Addict Torah: Song of Songs (Pesach Shabbat Chol Ha-Moed) 5784/2024

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Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. xxxv

[The Song of Songs] is the great songbook of the Jewish soul.

Mishnah Yadayim 3:5

Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai said: I have received a tradition from the seventy-two elders on the day when they appointed Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah head of the academy that the Song of Songs and Kohelet defile the hands. Rabbi Akiba said: Far be it! No man in Israel disputed that the Song of Songs [saying] that it does not defile the hands. For the whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the writings are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, location 17510, Kindle edition

Hezekiah was one of the most pious kings of Judah. Especially he is deserving of praise for his efforts to have Hebrew literature put into writing, for it was Hezekiah who had copies made of the books of Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Proverbs. On the other hand, he had concealed the books containing medical remedies.

Marcia Falk, The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, p. xviii

Separation of the lovers is a recurrent theme, and lovemaking is more invited, anticipated, and imagined than explicitly consummated or fulfilled.

Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs, p. 35

Not having the couple consummate is the point and the power of this book...We see what the Israelites desired and what we do. In the process, longing tells us about ourselves: who we are is our desire, what our soul loves.

Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs, p. 3, 11

If, as Freud contended, desire drives everything or nearly everything we do, then coming to understand its force is certainly worth the effort and is easily worth an entire biblical book...Desire is an impulse and emotion for more in life at any given moment. God is a belief that there is something more to life. Can’t these be the same?

Marcia Falk, The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, p. xvii

Immediately appealing as it is to the senses, the Song is all the more striking for its emotional complexity. Various and sometimes contradictory feelings interlace in the poems; anxiety, hostility, and loss are counterparts to eros and pleasure.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 27

kisses of your mouth. Spiritual realization is ever partial and fragmentary. The honest seeker knows that the goal is to make contact with some modality 'of' (or 'from') the great divine mystery - with something that remains hidden and other ('His'), even as one dares to imagine the connection in terms knowable ('mouth').

Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs, p. 21

All substantial, loving relationships come through effort, not under threats of early dismissal or attention deficit. You have to want to stay through the muck and the absurdities. The time to park it is when reason is telling you to leave. Spirituality is not immediate gratification. It is more the ardor of patience, a willingness to put oneself in God's way in case he shows. This is no facile enterprise for a bunch of post-traumatic stressed Hebrews coming out of the desert into their land, or for us, steeped in secular worlds. But what else are you really going to do with life but try to assent fully?

Song of Songs Rabbah, I.ii.2, cited in Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p.27

more delightful than wine. R. Yohanan assert[s] that loving interpretations of Torah are even better than wine - meaning, better than the Torah itself. That is the traditional words of the sages exceed in both value and pleasantness the very words of the Torah - since they can transform the body of one who imbibes it, even more than wine does.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 30

Your ointments yield...fragrance. The flow of divine giving through the totality of existence is like the scent of fine oil - a spiritual quality exuded by worldly substance...In this yearning for divine transcendence, God is addressed as 'you.' Divinity - the focus of a personal quest - is invoked as a person. Love longs to be personalizes, for it arises in a human heart. This yearning brings God into presence. In consequence, the kiss is expressed as an aromatic infusion of divine creativity into world being. If this new image is more tangible, it nevertheless remains symbolic of a more ultimate truth - the ineffable mystery of the Divine Name: 'I shall be as I shall be' (Exod. 3:14)

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 39

Let me be not as one who strays Renewal of the soul begins with this sense of loss and being lost - off one's true path (Ibn Aqnin). From this place of longing, the soul's question has arisen ('Tell me') and posed its quest for spiritual direction (Malbim, Immanuel).

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 46

nard an aromatic of the genus Nardostachys, which famously evokes desire (Immanuel) - and thus an erotic overtone here. It is listed among the spices of the priestly incense offering in B. Kar 6a

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 60-61

He brought me to the banquet room [lit: house of wine] The soul desires transformation. Ingesting the divine wisdom is not sufficient. The soul doees not merely want to incorporate spiritual nurture and cultivate inner perfection. It wants more...

Marcia Falk, The Song of Songs: Love Lyrics from the Bible, p. xvi

The view of the Song as an allegory of love between God and Israel no doubt provided motivation - or rationale - for its canonization. But it seems likely the rabbis were also influenced by the reality that the Song was already enshrined in the life of the people, as evidenced by the rabbinic injunction not to sing the Song in the wine halls.

Rabbi Akiva, in T. Sanhedrin 12:10 cited in Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. xxi-xxii

Whoever trills the Song of Songs in banquet halls - and treats it like a mere lyric - has no share in the world to come.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 68

Hark! My beloved! As an inner experience, the voice is a sharpening of religious consciousness - something is happening; and as an external matter, the oncoming reality throbs with vibrant images...

Bialik & Ravnitzky, The Book of Legends: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, 388:3

'Hark! My Beloved! Behold, He cometh' (Song 2:8). When Moses went and told Israel: Thus did the Holy One speak to me: 'This day go ye forth, in the month of Aviv' (Exod. 13:4), they asked: Where is He? Moses replied: Behold, He is about to stand before you - 'Hark! my Beloved, He cometh' (Song 2:8).

Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs, p. 76-77

Desire itself can be frightening, erupting anywhere, catching humans off guard: it is miraculously chaotic. It does not heed reason's claims, nor can it be charted...Desire darts and zigzags, laws low and then pounces without rhyme or reason...The Song details the twists and turns, pains, and pleasures of desire and makes no attempt to force it onto a safe trajectory. Rather, desire is left in its raw form: insistent, erratic, and even mischevious...Desire is wild. It slips out, zerioes in, circles and bandies about, retreating and erupting all over again. We pretend it is on a leash of our own design, but we are fooling ourselves...desire stays free in the Song, roaming at will, an undomesticated presence in life.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 71

Arise The soul is called to arise and follow: to ascend to a higher level and come away (lekhi lakh). Is it ready for the journey? Perhaps an echo of the divine call to Abraham has shaped the listener's consciousness. Does it hear in this call a trace of God's ancient address to that spiritual pilgrim to 'come forth' (lekh lekha) to a new beginning? Like that great forebear, the present seeker must respond from the depths. I must come forth with my fullest being. Nothing partial will do.

Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, p. 361

It is said that the battle between Jacob and the angel did not take place on the shores of the River Yabbok, but in the palaces of heaven...[at dawn]...many ministering bands of angels arrived and said, 'The time of singing God's praises has come' (Song of Songs 2:12). Michael [the angel] pleaded with Jacob, saying, 'Let me go, I beg you, lest the ministering angels incinerate me for delaying the song.' But Jacob insisted that he woul not let him go unless he blessed him...That is when God chose to reveal Himself to Jacob and the angels. Looking up, Jacob saw God face to face. At that instant a change came over him, and he became Jacob, patriarch, father of Israel's twelve tribes.

Carey Ellen Walsh, Exquisite Desire: Religion, The Erotic, and the Song of Songs, p. 22

Desire is about wanting more than it is about getting. It is the hunger that highlights the food; the patience that highlights the faith; the arousal that anticipates the sex. It commands a shift in perspective.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 84

I sought, but found him not The self has entered a cycle of seeking, with no result. A great emptiness separates the lonely, inward 'I' from its spiritually distant goal (called 'him'). A powerful pathos impels it. Loss defines the self and the corresponding quest to fill this void.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 88

Scarcely had I passed them The struggle for spiritual renewal may pass by ('avar) or ignore the very resources that can guide the quest - a transgression or oversight that requires renewed focus. The individual casts about, hoping to 'find' what has been so ardently sought - and 'hold it fast' and bring it into the deepest recesses of one's self. For the ancestors, the Exodus for Egypt was also a wandering toward spiritual fulfillment; a long-term passage through the desert until they arrived...For each worshiper, this historical process is paradigmatic. Jews must each find their rebirth in the womb of tradition. Guided by teachers ('watchmen,' v 3), the community may cultivate religious wisdom.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 91

Who is she that comes up The desert is a place of transition, between Egypt and the land of promise. It is also a place of imponderables, positive and negative. The midrashic tradition captures this complexity in the query of the Beloved. God asks: Who is this one ha'olah from the desert? Is this the nation 'who went up' to Cannan from the desert after years of disobedience, to find favor and renewal once again? In which case, Israel is a people marked by transitions and transformations.

Bialik & Ravnitzky, The Book of Legends: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, 99:122

Seeing the smoke [of the Israelites with God in the desert], all kings of the east and of the west said, 'Who is this that comes up out of the wilderness, like columns of smoke?' (Song 3:6) I caused manna to come down for you, the well to spring up for you, even brought you quails. Have I then been a wilderness unto Israel? Have I guided you in a wilderness? Or would you say that 'it has been for you a land of thick darkness' (Jer. 2:31)? Have I not Myself given light for you in the dark that beset you?

Song of Songs Rabbah 5:2, cited in Bialik & Ravnitzky, The Book of Legends: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, 523:161 & 529: 225

I sleep, yet my heart waketh The congretation of Israel said to teh Honly One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, 'I sleep' for lack of offerings [since there is no Temple now] yet 'my heart waketh' at the reading of the Shema and the Tefillah [prayers].' and 'The congregation said to the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, I am [numb as though] asleep, for lack of the Temple; 'nevertheless my heart waketh' in houses of prayer and houses of study.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 142

I met the watchmen Literally 'the watchmen met [or found] me.' This marks the challenge. There are many blocks to higher wisdom. The tree of true life is guarded by an impassable flame - this being our human limits...

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 144

I am faint with love Lost and wandering, the roaming is a physical and spiritual exile. Accordingly, the maiden's adjuration evokes a longing for redemption (Songs Rabbah 5.viii.I). Distant from God, the maiden requests her companions' intervention. But patience and restraint are required. Recalling the paradigm of Egyptian servitude, when the people pined for redemption, tradiiton emphasizes the need to wait - in hope - despite the sufferings of exile (Rashbam). The people's call is like an act of prayer, beseeching God for salvation and healing. Feeling cut off, they need spiritual helpers - friends and teachers who may understand her longing and give it a proper formulation. The self awaits a sign (Netziv).

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 158

My beloved has gone down Pondering the mystery (v. 1 [whither has my beloved gone?]), the soul proclaims that the Beloved has descended to 'His garden' - to the seeking soul itself! Somehow through the very query of 'Whither?' the self has located the Divine in its own depths. The self knows that this garden is its spiritual core, and the 'beds of spices' ('arugot ha-bosem) its exuding love...Unexpectedly, the self has a sense of God's reality. Presence now fills the heart.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 167

Who is she that shines The spectacle of the soul evokes wonder...Out of the inner dark of spiritual loss, the soul radiates the aura of its spiritual restoration (Zohar 1:170a)...Spiritual development irradiates the self and is evident to all. 'Who is she?!' - a question and an exclamation in one. She is transcendent - and reveals something that transcends all worldliness.

Michael Fishbane, The JPS Bible Commentary: Song of Songs, p. 176

Turn back, turn back This twofold call reflects a tension. The sould can turn in two directions: it can continue its spiritual progress toward the Beloved; or it can turn back, having achieved a certain level of self-realization. It is no betwixt and between - and must choose...And so the seeker must now decide whether to build on its spiritual achievements and ascent to yet higher levels...there is...ambivalence. Something human tugs at the soul to 'turn back' to its earthly self - to integrate its perfections and return to our world...One ideal is solitude; the other, communal solidarity.