If you were composing “The Bible,” would you include this juicy phrase: “My love thrusts his hand in at the latch, and my innards are stirred for him within me, My hands drip perfume-- my fingers flow with myrrh upon the handles of the bolt. I open, but he is gone.”? In fact, the rabbis present at a council held in the city of Yavne in Northern Israel in the year 90 CE, two decades after the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, attempting to create a canon so that the sacred texts could be preserved in a uniform fashion overwhelmingly objected to the inclusion of the Song of Songs, the book from which this quotation derives, deeming it, quite simply, too sexy. But R. Akiva, one of the most respected among the sages, arose and declared: “If the scriptures you have already included in the canon are holy then the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” Why did he say this? And what does it mean for Jews today, as humans, as friends, as lovers, as spiritual seekers?
This talk can stand alone,
or you may enjoy it as part of the series
"Eros & the Jews: Reading the Rabbis in Bed"
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