Shir Hashirim is the most erotic and sensual book to enter our canon.

I used to get really upset when I heard it explained as an allegory. I felt it was diminishing the power the book had as magnificent erotic poetry; that somehow the sexuality and sensuality of the book wasn’t okay and had to be explained away. I still feel that way sometimes, but more recently it occurred to me that when chazal called Shir Hashirim an allegory of our experience of G-d, they are really saying, at least on some level, that the power and passion of the sexual relationship can be so intense and so all encompassing that it is the best analogy we can use for an understanding of what our relationship to G-d should look like.

I’d like to address Shir Hashirim from a much more literal approach – as a love poem between a young man and a young woman— and to challenge a modern notion we have about sex.

Our society is in love with words and verbal communication. So much so, that we have come to believe that real emotions live in what is spoken; that relationships of the mind and heart are somehow purer then relationships of the body. And often we believe the equation to be one way, and one way only: if you have close meaningful communication – the experts say- that will lead to passion. If you talk with someone, communicate with someone and create intimacy with them through words, then your love life will take care of itself. Well, sometimes that’s true and sometimes it isn’t, but what I think seems to get lost in the shuffle, is the power of the reverse. When your sexual life is good, I would say, when it’s passionate and intense – then more often than not, it brings you to a sense of closeness and intimacy. The deeply erotic can forge two people, creating a connection that is stronger and less permeable than words alone could ever accomplish. The physical connection can make one feel a connection to a person beyond that of a friend. The power and the intensity of physical expressions of love can deeply impact a relationship, taking it to new places – places of understanding, commitment, joy – and bind them together.

And maybe Shir Hashirim understood this in its unabashed celebration of the physical and the erotic. Perhaps in glorifying the pure beauty and pleasure of the physical relationship with a loved one, Shir Hashirim suggests that a physical relationship can move two people beyond the ordinary day to day and into the realm of loved and beloved.

And maybe chazal understood that as well when they were so committed to seeing Shir Hashirim as an allegory. For in the end, our relationships are all dependent, one on another. It is through our relationships with each other that we can get a glimpse of what loving G-d should be all about. In understanding the power of the erotic relationship between human beings we can come to understand the experience we should have with G-d; – the awe, worship, adoration and dedication that one lover feels for another—that, in the end, should be what we feel towards G-d.