Judaism knows something about love that modern culture forgot.

Judaism understands things about love that would change how many of today’s relationships survive and even thrive.

photo: Michael Fenton/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Modern culture has made love strangely fragile.

We talk about love constantly. We search for it, ChatGPT it, make movies about it, sing about it, obsess over it, swipe for it, leave relationships because we no longer “feel” it, and spend enormous amounts of time trying to determine whether someone else feels enough of it for us.

We have turned love into an emotion, but Judaism does something much more demanding: Judaism turns love into a practice.

Nowhere is that clearer than during the Hebrew month of Elul, which commenced about 10 days ago. Elul is the final month of the Jewish year, the month leading into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is supposed to be a month of introspection, repentance, self-examination, and preparation for judgment.

Yet Jewish tradition also associates Elul with one of the most romantic verses in the entire Bible: Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.

The first letters of those four Hebrew words spell Elul, which is not a coincidence we should rush past. The month before the Day of Judgment is framed as a month of love.

At first, those ideas seem almost contradictory. Love comforts, judgment condemns. Love accepts, judgment evaluates. Love says, “You are enough.” Judgment says, “You need to change.”

But Judaism does not see the contradiction, perhaps because Judaism understands something about love that we have forgotten: There is no real love without accountability, no meaningful relationship without disappointment, no covenant without the possibility of breaking it, and no lasting love without learning how to return.

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Falling in love is intoxicating because it requires very little history. You meet someone and see possibility. They are funny, intelligent, beautiful, kind, exciting. You notice the way they smile. You replay conversations. You think about them before falling asleep. You imagine a future before you have accumulated enough information to know whether that future makes any sense.

In the beginning, love is easy because disappointment has not yet had enough time to arrive.

Then you actually get to know each other. You discover the annoying habits, the insecurities, the selfishness, the family baggage, the strange sensitivities, the arguments that seem ridiculous 24 hours later but catastrophic while they are happening.

Eventually every serious relationship confronts the same revelation: The person you love is a person. And so are you. That is where infatuation ends and love begins — because love is not proven by how intensely you adore someone when they are still mostly an idea. Love is tested when the illusion disappears.

Judaism seems almost built around this insight. Its central relationship, the relationship between God and the Jewish People, is anything but a fairy tale. It is messy. We promise, we fail, we return, we promise again, we wander, we betray, we repent, we repair, we begin again. We are the story of an imperfect people who keep finding their way back.

Consider the relationship between God and Israel. Abraham hears a call and follows it. At Sinai, the Jewish People enter into covenant. Almost immediately afterward, they build the Golden Calf. They complain in the desert. They rebel. They worship idols. They neglect commandments. The prophets describe Israel’s relationship with God using astonishingly intimate language: marriage, betrayal, longing, jealousy, abandonment and reconciliation.

Again and again, the relationship breaks. Again and again, the possibility of return remains. If Israel had no ability to walk away from God, its loyalty would be meaningless. If God abandoned Israel the first time Israel failed, the covenant would be meaningless. Love requires freedom, and freedom creates risk.

The person you love can disappoint you precisely because they are not yours to control. The person you love can leave. So can you. That possibility makes commitment frightening. It is also what makes commitment meaningful. Love is not valuable because leaving is impossible. Love is valuable because leaving is possible, and two people keep choosing not to. The same is true of covenant. Judaism does not pretend that faithfulness is automatic. It asks us to choose again and again and again.

Which brings us to the central word of the High Holiday season: teshuvah. It is usually translated as “repentance.” That translation is technically useful and emotionally terrible. Repentance sounds like punishment, shame, or standing before a judge and pleading guilty.

But teshuvah comes from the Hebrew root meaning “return” — as in, come back. That is an entirely different image. You wandered? Come back. You forgot how much the relationship meant to you? Come back. You hurt someone? Repair it and come back. You became overwhelmed? Come back. You stopped giving someone the benefit of the doubt? Come back. You took someone for granted? Come back.

In Judaism, mistakes matter, but they do not necessarily get the final word. The door does not disappear merely because you walked away from it. That is why Elul is not a month for perfect people. It is a month for people who screwed up, which is another way of saying: It is a month for everyone.

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We often speak as though love and disappointment cannot coexist. If someone really loves us, we imagine, they should accept us exactly as we are. If we really love someone else, perhaps we should never judge them.

Judaism rejects that idea. A God who did not care what we became would not be loving. He would be indifferent. Indifference says: “Do whatever you want. It doesn’t matter to me.” Love says: “What you do makes a difference because you matter to me.”

That is why Judaism’s month of love leads directly into Judaism’s Day of Judgment. Judgment is not necessarily the opposite of love. Sometimes judgment exists because of love. We hold people accountable when we believe the relationship matters. A parent expects something from a child because the child matters. A spouse confronts a spouse because the marriage matters. A friend tells the truth because the friendship matters.

The person who has truly stopped caring usually stops arguing, asking, and expecting. They stop being disappointed. They simply leave. Indifference is often much colder than anger. And so the Day of Judgment can be understood differently. God is not saying, “You failed, therefore I want nothing to do with you.” He is saying, “You matter enough that what you do matters.” Judgment, in this sense, is not evidence that the relationship has failed. It is evidence that the relationship still exists.

That idea is embedded in the very verse Jewish tradition associates with Elul — Ani l’dodi v’dodi li. “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” There is something remarkable about the order of those words. First: I am my beloved’s. Then: My beloved is mine.

Modern relationships frequently reverse the question. Does this person love me? Do they make me happy? Are they giving me enough? Do they meet my needs? Do they make me feel secure? Do they appreciate me? Do they choose me?

Those are legitimate questions.

But Elul begins somewhere else. What am I giving? What kind of partner am I? What does this relationship require from me? What kind of Jew am I? What kind of friend am I? What do I owe the people I claim to love?

Before asking whether my beloved belongs to me, Judaism asks whether I have offered myself to my beloved. That may be one of the sharpest differences between love as an emotion and love as a covenant. Feelings ask: What am I experiencing? Covenant asks: What am I responsible for?

Of course feelings matter, but feelings fluctuate. No human being remains permanently intoxicated by another person. No religious person feels spiritually inspired every morning. No parent looks at a screaming toddler at 3 in the morning and experiences unbroken transcendence. No Jew wakes every day equally moved by Judaism.

Commitment begins precisely where feeling becomes unreliable. That is why Judaism translates love into action: reach back out, call, show up, give, remember, apologize, forgive, keep promises, create accountability, make time, do something. Love cannot survive forever as a noun. Eventually it must become a verb.

Elul, therefore, is not really about falling in love. It is about something harder: falling back in love. Anyone can become excited about something new — a new relationship, a new city, a new career, a new religion, a first trip to Israel, a spiritual awakening. Newness does much of the work for us.

Then life happens, and the relationship has its ups and downs. The person who once fascinated us becomes someone whose stories we already know. We stop paying attention. We stop becoming curious. The problem may not be that the thing we loved changed; we stopped seeing it.

Elul interrupts that process. It asks: Do you remember why this mattered to you? Do you remember what moved you? Do you remember why you chose this relationship in the first place?

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Modern relationship culture often seems obsessed with finding the right person. Judaism is more interested in two people capable of return and repair.

Finding the perfect person suggests that successful love depends primarily on selection: Choose correctly and everything will work.

Judaism’s vision is less comforting: You will hurt people, they will hurt you, you will misunderstand each other, you will behave badly, you will sometimes become selfish or impatient or cruel.

The question is not whether rupture will occur. The question is what happens next. Can you apologize? Can you take accountability? Can you be better tomorrow than you were yesterday? Can you forgive without pretending nothing happened? Can you change a behavior rather than merely regret it? Can you return?

Jewish tradition takes return and repair so seriously that even Yom Kippur cannot substitute for it. If you wrong another person, fasting does not magically repair the relationship. Prayer does not replace apology. God does not become an escape hatch from human accountability. You have work to do. That is love with teeth. It says, “I love you, therefore what happens between us matters enormously.” It says, “I did something wrong, and I can become better.”

That tension is essential because it is easy to forget, to drift, to become distracted, to fall back into old habits, to say things we regret, to stop appreciating.

But, thankfully, Judaism brings us back — which is precisely what relationships require. Love has to be renewed. That is Elul. That is what covenant really means. It is not that something in a relationship should never go wrong, but that something remains worth returning to when it does.

Modern culture often tells us that love should be “easy.” Elul proposes something harder and more enduring: Love is choosing, love is responsibility, love is allowing yourself to be vulnerable, love is being disappointed without becoming indifferent, love is leaving the door open, love is repairing, love is returning when fear tells you to stay away.

After everything, the relationship is still there, still waiting, still patient, still hopeful — and Judaism asks only that we turn around and begin walking toward it again.

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