have you to say?”
