And you shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Deuteronomy 6:5

All – “You’re so intense.”  I’ve often heard this back-handed compliment.  Maybe it’s true.  When you get me wound up about Hebrew thought, it might take a long time for me to release the tension in the spring.  The conversation will be laced with scribbles on a page, excited inflections and driving arguments.  I’m definitely not passive about this stuff.  Apparently God isn’t either.

Kol-levavka – with all your heart – intensifies the demand.  Love God, but do not love Him partially, incompletely, imperfectly.  Suddenly this seems impossible.  Who among us has not wavered in our affection for God?  Who has not failed to remain steadfast and true?  Who has not doubted, stumbled or idolized what does not revere Him?  Love Him?  Yes!  But with all my heart?  How?  There is hardly a single feeling in my life that doesn’t contain a hint of diversion or a twinge of conflict.  It seems as if there isn’t a single event that doesn’t get a second-thought, a hesitation.  Life is joy shaken and stirred with sorrow and questions.

But God  doesn’t demand what we can’t deliver.  So if He asks for all, He knows that we can deliver all.  It might be hard, but it is not impossible.  And if that is the case, then we better be very clear about the meaning of kol (all).  “Everything, the whole of something, entire” is applied according to context, but the pictograph helps us see the underlying thread.  An open palm (Kaf) and a cattle prod (Lamed) paint the picture of “open authority,” or “allow control.”  How are these pictures related to “all”?  Turn your thinking upside-down.  Our view of “all” is usually couched in possession.  When we think of “all,” we think of acquiring everything.  Getting it all.  That’s the name of the game.  But the biblical view of “all” is giving everything, emptying the storage chest, distributing the treasure.  We need to stand on our heads if we are going to display “all” in Hebrew (and, by the way, when you stand on your head, what’s in your pockets all falls out!).  To love God with all my heart is to empty myself of normal agendas, personal plans and individual objectives.  God fills empty containers.

The heart is the center of my will, my emotions, my actions and my cognition in Hebrew thought.  There is no battle between the body, the mind and the spirit.  All are combined in one indissoluble embodiment called me.  God wants it all emptied for Him.  What I decide, how I feel, what I do and how I think are to be consumed with His perspective.  Heschel says that this is “sharing life with God.”  He’s right.  Life, in all the ways it comes, is to be saturated with His point of view.  “Take every thought captive,” says Sha’ul.  He might as well be commenting on Moses who is speaking for God.  Fulfilling the command to love is divine Texas Hold’em.  “I’m all in.”  I’ve emptied my reserve.  I’m going for broke (and I’ll have to become broke to get there).  Maybe we ought to call it “Texas no-Hold’em”.

Are you in?  Are you empty?

Topical Index:  all, kol, empty, Deuteronomy 6:5