Defining Love - Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] the topic I was asked to address today was what exactly is the cultural definition of Love according to these Orthodox Jews what do they think so what I'm going to do with you is I'm going to carry you there's two ways to really know what cultures believe about any particular concept one is by examining their literature and the other is by interviewing people and finding out about their oral tradition so what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try to carry you through a brief tour of the literature and the oral tradition regarding this concept of Love within within uh Jewish Orthodoxy at least 2,000 year old tradition and I think that you'll find it um provocative at the very least yeah we'll start with a story The talmud describes a scene that took place here in Israel about 2,000 years ago uh very close to quesaria on the coast when the scene opens so the Romans have just banned the study of Torah and there's a Great talmudic Sage there Rabbi AA and he goes out into a Public Square and he starts to gather the masses come who wants to learn Torah and a large group gathers now many of the people who were there were probably coming just to see what was going to happen to this poor fellow because everyone knew how the Romans would respond and some people may have come to learn Torah it's possible as he's about to begin the lecture there's a secular uh Jew who sees what this lunatic Rabbi is doing and cries out to him Reby our teacher don't you know what the Romans are going to do to you and reaba looks at him and he tries to explain by breaking into metaphor and he says it's like a fox that is walking along the

Jump to a moment

1. 0:03[Music] [Applause] [Music] the topic I was asked to address today was what exactly is the…
2. 3:53this sound of them constructing this giant torture platform the sunsets R students thousands of them…
3. 7:39Jews and hears about Orthodoxy and decides he wants to start becoming religious and he heads…
4. 11:52Jewish concept of love let's take the concept of love that I absorbed in the culture…
5. 15:31happy how much of what is important to me or what makes me comfortable will I…
6. 19:48shortcomings of your beloved and every person marries somebody with shortcomings marriage is a 50/50 deal…
7. 23:31said I didn't marry you cuz you're Superman and this couple lived out one of the…
8. 27:13love to give to take care of others if here we are terrified that we would…
9. 31:33Yeshiva was practicing becoming a lover her and in little ways here and there he let…
10. 35:21word that the whole point is to give and now I'm not going to do it…

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