Does Hashem Love Us Unconditionally? (Part 1)

The Tefilah Podcast

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Length: 1 hour
Synopsis: Tonight (1/1/24), in our Wednesday night tefilah shiur, we took up a question that was sparked by a debate I had on Facebook about whether Hashem loves us unconditionally which, itself, was sparked by the popular Israeli song "Tamid Ohev Oti." We began with a surface-level analysis of the two berachos before krias Shema in which we talk about God's love for Israel, raising some basic and powerful questions. We then quickly familiarized ourselves with the source-pesukim cited by three Rishonic commentaries on tefilah. We concluded with a quick run-through of R' Hasdai Crescas's analysis of what it means to say that Hashem has "joy," "pleasure," and "love." Although we emerged with a working definition of Hashem's love, our REAL analysis will have to wait until next time, when we delve into the pesukim that form the basis of the berachos.
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מקורות:
תמיד אוהב אותי – ששון איפרם שאולוב
אהבה רבה (נוסח אשכנז)
אהבת עולם (נוסח אשכנז)
אבודרהם
ראב"ן
ר"י בר יקר
ר' חסדאי קרשקש אור ה' ב:ה
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