Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse,
The great French Renaissance writer Antoine De Rivarol wrote: “Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.” Other writers have compared reason to a magnificent ship and passion to the wind that enables it to sail. The book of Shir Hashirim [the Song of Songs] is about the passion in the relationship between God and the people of Israel. Filled with poetically passionate shows of love and affection, the book is beautifully filled with expressions of young love and excitement between the two lovers — God and Israel. It is clear the reason we read the book on Passover is to invoke the passion with which the Jewish people followed God out of Egypt in the story of the Exodus. What is less discussed yet very much present in the book of Shir Hashirim is the violation of intimacy, a lesson also there for us to learn from.