All You Need Is Love
by Velvel "Wally" Spiegler

In browsing through the many Jewish periodicals I come across, I find lots of articles on Israeli politics, the holocaust, Jewish identity and Jewish continuity, but the one word that's conspicuously missing from any of these essays is love. It's as if love doesn't play a part any more in any of the current Jewish topics. It's as if we can solve all our problems through intellectual and political influence. In the December issue of Moment magazine, I could barely find a single reference to love in an article entitled, "Secrets of Great Jewish Parenting." Is it possible that we have effectively learned to disregard love as the medium of connectedness?
It's hard for me to believe that as a people whose spiritual literature is so abundant with thoughts and expressions of love-love for God, God's love for us, love for other Jews, love your neighbor-that we have become so cerebral as to close ourselves off from the one emotion that connects the entire universe. To talk about love, genuine love not the sentimental or sensual kind, seems almost as taboo as talking about sex and violence, yet to love is truly the most powerful truth and healing force we have.

Love is a two way street. The first objective is to learn to love yourself, and the second is to love all others. All the problems  of the world are a result of people not feeling loved. You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else which requires that you know and have experienced the feeling of unconditional love.  To encounter that kind of love,  you have to be accepted for who you are, just the way you are, regardless of your faults, your shortcomings, and your insecurities. Conversely how do you deal with someone else's unacceptable behavior? You can abandon and reject them or you can stop to realize that you don't feel loved enough yourself to be accepting and loving. The Hasidic rebbes were known to love their followers unconditionally, but today those teachers are not easy to find. A few of us may have been lucky enough to know a saint or a saintly therapist. Another way  of understanding that kind of love is to know that we're loved unconditionally by God, the universal support system; it is confirmed throughout Torah literature and particularly in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book.

Fear is the polar opposite of love. Most of us are afraid that if we expose the truth about who we really are, we'll be unacceptable, unloved. So we resort to all sorts of devices-saying the right things, going on the right vacations-hoping that others will notice and love us. And just as we acquire the clothes, the car, we find nothing really changes and no one loves us any better. So why not give others a chance? Trust that if you tell them who you really are and what's really going on in your life, they'll accept you and love you unconditionally. The next time try a new answer to the question, "how are you?"

The love of others demands that we also accept each one for who they are, and to understand that they too are frail creatures sharing the same pain that we endure. Listening attentively to a person's problems and feelings without judgment or criticism is an exquisite act of loving support. On the other hand if I get angry at someone, I rejected him; I'm saying energetically that you don't measure up as a human being; you're simply not acceptable, you're not loved. Here's an example: let's say your kid is responsible for cutting the grass and you come home to find the grass uncut. You have a choice. You can scold him or simply ask why the grass didn't get cut.  If you tell him that you understand his reasons, he can learn that he was wrong and still feeling loved.
If you want to be a great Jewish parent, love your kids unconditionally and if you want to be a great Jewish mensch (a loving person), love everyone else unconditionally also.