What’s Love Got To Do With It
Most — if not all — of us in this room have lost someone we loved so dearly. The ache remains as fresh as the day they left us. A little bit of us died with them. We feel that vacuum, that emptiness, that grief that settles into the corners of our lives. No matter how long it has been, we still feel connected to them. Our lives were never the same, and never will be.
And yet, despite all this loss, I believe something else about us: We care. We love. We want coexistence, harmony, and peace.
Call me a dreamer or an optimist — but it is the only way I know how to live.
Why do you think there are so many love songs? “What the world needs now is love, sweet love…” “Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch…” “What’s love got to do with it…?”
Because love is the thread that stitches humanity together. Not just romantic love — but love of friends, love of strangers, love of those suffering across the world, love of the animals entrusted to our care. Most of us ache when we witness cruelty. There is an art to loving, and for some it does not come naturally.
This is why a Rabbi meets with a couple for months before the Kiddushin (sanctification of a wedding) — not to test them, but to prepare them. To help them imagine the future, to teach them how to respond with compassion, how to avoid needless hurt, how to build unity rather than fracture. Fidelity is love. Unity is love. And unity — true unity — is the work of a lifetime.
Our tradition teaches that love and worship of God are best expressed through love of humankind. “Betzelem Elohim” — we are made in the image of God. That means God is not only far away in heaven; God appears before us in the faces of our fellow human beings. If we truly loved one another — deeply, consistently, courageously — would we need the Ten Commandments? Would we lie, steal, covet, cheat, or wound others with careless words? The answer is no.
And this brings me to Primo Levi, a Jew.
He tells the story of Lorenzo, an Italian bricklayer forced to work near Auschwitz. Lorenzo was not a Jew, not an inmate — yet every day, for six months, he brought Levi a tin of soup. He risked his life to do it. He scavenged scraps, stole into kitchens at night, and fed not only Levi but several other starving prisoners.
In that violent, degraded world, Lorenzo’s kindness was incomprehensible. He was a savior in workman’s clothes.
Levi survived because of him.
But after the war, when Levi went to thank him, he found a different man — weary, depressed, drinking his days away. With no one left to save, no one depending on him, Lorenzo had lost his purpose. Soon after, he died.
Levi was left to ponder the power — and necessity — of love.
The point of the story is simple and devastating: Life is empty without love. Love gives us meaning. Love gives us purpose. Love gives us a reason to keep going.
The Song of Songs says, “Love is as strong as death.” But perhaps love is even stronger. Anyone who has ever loved — or been loved — knows this truth.
“Love your neighbor” is not only a command to give love; it is a command to make it possible for your neighbor to love you in return. Love is reciprocal by design. It is a divine gift in both directions — the ability to love and the ability to be loved.
To love is to live. And it is only by loving others that we truly live.
I leave you with the words of Mordecai M. Kaplan: “The command to love one’s neighbor is to love the Divinity which is in him.”
Our time on this earth is short. Let us not only love our neighbor — Let us make sure we give our neighbor the chance to love us back.
Amen.