My friend David seemed very excited. “Rabbi,” he said to me, “I need you to help me.” Without skipping a beat he continued, “I met my Bashert (preordained soul mate) last night and I want to make a blessing: tell me the correct one to say.” He proceeded to tell me about ‘the most amazing Jewish girl in the world.’ “Rabbi,” he said, “I am going to fly you in to officiate at the wedding.” He had obviously fallen head over heels in love with the girl he had dated the previous evening.
Three weeks later I met him again and politely inquired about his new girl friend. “Oh her,” he said, “She was a real pain.” So that was it. No more enthusiasm, no more wedding bells – just the sour smell of extinguished love.
The Bible is full of stories depicting romantic love at first sight: Adam feeling delight upon laying eyes on Eve, Rebecca falling in love with Isaac, Jacob falling in love with Rachel and David experiencing love the first time he saw Avigail and Bathsheba.
Does this mean that the Bible believes in love at first sight? Or is this really just infatuation – an extravagantly foolish and unreasoned passion?
The Kabbalah explains that emotion is the fruit of the intellect. Thus, both love and hate are emotions that are created by understanding that an object is either good or bad. Or, in Kabbalistic jargon, one has to have Da’at (knowledge) before one can have Midot (emotions). Thus love is always dependent on knowledge of the object of one’s love. But when Jacob fell for Rachel he did not know her yet and therefore could not have had the knowledge needed to create love! So was Jacob’s initial feeling of love real, or was it just infatuation?
The truth is that one can have Da’at (knowledge) that is based on fantasy. When a man meets a beautiful woman who acts towards him in a flattering manner he may imagine her to have all the qualities that he needs and wants in a woman, and it is this subconscious perception that he falls in love with. This knowledge, based on imagined truth rather then hard facts, will often not develop into long-lasting love. Jacob however, was a holy man who had Divine insight. His subconscious perception of Rachel was accurate so he fell in love with the true Rachel rather than a possibly falsely pre-judged picture of her.
So according to Kabbalah and contrary to current popular wisdom, love at first sight does not guarantee a long-lasting relationship. Long-lasting love can only develop after one actually knows (Da’at) the other person.
A romantically loving relationship can develop in three different ways. A person can fall in love at first sight and, as time moves on, the initial perceptions are proven to have been accurate. This love then becomes anchored in reality. However the opposite may occur: the original assessment of the other person may prove to have been erroneous. Since the love that was experienced at first was based on fictitious assumptions, this love will inevitably phase out. A third scenario is where no love is initially felt. However, as the couple get to know each other they realize that they are well suited and love starts to develop.
Our passion for God and all things spiritual is similar to the above. There are innately spiritual people who constantly yearn for spirituality and closeness to God. This is analogous to someone who subconsciously perceives the other person as able to fulfil their needs, and therefore falls in love with them.
The person who feels no love on the first date however, is akin to the non-spiritual person, who has no conscious yearning for God or spirituality.
Like our personal relationships, our relationship with God can also manifest in three ways. An innately spiritual person will naturally feel a love for God. Thus meditation will turn that love into a powerful emotion. However if this type of person does not fuel this feeling of love and yearning with the study of Kabbalah, meditation and contemplation of God and His omnipotence, these spiritual feelings will not gain momentum and may even fade.
Just as a person can engender passionate love without experiencing love at first sight, similarly a person who is not innately spiritual and does not naturally yearn to reach the Divine, can – through meditation and study of Kabbalah – awaken the hidden spiritual dimension of the soul and engender a passionate love for God and spirituality.