Deuternomy 6:5
וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
What makes you, you? Not an easy question to answer. What brings you joy? What do you do really well? ֿNot only is it a good thing to occasionally reflect on these questions, but doing so helps to fulfill the difficult task set before us in this verse. We are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, and might. What does it even mean to love God, let alone with one’s heart, soul, and might?
My teacher, Reb Mimi Feigelson, shared an important lesson from this verse. She pointed to the last word, מאדך – me’odecha, and asked if I knew what it meant. Your might, I replied. Wrong, she said. The word me’od in Hebrew does not mean might. It means a lot. me’odecha takes this word and adds, for my grammarians out there, a second person singular possessive suffix: YOUR a lot. We are called to love God not with our might, but with that which makes us who we are. For me, all of my Sam-ness. For my teacher, all of her Reb Mimi-ness. And for you, all of your you-ness.
We each bring something special into the world. I know therapists who love God when they sit and help their patients, truck drivers who love God from behind the wheel, musicians who love God when they jam, and accountants who love God when they crunch the numbers. To bring ones whole personally to the table, ones gifts and foibles, ones work and ones play, and believe deep down who we are is an expression of gratitude for the gift of being alive, then we are loving God in the way we are called to; to love God with your “alot-ness,” that which makes you uniquely you.that we too share in the profound power of words, and cause us to reflect on the potential of our own.