Question

Usually, in discussions about emotion, the issue under discussion is whether emotion stands at the basis of faith or serves as an accompanying addition, etc.—questions that always touch on the intellectual, causal side of things. It seems to me that there is another way to look at the place of emotion in a person’s service of God. After all, a human being was created not only with intellect but also with an emotional system, and it exists. A person does not always have an intellectual grounding of cause—for example, a feeling of love is a simple feeling that just exists, even though one can only define it; it is there, and there are rules to the emotional system. One of those rules is that giving generates love, and that is a simple, existing rule. What follows from this rule is that when a person believes intellectually, through arguments and the like, and he keeps the commandments, or at least tries to keep them and to live his life according to the Torah’s framework, and as it were gives a great deal of his desires, strength, time, etc. for the Holy One, blessed be He, it is only natural that feelings should awaken in his heart. And the words of Maimonides are well known—that the way to reach the service of God is through contemplation of His deeds and actions, etc. That is, there is a dimension of emotion as a system that simply works this way, and when we see a person who lacks emotion, in some cases the reason may be that he is not truly serving God, and then the lack of emotion would be a sign of the lack of his service; and likewise the reverse: when we see a person full of emotion, it is possible to explain this by saying that he lives a Torah life, although this is not necessary. If so, emotion has an important place as information about his relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He. For example, if we hear about a couple managing a relationship but there are no signs of love, in most cases this indicates a failure in the basis of the relationship between them. So is there a source for love of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the sense that when one serves God properly, one will naturally arrive at love of God, and vice versa?

Thank you,
Eliezer