Question: There are many songs created about love, and many wonderful romance novels written throughout the history of humanity. On the other hand, love has led to a great number of tragedies and wars. So much has been said about love. Perhaps it is a person’s  most sublime feeling. What is love?

Answer: Love is a special attitude of a person to someone or something. I love the sea, music, pleasant smells, etc. This is also called that I love.

Why do I love? Because it gives me pleasure. I enjoy the sea, the music, the smells, the skies. I love what gives me pleasure. Conversely, I hate what causes me suffering or problems. This is how love or hate that arises to people and animals.

It is “egoistic love” when I love something that gives me pleasure and hate what causes me suffering. We are like animals; we love what is good for us and move away from things that are bad for us. This is called love. Meaning, it is not love toward some object, but rather love for what it awakens within me.

For example, I run into a friend and he tells me that he has divorced. “What has happened?!” “Love has gone.” It means that love exists up to the moment where we can receive pleasure from one another. Even today doctors say that love between partners disappears in 2 to 3 years.

This is not the love that the wisdom of Kabbalah is talking about. The wisdom of Kabbalah talks about love as something that is above a person’s ego, which enjoys using someone or something. Love is something we build on two levels.

There is a level of relationship between us which may involve arguments and even hate, i.e., disagreement with one another. At the same time, above these disagreements, we build a special connection called “love.”

We work a lot on this, make efforts, and invest time building it. This is called “love will cover all transgressions.” It means that we build love precisely above transgressions, above disagreements that exist between us.

Only in this way can two people connect one with the other so their mutual connection would be good, strong, healthy, and truly human. This connection is between people who understand that they are egoists and that again tomorrow they can have a dispute but they will still continue working to make their connection beautiful and kind, and it is called “love.”

This is not love that is built on sexual attraction, habit, or something that is good for me today but tomorrow may be the opposite.

On the contrary, it is love between people: a man and a woman, children, within a nation, or within a group of people. But with all this we do not treat each other based on receiving pleasure one from another, where I receive pleasure from the other one and therefore I love. After all, this would be the animal level.

At the human level we create connections of love between us above everything that we receive one from another—pleasures or the opposite—up to the point that I can hate the other for his habits that I do not like. Still I have to love him, for example, for the reason that we belong to the same nation.

Then we will work on how we can also become closer one to another in the habits at the level of this world—physical, national, and so forth.

In other words, love is the highest value in relationship between people who are going to connect with each other since they are obliged to be tied and they chose this connection. Then they constantly work on this.

Therefore it is said that “love will cover all transgressions.” There are “transgressions” between us, various disagreements, and above them we are constantly building love. Even more, the more disagreements, the stronger love should be above them.

This is the way we have to educate people. Then we will be able to come to the state where we will be able to open an umbrella of love above the entire world, above all of humanity. This is precisely what love is. Otherwise, it is just a physiological love where you love something that is good for your body; this is love of animals, whereas human love is built above all that makes me unhappy about the other one. There is some reason, a higher value, that obliges me to be in connection with the other one.

We both understand that at the regular level we have all kinds of disagreements with regard to the country, life, and everything else, but in any case we come to the decision that we have to be connected despite that we are different and our structure is different.

We build this connection, our love, slowly, step by step, based on our superior goal which we together have to reach in connection between us and above our physical bodies.
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From the Program on Radio Station 103FM, 2/14/2016

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Love Without Conditions
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The Art Of Love

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