From HaGaon Rav Zevadia HaCohen Shlit”a, The Head of the Batei Din in Tel Aviv
(translated by our dear friend Rav Daniel Levy Shlit”a, Leeds UK)
Loving Me, Loving You! Two Types of Love
We read in the Parashah Yaakov’s exit from Be’er Sheva to travel to Charan and his labour by Lavan for 20 years; 7 years for Leah, 7 for Rachel and 6 further years. During that time, he also married Zilpa and Bilha, and they bore 11 children.
We read that, “Yaakov worked seven years for Rachel. But he loved her so much, it seemed like no more than a few days” (Bereishit 29:20).
It appears rather surprising, since ordinarily if a person loves, yearns and desires something, then the greater the yearning the greater the time seems to draw out, thereby making it less bearable, and a few moments seem like eternity.
We may illustrate this with an analogy. A chatan is scheduled to marry in a week and is very much looking forwards to it. His experience is certainly that the time is passing slowly. If so, why with Yaakov Avinu who loved Rachel so much, does it say, “it seemed like no more than a few days.” Why did Yaakov experience that seven years seemed like a few days, on the contrary, the reality dictates the reverse. And it should have written, “they seemed like many years”, way more than just seven years?
In order to fathom this, we must introduce the following important profound idea.
There are two types of loving others. There is loving another “physically”, here the objective of the lover is to advance their personal interests. They love the other person, when in reality they love themselves, and therefore in practice they use the love of the other to materialise their personal gaol.
This is analogous to the well-known principle, of a person who stays at a hotel and is asked what they love to eat. They answer that they love to eat fish. Is their intention that they love the fish or that they love themself? For sure they love themself, since if they really loved the fish, they would set them free and not cause their death thereby turning them into a tasty dish for themself.
In contradistinction, there is the love of another which is deemed “spiritual”. This means that the love of the other, is only, or at least mainly, for the benefit of the recipient, without any personal gain of the giver, since the goal is to just benefit the recipient.
The contrast between one who loves “physically” and one who loves “spiritually” is precisely the point we are deliberating here; understanding the feeling of the protracted time, how much longer is left to receive something.
A person who loves something from the perspective of “physical love”, their experience, from the perspective of passing time until they receive something, will be feeling a longer period of time than it truly is, because they have laced in their personal goal, which they are anticipating. Their personal yearning causes them to feel that a greater time is passing.
However, where it is a “spiritual love”, there is no personal interest, the entire goal is to benefit the other. Indeed, on the contrary, the feeling of time passing seems to go quicker.
Therefore, we may now understand that which is related about Yaakov, “But he loved her so much, it seemed like no more than a few days.” Yaakov Avinu loved Rachel from a spiritual perspective, with no vested interest, therefore the time whizzed by, it felt just like “a few days”, since there was literally no personal gain laced in.
This is carefully reflected in the passuk, “But he loved ‘her’ so much, it seemed like no more than a few days”, “her” and not himself in anyway whatsoever.
Shabbat Shalom!
