This weekly women's class was presented on Tuesday, Parshas Bechukosai, 23 Iyar, 5782, May 24, 2022, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY.

King David—whose yartzeit is on Shavuos—remains one of the most fascinating, perplexing, and majestic figures in Jewish history. The combination of wisdom, humility, honesty and spirituality coupled with courage, power, passion, and leadership, and all of them with incredible intensity, conferred upon him the status of the ultimate Jewish king, leader, and poet.

Two of the most powerful stories of love in the Tanach are also associated with him and one two of his children. They are summarized succinctly by our sages in the Ethics of the Fathers ch. 5: “What is an example of a love that depended on something? The love Amnon had for Tamar. What is a love that did not depend on anything? The love between David and Jonathan." 

Let us recall these two narratives of love. Let us also understand why the Mishnah needs to find illustrations for two models of love from two ancient stories, when both of these models play themselves out in each of our lives on a constant basis?

At a “farbrengen” in the spring of 1973, Shabbos Parshas Bechokosai 5733, the Lubavitcher Rebbe offered an explanation to the Mishnah. As was his style, he demonstrated how the answer to the above enigma lay in what seems like a discrepancy of a single world. It teaches us a novel idea about how family members need to nurture relationships between themselves and also what type love we are capable of achieving with our spouses and even toward strangers.

The riveting stories of how Amnon violated Tamar and how Jonathan loved David illustrate what we are capable of and what we must be caution of in the volatile and complex world of love.