We're learning about the fourth class of pleasure, which is the pleasure of Ahava, love. We mentioned yesterday that, surprisingly, Ahava is a choice. Most people feel that Ahava is an accident, but the Torah tells us clearly that love is a choice we make.
If a person is unable to develop love for somebody, then telling him to love somebody doesn't make it possible to actually love them. So you don't really have a choice to love them. But the choice we have is to do the things that will bring us to love them. So when the Torah tells us, “Love your friend,” it doesn't mean, “Okay, now you're ready—love.” Not like that. It means, do what's needed so that love will be created. Okay?
We said yesterday that the button that produces love is the button of sacrifice. It's the button of giving, of doing for others. When you do for and sacrifice for someone or something, you automatically develop a love for it. So it's actually partially true that love itself is not in our hands. You can't just turn on love. But what's in your hands is to produce it. So really, it is our free choice.
Once we know this all-important fact, this reality, that love is a choice, that means you could love anything. And you could love anybody. You must know that. You can never say in life, “You know why I don't do this? I don't love it.” That's not an answer, because you could love it. If love is your choice, you can't say, “I don't do it because I don't love it.” It doesn't make sense. You chose not to love it. That's a very important part of our understanding of things.
You could say, “I don't do something because I think it's wrong. I don't do something because it's not healthy. I don't do this because I...” Yeah, you could say all those things. But you're never allowed to say, “I don't do this because I don't... I don't love it.” That is a mistake, because love is in your head.
For example, a person might say, “You know why I don't learn? You know, I don't learn Torah. I don't enjoy it. I don't love it.” If a guy told me, “I don't learn Torah because I don't think it's important,” okay, I get it. If you don't think it's important, that's why you don't learn. I can disagree with you, but I can't argue with you. You shouldn't do something in life that you don't think is important. Maybe you don't understand what's important. That's a different story. But your statement is valid: “I don't learn Torah because it's not important.”
But to say, “I don't learn Torah because I don't enjoy it,” that is a ta'ut. It's a mistake, because you don't love it today. Of course you don't love it. You haven't put in the pain. You haven't put in the investment so that you could love it. If you put in the pain, if you invested in learning Torah, what does that mean? It means getting a Chavruta (study partner), getting a rabbi, getting a pen and paper, writing down notes as you're learning, learning the words, reviewing what you learn, and taking your learning seriously and investing in it.
People who are invested in their learning and sacrifice time for it could have gone out for a four-hour dinner, but instead they said, “No, I'm not going to miss my learning tonight.” Sacrifice. Those who sacrifice for their learning—which means sacrificing time, maybe some other physical pleasure a person could have had, their energy, and their thoughts—will, when they invest in learning, be able to enjoy the pleasure of learning. It's only a matter of time. It's a great pleasure to learn. To learn Torah is a ta'anug, a great pleasure. It's a pleasure. But it's not available to people unless they put in the pain. You must invest in your learning to be able to enjoy your learning.
Therefore, a guy who says, “I don't learn; I don't enjoy it,” is making a choice not to enjoy it. He says, “No, really, I don't enjoy it.” I know, but it's your choice. “No, I want to enjoy it.” No, no. It doesn't work like that. You want to enjoy it? Let me tell you how to do it. It's a guarantee. It's not a question. If you can love a logo, what love can come to a person for the Torah of the Creator, for the truth, for meaningful things? It's not a question. A guy who thinks he has made it in the world of love because he has a team that he follows is a joke compared to loving something of substance, something that's eternal, something that's real.
So a person can never say, “I don't do this because I don't love it.” You didn't choose to love it.
Now that we know all this, we have a very big question to answer. Anyone here, anyone listening, could love anyone or anything. Fact. You could love anyone; you could love anything. It's all up to you. Now you have a challenge: What is worthwhile to love? You could love your dog. You could love a logo. You could love brand names. You could love all kinds of people. You could love all kinds of things. You could love anything. Look around the world and you'll see people in love with things you couldn't imagine: trees, whales, and anything and everything you could imagine. People love. Love them. You could love anything and you could love anyone. Fact.
Once you know that, remember that most people don't know this. Most people think the reason why they love something is just because. It could be, by the way, that a person has a certain attraction to things. Maybe people are more attracted to trees. People are more attracted to dogs. People are more attracted to their whales. Could be. Could be it's a natural attraction of somebody to certain things. But that's not love yet. That's just an attraction. Love is built through work and sacrifice.
So now you have a big question. Now that you know love is not an accident that just happens to a person, and that we have the ability to love, we must ask ourselves: What is worthy of my love? I'm going to live in a world where I'm going to love things. Most people in life do have a little connection to the fourth class. Everybody in life has a connection to the fifth class. If you don't have a connection to the fifth class, you're pretty much done. And most people have a connection to the fourth class too. They do love things. They love money. How can people love money? Because they work very hard for it. They sacrifice or love it. I don't mean loving what money can buy you. We all understand that money is important because we need things in life. I don't mean that. There's actually love of money. A guy has all kinds of money and he's loving it, not spending a dollar. In fact, because he loves it so much, he doesn't want it. He doesn't want to spend it. People who love money don't like spending money. People who spend money don't love money as much. That's a reality. When you love something, you don't want to let it go.
So people love money. People love animals. People love teams. Sometimes they love wives and spouses. Sometimes people love their children. People love their grandchildren. Sometimes they love their parents. It's unusual to love parents. It's unusual for a child to love his parents. For sure, when they're young, they don't love their parents. That's a guarantee. Maybe when they get older, maybe if they sacrifice for their parents, worry about them, do things for them, or honor them, they might. It could be. As they get older, sometimes children love their parents.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, let's make this clear. I just said that sometimes children love their parents. So he's asking, “I don't understand. My parents sacrificed so much for me. How can I be able to love them?” Let's review clearly. Someone sacrificing for you develops love for you in the person who sacrifices. It doesn't develop love in you for them. Parents sacrifice for their children. They do much more for their children than their children do for them. You would think that most people think, “You know who I love? The people I get from. The people who give to me—I love them.” It's not true. Children love their parents much less than parents love their children, even though children hardly do anything for their parents. They're getting everything from their parents. The rule of love is that sacrifice brings love to those who sacrifice, not to the recipient. It brings love to the one who sacrifices.
Most people in life have some connection to this class, the fourth class. There are things in their life that they love. But now that we know it's a choice, and we know it's a pleasure to love, it is quite worthwhile for a person to sit down with themselves and say, “Okay, now that I know love is a great pleasure that I need to have, and now that I know it's all in my head, where is it worthwhile to love? I could put an effort into anything. I could love a stone. I could love wood. I could love animals. I could love squirrels. I could love anything and everything.”
One time a guy came and told me, “I have something very special to show you.” Not a joke. He had this binder. I thought he was going to bring me the writings of Aharon HaKohen. He told me, “I have something very special,” and he opened it up. It was all stamps. But the way this guy spoke about stamps—you saw a light in his eyes. You saw a man who came to life. “And this stamp—oh, you don't know what a stamp is.” Now I'm looking at it, and they're all stamps. All I know about stamps is that you put them on an envelope. I could never imagine that they would mean any more than that. And the pleasure this man had in showing me his stamps—even though he knows I could care less about his stamps! But it doesn't matter whether you love something. It's like when a grandma talks about her grandchild to her friend; her friend could care less. This guy comes over: “Oh, he's so cute. You don't know what he did. You don't know what he does.” And the other one is listening: “Okay, no, no, finish.” When you love something, it doesn't matter who's listening. You're so excited.
Here's a guy who fell in love with stamps. Another guy fell in love with coins, baseball cards. I mean, we could go on and on. How many things do people love? People love to watch birds. Unbelievable. I had a good friend from business once. He told me he was going out to his Monday night club. I was talking to him on a Monday morning; this goes back 30 years. I said, “You go every Monday night with your wife to a club with all your friends. Okay, what's the club?” They have a club for lilies. You know the flower, the lily? It's nonprofit. If you want to donate money, the government will give you a tax deduction for it. I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “We go and bring lilies, and we discuss them and talk about them.” That's right, people love flowers. Not just like seeing them at a wedding. Some people really love flowers. They invest in them. They work on them.
The real thing is that once a person knows love is in your hands and you could love anything and anyone, it becomes a very big challenge. A person should take a few minutes in his life, shut off his phone, lock himself in a room, and ask himself, “What is worthwhile to love, since I could love anything and I will enjoy it when I love it? I will enjoy it when I love it. That's not the issue. But what's worthy of love?”
So the Torah comes with very clear direction in this area. The Creator of the world says that while you could love anything and anyone, you should make the right choice. There are only two things in life that are worthwhile for you to love. Everything else is a waste of an emotion. Think about that. There are only two things in life for which the love you have has real value. Everything else would be called a wasted emotion. It's meaningless. You may have the pleasure of love, but it's not worth anything.
The Torah says, you know who is worth your love? The people in your life. All the people in your life. Love people. Take your energy and invest it in loving people. Not loving flowers. Not loving birds. Birds are nice to see. I appreciate them. But don't fall in love with birds. You're not doing anything wrong if you have a love affair with a bird, but you're wasting your emotion. You should be focused on love that makes a difference. All the people in your life means every person in your life. Every single Jew. Invest in the love of others.
Could you imagine if, instead of spending 20 hours a week on a football team, a young man spent 20 hours a week on the people in his family and the people in his life? We'll get to that soon: how a person can invest in loving the people around him. Could you imagine walking everywhere you go and, since you're so invested, becoming emotionally connected to the people in your life? The ones who are close to you and the ones who are farther from you don't necessarily get the same level of love. The people closer to you should get more. But love all. Walk into a room with 500, 1000 people, and you love everybody there. That's a worthwhile love: to love every person in your circle. Unless the guy's a Rasha (wicked person). There's no mitzvah (commandment) to love a person who's a Rasha. But fortunately for us, most people we know and are around are not a Rasha. So you don't have to worry about that. But if there is a Rasha, then loving a Rasha would be the opposite of what love is meant for. Otherwise, develop an Ahava for every person around you.
The second love the Creator talks about is love for your Creator. What does loving Hashem entail? Meaning, loving truth. Loving Emet (truth). The stamp of the Creator, when He signs His name, so to speak—if He were signing His name on a letter, He would sign Emet. As we say at the end of Shema: “Hashem Eloheichem Emet (Hashem, your God, is truth).”
The love of the Creator is the love of truth. Included in the love of the Creator is the love of Torah, the love of mitzvot (commandments), and the love of Ratzon Hashem. Ratzon Hashem means what Hashem wants. When things happen in the world, when things happen in my life, that's called Ratzon Hashem. To love Ratzon Hashem—that's the Emet. Whatever Hashem wants is the Emet. To love the Creator means to develop a relationship with the Creator of the world. That connection is very meaningful.
There are two things in life worth loving, and no more. You could play tennis, but you don't need to love tennis. You could make money, but there's no need to love money. The two areas of love the Creator tells us to invest in will not only be enjoyable—as I told you before, you'll enjoy any love you have—but will actually mean something and bring tremendous pleasure into your life in the biggest way. When you love lilies, the enjoyment of lilies—that's it. But when you focus your love on these two areas, you'll become a person who is tremendously successful and full of the pleasure of love.
There are two areas in life to invest in. Invest in the love of Hashem.
One would think, if that's so hard, that of course I'm going to love Hashem. After all, He created me, and He gave me everything I have. But the rule says that you can only love what you sacrifice for. Does Hashem love us? Oh yes, of course He loves us. Hashem says, “I love you.” Of course He loves us. He made us. He created a world for us. He keeps us alive. He sustains us. He worries about us. Hashem loves us, and we're the recipients, so automatically we should love Him? Oh no, come on. The next time you have a child, remember that being the recipient of good doesn't make you love the giver. Love comes only through giving and sacrifice.
So what does it mean to love Hashem, and how am I going to love Him? Well, the Creator says, “You want to love Me? You have to do things for Me. You have to sacrifice for Me.” Like in the morning, you're a little lazy and you'd rather sleep for a couple of hours. No, no, no. You have to say Keriat Shema. You've got to get up. “But I'd rather sleep.” I know, but you've got to sacrifice your sleep. “I need you to give up your sleep for Me.” “Oh, you want to eat that?” “Oh, but I don't want you to eat it.” “But I really want to eat it.” “I know, but I'm telling you not to eat it.” Do it for Me. People who don't eat the wrong things because they think it's not healthy are totally off. We don't eat when Hashem says not to eat because that's a sacrifice, quote-unquote, that we make for Hashem.
Hashem says, “Friday night comes, you have rules, but it's for Me.” It doesn't matter. “I want you to sacrifice for Me.” Sacrifice your time, sacrifice your desires, sacrifice many times in your life when you want to do something and I tell you, “Don't do it.” Sacrifice.
When you look at what Hashem wants from me and I put in the effort, Friday morning comes, and a woman is getting ready for Shabbat. She's cooking, she's preparing. It's not easy, and many women might opt out. Let the housekeeper do it. I don't know. It says it's a greater mitzvah when you do it than when you have somebody else do it for you. But why? It gets done the same. What's the difference? The difference is that the love created when you do it cannot happen as much when someone does it for you. When you prepare for Shabbat, cook for Shabbat, clean for Shabbat, and put in that effort, you're developing Ahava not only for Shabbat but for the Creator of the world.
When you clean your house before Pesach and make sure there's no chametz (leaven) in any corner, and you do it with your heart, it's hard work. Not only do you love Pesach, but you love the Creator of the world. Or you could just lock your doors and go out of town. It's easy. Have someone clean for you. Have someone cook for you. Everything is kosher, but you're missing something very big. You're missing the love of Pesach and the love of Hashem. You're raising children who don't love Pesach the way they're supposed to and don't love the Creator the way they're supposed to. When the person does it, it's greater than when someone does it for you. Cooking for Pesach is a little hard. It's a sacrifice, but it acquires love.
A person says, “How come I don't love Hashem?” You don't love Hashem because you're not sacrificing. You're having things done for you. The Creator of the world has given us clear guidelines for how to love Him and live life. Being in love with Hashem is one of the greatest feelings a human can have on the planet. Shlomo HaMelech wrote an entire Megillah (scroll), Shir HaShirim, describing that love. It's a love that's with you wherever you go. You could be on a deserted island and feel the love. There are many lonely people in life, but those who love the Creator are never lonely. He is there. When your heart is full of the love of the Creator, not only do you love Him, but you start to love everything about Him. When you love Him, you want to be like Him. That's what happens in life. When you love something, you want to be like it. When you want to be like Him, you start doing things the right way. You start making fewer mistakes in life. The Creator doesn't need us to love Him, but through our love for Him we will be able to elevate ourselves and become great people, because He is all about greatness. He is all about Emet. When you love Emet, you become Emet.
That's why you see the first story of Kayin and Hevel: two brothers in the world thinking about how they can develop a love for the Creator. They didn't have a Torah, and they were thinking, “What can we do to love Hashem?” So Kayin said, “You know, we will bring a korban (sacrifice) with a big chiddush (novel idea), because Hashem doesn't need your korban.” Wait, wait. He's going to give Him food. He's going to give Him fruits. He doesn't eat. And besides, even if He did eat, He's the one who gave you the fruits. What can you give Him? What an idea. Let's give the Creator some sheep. What? You give Him sheep? Why do you need your sheep? Oh, who gave you the sheep? He did. He makes sheep. You're going to give Him sheep? That makes no sense. People are thinking, what can we give the Creator of the world? They can't think of anything.
Kayin and Hevel, two brothers trying to develop a love for the Creator. They were going to love the oceans. They wanted to love something real. They wanted to love the Creator of the world, but they didn't know how. They knew the rules. You can't love without giving something. But what could they give? There was nothing to give. And Kayin comes up with a tremendous idea. He says, “Even though the Creator doesn't need my food, He doesn't need my fruits, I know that. But if I give up something that was born to me, and I'm willing to give it up for Him, that sacrifice develops a love for the one I'm giving it to.” So he brought a korban. We call a sacrifice in Hebrew a korban, but the word korban is an amazing word because the root word of korban is karov. Karov means to get close to, to love. It's amazing in the Hebrew language that the word for sacrifice is actually the same word as love and closeness. It's not a different word. If you sacrifice, then there will be another word called love. It's one and the same.
And Kayin thought, “Wow, what an idea. If I give up something that is valuable to me, there is the love.” That's why every morning we thank Hashem that He gave us a Torah, because the Torah answers Kayin's question. It answers Hevel's question. A person is thinking, “What can I do for the Creator of the world?” In the same way, he should be asking, “What can I do to develop Ahava with my spouse? What can I do to develop Ahava with people around me? What can I do to develop Ahava with my Creator?” Because I will benefit most from that love.
You see, if I love some low person in the street that many people love, that love may be a pleasure, but it doesn't get you anywhere. Now you start to be low like him. Now you start to become a failure like him. That love didn't get you anywhere. It's the opposite. People today love all these celebrities and all these people. Some of them might be good, but for the most part they are failures in life. So now you are loving them. What are you doing when you are loving them? You are learning from them. You are copying them. You are reading their books. You are following their lifestyle, and they are leading you to emptiness. So what a waste of love. It's a waste of time. It's worse than that. It's misleading you.
When you love the Creator of the world, you are loving Emet and living a real life of success. The Creator of the world says, “You know, Kayin and Hevel were trying to figure out what they could do for Me so they would develop a love for Me.” The Creator of the world says, “Let me give you the Torah and tell you in that Torah what you can do for Me. I want you not to do this. You want to say something that's very juicy and exciting? You have a desire to say it. Hashem says, ‘You know what? Don't say it. I don't want you to say it. Don't talk like that. Don't talk negatively. Don't be a peddler of information that you are not supposed to spread.’ But it's hard for me. Sacrifice. Don't wear that. Don't eat that. Don't go there.” The Torah basically is a book of sacrifices. It's a book that says, if you want to love the Creator of the world, this is what you can do for Him.
Now I keep saying the word sacrifice. In reality, there is no sacrifice to keep Torah and Mitzvot. It's only a perceived sacrifice. That's the beauty of the whole thing. You know, it was a very big challenge for Hashem to take something very, very beautiful and make the person sacrifice for it. It's like telling a guy to sacrifice Friday night to eat kibbeh. Tell him, “Yo, I know it's hard for you. Sacrifice. Go ahead, eat the kibbeh.” What does that mean? Did you get a guy to sacrifice to eat kibbeh? He loves kibbeh. How can he sacrifice for it?
The Creator of the world had a very big challenge because everything about Him and everything He is telling us to do is actually gorgeous. Shabbat is beautiful. Kashrut (kosher dietary laws), awesome. Tzniut (modesty), the best. All the things that He actually wants us to do are beautiful. They are a delicacy of life. How in the world can you get someone to sacrifice for a delicacy? A person can sacrifice for things that are bitter, for things that are not so enjoyable. How do you get a guy to sacrifice for Shabbat? Shabbat is the most pleasurable day. How do you get a guy to sacrifice for it? You know how big of a challenge that is? You have everything gorgeous, tasty, unbelievable, and you need that guy to sacrifice for you, to love you. But all you are offering is delicacies. How is that ever going to work? If you gave me bitter things, it would be easy. But they are not bitter. It's all sweet. The Creator had a big challenge, and the brilliance of the Creator is that He takes the same beautiful, sweet things and develops a perception from the outside in.
When you are outside of Shabbat, you are not in. You have a perception that this is going to be very hard. “I have to sacrifice not to work on Shabbat. I've got to sacrifice not to use my phone on Shabbat. I've got to sacrifice to do this on Shabbat.” The guy on the outside feels like this is hard. But what can I do? I've got to do it. For a woman who decides that she needs to dress modestly from the outside in, it's a big sacrifice. She can't even imagine, “How am I going to do this? It's impossible. How is that going to be? I can't imagine it.” It's sweet. It feels like a sacrifice because Hashem created the perception that, when you are on the outside, you see things a certain way. You see something difficult even though, in reality, what you are looking at is sweeter than honey.
Every single commandment of the Torah is that way. When you are on the outside, it feels like a sacrifice. Hashem had to make it like that because if He didn't make it difficult from the outside, then there would be no sacrifice, and if there is no sacrifice, there is no Ahava. And one of the most beautiful things in life is to be in love with the Creator of the world. So He created a reality in which we are able to quote-unquote sacrifice. We sacrifice our sleep, our money, our time, our desires, and we walk around all day long thinking we are sacrificing. And all of a sudden you realize: What sacrifice? I sacrifice to learn Torah. Are you kidding? The biggest pleasure in life is to learn Torah. You can sit learning 10 hours a day, and it's not enough. That's a sacrifice? I sacrifice to learn? There is nothing you can do with your time that's more pleasurable. People all day long are looking for things to do. They are looking for things to occupy their time. Learning Torah is the most pleasurable thing. That was what I sacrificed for? I thought I was giving up something. What am I giving up?
Every single mitzvah, every single commandment of the Creator, is such that on the outside it feels like a sacrifice for a reason. “I'm working hard preparing for Shabbat myself, doing this—come on, it's so hard.” When you have a Pesach that you prepared for, when you have a Pesach that you worked for, it tastes different. Different Pesach. But sometimes people on the outside don't want to see. It's hard for them to see, but this is the reality.
The Creator of the world spoke very loudly when He told us. He said, “He's telling you and me: Take your emotion of love and spend it on something worthwhile. Don't waste your time loving things that don't make a difference and sometimes are detrimental. Spend your time and energy loving the Creator of the world. It is not only very, very enjoyable, but the tremendous benefits it will bring you all around are too many to count on your fingers, too many to count on a piece of paper, too many to count on a calculator. The benefits are innumerable. When you love the Creator, your love is producing greatness in your life. Stop wasting your time loving things that don't make a difference. That's the place to invest. That's the place to sacrifice.”
The person says to himself after he hears this, “Okay, I'm ready, Hashem. What do you want from me? Doesn't matter. I'm in. What do you want from me? I'm never going to say, ‘I don't do that.’ No, no, I'm going to do it. It's hard for me? Oh, even better. Thank God it's hard for me. If everything were easy, I couldn't fall in love with You. So You actually gave me things that feel hard. Wow, beautiful. I'm in.” This is the way the Creator guides us to direct our emotion of Ahava. The second one we'll discuss tomorrow.