With All Your Heart And With All Your Soul

Yesterday, Prof. James Kugel spoke at Yedidya during Sholla-Shooddiss. This is a reconstruction of what he discussed.

Devarim/Deuteronomy 6:5 —

״וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵת֖ ƶ׳֣ אֱלֹהֶי֑ךָ בְּכָל־לְבָֽבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ״

There are two well-known drashes on this verse:

1. BEKHOL LEVAVEKHÁ = with both your selfless and selfish inclinations

(because "your heart" is written with two bets לְבָבְך and not one לִבְּך)

2. BEKHOL NAFSHEKHÁ UVEKHOL ME’ODÉKHA = there are some people who value life more than property, and others who value property more than life

(this is from Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 74a)

The second drash is understanding the pasuq to mean And you shall love God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your stuff. However, מְאֹד as a noun is very rare. It only appears here, whereas everywhere else it appears in the Tanakh it has the adverbial meaning of "very" or "a lot" (Colloquial American English: mad).

Prof. Kugel sources this understanding of me’od in the Septuagint, the translation of the Greek-speaking Jewish diaspora. In the Septuagint (a.k.a. Targum Hashiv‘im), the noun מאד is translated as δύναμις dýnamis (source of the English word "dynamic"), which means power... but can also mean stuff. And so the Hebrew word מאד, which may have originally only meant "power" (fitting very well with the use of מאד for "very"), absorbed the additional connotation of its Greek translation dýnamis, namely "stuff, objects, material possessions". This is what we call a calque, or 'loan-translation'. The other, seemingly original meaning of מאד is expressed in other translations, like the JPS linked to above, that translate ובכל מאדך as and with all your might.

There's another well-known drash on this pasuq.

3. UVEKHOL ME’ODÉKHA = R' ‘Aqiva says that one should acknowledge God for both the good and the bad.

Based on the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where מאד is spelled מודה (ignore the extra hei at the end; the DSS people were fond of adding /a/ to the ends of adverbs, as well as other places), it's very likely that the alef was elided or dropped in the speech of Late Second Temple period Jews. So while R' ‘Aqiva may have been careful when leining to enunciate מאד as מְאֹד, it's possible that when speaking colloquially he may have read it מוֹד like the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls (compare contemporary Ashkenazim who pronounce Hebrew differently depending on register).

Instead of reading the pasuq as

ואהבת את ה' אלקיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ

he drashed it as:

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה' אלקיך בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ —
וּבַכֹּל [אֲנִי] מוֹדֶךָּ

"...and for everything I acknowledge/thank you."