Parashat Va’etchanan 5770
And You Shall Bind Them As a Sign
One of the most famous lines of the Torah is a part of our reading for this week. We read, “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Volumes have been written as sage and scholar alike try to unravel the meaning of these words for their generation. We recite these words as part of our worship twice each day, both morning and evening, reading the words of the first paragraph literally. The Shema became the first words we recited in the morning and the last words we recited each night. In time, they were incorporated into the morning and evening services at the synagogue. In the Talmud, in Tractate Berakhot, the opening scenario asks when is the most opportune time to recite the Shema. What ensues is a conversation among the sages of different generations, each one offering their opinion on how early is early enough to start the day with these words on their lips. Perhaps this is why we find a version of the Shema, not the official one, following the recitation of the morning blessings, preceded by these words of praise:
“How happy are we! How blessed our lot! How sweet our destiny! How magnificent our heritage! How happy are we that as we rise and as we lie down, morning and evening, twice every day we proclaim: Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
Our ancestors understood intimately the power of these words and how they affected their daily lives. When they inserted the Shema into their mezuzot before attaching them to the doorposts of their homes, they wrote their own personal incantations on the back side of the klaf to insure their personal safety and prosperity as well as the other members of their household. In the Torah itself, the letter “ayin” of Shema and the letter “daled” of Echad are enlarged by the scribes. We speculate that the two letters were written in this way to remind us that each of us is an “eid” or “witness” to God’s One-ness in the world.
As Jews, we are asked to testify to the role that God plays in our lives, beginning with the moment we wake and ending with the moment we place our heads on our pillows before falling asleep. Testifying means being a witness to all of the miracles that are a part of the world in which we live, and honoring the one responsible for them. When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the very first “rule” asked us to place our faith in God who was responsible for our liberation as well as our redemption. Honoring God means that we respect one another as well as the world in which we live.
We are taught at a very early age the first paragraph that accompanies the first line of the Shema. “V’ahavta et Adonai, bekhol levavkha… You shall love God, with all of your heart…” The word for “heart” contains an extra letter. It has two “beits” rather than the normal spelling of “leiv.” The sages, also, teach that the heart, in the ancient world, was a metaphor for the seat of our cravings and our aspirations. The double letter is a symbol of the two inclinations that make us human. To be human is to battle between the urge to do good and the urge to do evil. Both are necessary. Without the urge to do evil, we would not have the impulse or the inclination to desire food, drink, wealth, sex… The Shema encourages us to channel these urges in a positive direction.
Just as we are asked to bring the evil inclination and the good inclination in line with one another, we announce that God is One as well. I have often wondered what we mean when we make this declaration of faith or belief. The God that I have “witnessed” as a part of the Bible that we read each week has demonstrated that the Lord can be just as angry as He can be loving and compassionate, and he can be just as judgmental and punitive as he can be merciful and kind. In the ancient world, many cultures had a different God for each of these attributes. The Jews, however, declared that a single God is capable of encapsulating all of these characteristics into a single entity, as One. The goal is for us to reach the inner harmony that is a part of the God that we see in the Bible and whose beneficence is reflected in the prayers of our siddur, for God is the “true judge” who is called upon to comfort the bereaved when we bless God at the tearing of the ribbon to begin the process of mourning. No matter what may happen to us, we discover a way to praise God. Being able to do this at our most vulnerable times pays tribute as well as testimony to our ability to endure under God’s providence and the words of the Shema.
In that first chapter of Tractate Berakhot, the sages of the Talmud debate in a sidebar what it means to recite the words of the Shema and the first paragraph with “kavannah” – a sense of attentiveness or spiritual intent. They agree that it is better to say an abbreviated prayer in one’s spoken language with “kavannah,” than to complete the Shema in Hebrew in a hurried manner. How do the sages define “kavannah”? According to one Chasidic rebbe, “kavannah” is singing “Adon” in Adon Olam (Master of the Universe) without having given thought to the next word! Perhaps, this is why we ought to consider as a congregation, the custom of slowing down this one line so that we can concentrate on each of the words with “kavannah” – rather than rushing through them!
Throughout my years here at TBA, I have made several attempts to teach a class that I called “Surfin’ Thru the Siddur.” The subtext has always been that it is more like wading that surfing when we begin to look at the individual prayers and their constructions and our attachments to the message they wish to convey. In regard to the Shema, the sages claim that we should not accept the words of the Shema on faith alone. We need to internalize them. This is the purpose of reciting them with “kavannah” – understanding for what we are saying, and being able to say them with conviction and meaning. When it comes to reciting the Shema, we ought to be able to say these words not only with our tongues, but more so with our heart.
The real question then becomes: How do we do this when we doubt the existence of God? Or our hearts are void of any knowledge of God operating in our own lives? Where do we stand in our relationship with God, when there appears to be NO relationship there? Where is God’s unity, here?
Has anyone noticed how the Reform tradition is to stand every time that the Shema is recited and the rest of the world remains seated? The issue of whether to sit or stand is a matter of debate in the Talmud, between the schools of Hillel and Shammai. According to the students of Hillel, one should remain seated when one recites the Shema in order not to destroy the kavannah that is already in place. Shammai’s students, however, argued that one should rise when making a public declaration of our belief in the tenets of Judaism. As usual, the sages agreed with Hillel – for the time being. We, also, believe that all disputes will be resolved when the Messiah arrives, and rumor has it that all of Hillel’s rulings will be overruled in the end of days!
Stand or sit! Sit or stand! Does either action make sense when we treat one another with such disrespect? How often do we talk about someone behind their backs and then smile at their faces? Worse yet, how often do we snub people to their faces? It hurts when people talk around us rather than talking to us.
As Rabbi Arthur Segal notes in his d’var torah for this week:
“If we really believed in the Shema and the commandment to love God that immediately follows it, I would hope that we as Spiritual Renewed Jews could truly accept the yoke of this one commandment. If we did accept this mitzvah, so many other paths to help our fellow and treat him with love would flow naturally from our hearts. Tikun Olam (repair of the world) would not be just a slogan, but it would already be an accomplishment.”
On Tisha b’Av, which we commemorated this week, the sages admitted that the Temple was not destroyed by Israel’s enemies, whether it be the Babylonians or the Romans who exiled the Jewish people when they were victorious. Rather, the Temple was weakened when one Jew dishonored another Jew. When we failed to honor the Shema and its tenets of loving God by embracing our neighbor, the walls of the Temple were weakened. How many synagogues become weakened when factions arise from within the community? Now is the time to strengthen our resolve, to honor the words of the Shema, to be present for its recitation, and be a witness to the idea that we hold so dearly that we are a welcoming community that honors the diversity that is a part of our generation and the way in which we express our spiritual nature.
On this Shabbat, may the words of the Shema be our guide as we learn from the inclinations of our heart, what it means to hear the words of God and to then teach them to our children, what it means to be at One with God and our inner selves, as well as to honor the relationships that bind us and connect us to one another as individuals and as a community.
