35. When Love Is Real

Rav Shlomo Katz asks one of the deepest questions a Jew can ask: How do I know if what I’m doing is really from love? Not love as a slogan. Not love as a performance. But ahavah pnimis—the inner life-force of a soul that seeks only to uplift, to heal, and to build in truth. Drawing from the Torah of Rav Ginsburgh and the heart of Eretz Yisrael, Rav Shlomo gently guides us to check our engine: Am I building because I love Hashem, His people, and His land? Or am I trying to win an argument? Am I giving over Torah with compassion, or with fire but no light? Real love isn’t soft. It’s strong. It knows how to say no. It sets boundaries. But it always begins in the heart that says, “I want the good. I want Hashem’s good for the world.” And that’s what sustains a people through 2,000 years of exile, and what brings us back to Zion—not as colonizers, but as children coming home.