The first blessing of the Amidah begins in an odd fashion. As I mentioned last week, we bless the G-d of our ancestors. Then we go on to bless “G-d, the great, the powerful, the awesome, G-d on high.” So we start with the very particular—G-d of our ancestors, and then turn to the very universal—G-d of the cosmos. One would think the order should be reversed. Surely, our praise of the G-d of the entire world should precede our more limited, particular focus on G-d who had a relationship with one particular family.
Actually, no. And this jarring reversal of the logical order is meant to teach us things.
First, it reflects the fact that our experience of G-d is a personal one. It involves me, my family, my (great great) grandparents, and their (great great) grandchildren. G-d knows my family, and loves them. My grandparents did Him some favors—bearing His truth when literally no one else in the world did.
He owes them (and by extension, me).
Second, the prayer is meant to teach us that the particular is intended to precede the universal. Especially when you are talking about love. If you don’t believe me, try an experiment. Next time your wife asks, “Do you love me?” tell her “Of course dear, I love all women.”
Lemme know how that works out for ya.
Love is unashamedly, passionately, blatantly, stupidly, stubbornly, gloriously associated with loyalty. Now loyalty can seem unfair—nobody loves everybody equally, even if , theoretically, they should. But the wisdom of our tradition is that by experiencing the power of love “in particular”, that is, love for particular people or, in G-d’s case, love for a particular people, we can begin to explore love that is more universal.
In this, the rabbis were in direct competition with the philosophical thinking of the Greco-Roman world. Remember Plato’s “Ideas?” His incredibly influential view was that love as expressed by human beings is merely a shadow of real, abstract, Love with a capital L. For the rabbis, and for us, it’s the other way around. The abstraction is not more than, or higher than, the concrete thing. To the contrary. The more richly we feel “the real deal”, the more fully we can develop an abstract concept that is never fully separated from the concrete.
So too with G-d. You don’t start with the G-d of the universe. You start with the G-d that loved a little family, taught them how to change the world, and as the first blessing proclaims, promised “redemption for their great grandchildren [us] because that is G-d’s nature.”
We’ll get to the universe eventually.