Musar su Cantico dei cantici 2:5

The third: To visit the sick and to heal them. It is thus known that the Divine Presence is lovesick for unification, as it is written (Song of Songs 2:5), "for I am sick with love." And Her healing is in the hand of man, to bring Her proper drugs, as it is written, "Support me with fruitcakes, lay apples below me." And they explained in the Tikkunim (p. 39b) that the secret of fruitcakes (ashishot) is all of the things that are connected to Kingship (Malkhut) - through the man (eesh) [that includes the letter,] hay (five, which is) Kindness, and through the woman (eeshah) [that includes the letter,] yod (ten, which is) Severity, [which] is through the two forearms. And She supports Herself upon them there. And whoever does this supports the patient in his sickness.

And what is "the proper love"? It is that he must love the Lord with a great, mighty and supreme love until his very soul is bound up in the love of the Lord, may He be Blessed, and he is in the ecstasy of that love always, as though he were love sick and his mind cannot for a moment be free, as when a man is infatuated with a woman, and he thinks of her with constant ecstasy, where sitting, rising, eating or drinking. Even more than this must the love of the Lord, Blessed be He, be in the heart of those who love him, ecstatic with longing for Him, as He commanded: "with all your heart and with all your soul" (Ibid.). And this is what Solomon said by way of a parable in the song of Songs: "For I am love sick" (2:5) and the entire Song of Songs is a parable of this love of God.

The Heavenly fire is alluded to in Song of Songs 2,5: סמכוני באשישות, "Sustain me with fires," which the Zohar explains as a reference to the two fires on the altar, the man-made one as well as the fire coming down from Heaven to consume the offerings. In our context the reference would be to the physical fire, representing the body, and the spiritual fire, representing the soul.

We need to say a few words in introducing the subject of the significance of the moon. The sanctity with which we sanctify G–d when blessing the New Moon is of a dual nature. Similarly, the sanctity which G–d bestows upon us is also of a dual nature. We therefore have two sanctities which are in reality four. How does this work in practice? We sanctify G–d by devoting both our body and our soul to Him when there arises the need to sanctify His holy Name. In such situations we are considered like sheep ready to be slaughtered; we do this joyfully as mentioned in Song of Songs 2,5: "for I am sick with love." This means that I, the כנסת ישראל, love You, G–d when I am sick, i.e. when I accept your afflictions with love. This is totally different from the way the Gentiles react to afflictions. Their reaction to afflictions is described in Isaiah 8,21: "When he is hungry, he shall rage and revolt against his king and his divine beings." This is why most kings divest themselves of their crowns in the first three hours of the day and pray to the sun, as pointed out in the Talmud Avodah Zarah 53. They keep up this practice because the sun, unlike the moon, never wanes and thereby convinces them of its power. Israel, on the other hand, counts according to the lunar calendar which wanes every month. This is what the Midrash quoted above had in mind.

A third reason why the Jews accepted the Torah with alacrity after the fall of Haman will become clear after we first explain some of the differences between acting under compulsion and acting without any kind of duress. The author of Kliy Chemdah writing in the name of his father in his commentary on פרשת יתרו describes the acceptance of the Torah by the Jewish people at Sinai as an act of compulsion since it was an act of gratitude for all the supernatural miracles G–d had performed for them. He defines a voluntary acceptance of the Torah as an appropriate description of Jews embracing the Torah because they find themselves in dire straits. This is alluded to in Song of Songs 2,5: חולת אהבה אני, "For I am sick with love (when bereft of Your Presence)." Israel loves G–d and holds on to the Torah even when sick, i.e. when in distress such as in exile. This is in direct contrast to the Canaanites of whom it is recorded that they curse their deities when in trouble, as we know from Isaiah 8,21: "and he curses his god." I have seen this interpretation in a book called Shoshanat Amukim on the above quoted verse from Song of Songs. In view of this it is perfectly understandable that, due to their extreme distress the Jews under threat of annihilation from Haman embraced the Torah more than they ever had in their entire history. When such acceptance is contrasted with the normal human reaction of resentment and rebellion against protective powers which have failed one, one can truly describe such acceptance of the Torah as being totally voluntary.