The Shema Yisrael

Simple Words: Thinking about What Really Matters in Life, Rabbi Steinsaltz

Perhaps our greatest difficulty in relating to God is our inherent inability to form any coherent understanding of the Almighty. With the millions of words that have been said and written, both for and against, with all the prayers, prayer books, and books on devotion, so much of this subject still remains empty words. The word “God” is indeed used—in public prayers or in unvoiced wishes, in common conversation and in curses—with equal meaninglessness. For most people it means everything—and nothing.

For many people, the image of God is quite clear: a big, white bearded man sitting on a throne very high in the sky. He has—at least figuratively—a stick in one hand, and a bag of candy in the other, bestowing each on His subjects. Many prayers, as well as bitter complaints, ask for more of the candy and less of the stick. You may object and say that such an idea is just childish, kindergarten imagery, but how many people actually continue to develop their religious understanding beyond that age?

Rabbi Steinsaltz: at the 2011 Global Day of Jewish Learning

For the Jewish people, the Shema is a call, a slogan, a sign of identification and an expression of great emotions. It is a declaration of bond, principles and identity. Shema Yisrael, “Hear O Israel,” has been with us from the very beginning of our history. These words have accompanied our people for thousands of years—in its homeland and in exile, in times of peace and war, in the gas chambers and along with the cries of triumph. This was our “password”; it is how Jews recognized each other—despite geographical, linguistic and cultural differences.

The Shema, is a declaration of connection, of faith and of confidence. It is a promise and a call: We are here, we belong, we continue, we have a past and a future.

Rabbi Kahaneman and the Catholic Orphanage

After the Second World War, Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman traveled throughout Europe searching for Jewish children that had been left for safekeeping in Catholic convents and orphanages. These children had lost their families in the Holocaust, and he was determined to find as many as possible and place them in Jewish homes. When he came upon one particular orphanage, the priest told him that he wouldn't find any Jews there, and if there were, he would need proof of their Jewish identity. Rabbi Kahaneman asked for permission to see the children. The priest allowed him to enter, knowing that the children would have no recollection of their Jewish roots after so many years of separation.

The rabbi walked into the sleeping quarters of the children and cried out, "Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad!" Suddenly, from throughout the room, certain children started stirring and sitting up in their beds. Cries of "Mameh" (Mother) and "Tatte" (Father) could be heard as the children remembered the familiar prayer their parents instilled in them years before. One by one, he was able to pick out the Jewish children while the gentile children remained sleeping (https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/558388/jewish/Another-Sleepless-Night.htm)

The Imperative to Listen

Rabbi Steinsaltz

The command is “Hear, 0 Israel.” is, first of all, to hear. If you don’t hear the Shema Yisrael, where are you? So you must first hear. Now, if you are listening, and answer, “Here I am. I am listening,” then perhaps a message can come through.

Power of Shema, Listening, Rabbi Sacks

[1] to listen, to pay focused attention, as in “Be silent, O Israel, and listen
[u-shema]” (Deut. 27: 9)
[2] to hear, as in “I heard [shamati] Your voice in the garden and I was afraid” (Gen. 3: 10)
[3] to understand, as in “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand [yishme’u] each other” (Gen. 11: 7)
[4] to internalize, register, take to heart, as in “And as for Ishmael I have heard you” (Gen. 17: 20), meaning, “I have taken into account what you have said; I will bear it in mind; it is a consideration that weighs with Me”.
[5] to respond in action, as in “Abraham did [vayishma] what Sarah said”
(Gen. 16: 2). This last sense is the closest shema comes to meaning “to obey”.

It has yet other meanings in rabbinic Hebrew, such as “to infer”, “to accept”, “to take into account as evidence” and “to receive as part of the Oral tradition”.

Rabbi Sacks, Va'etchanan, the Meaning of the Shema

In Judaism faith is a form of listening: to the song creation sings to its Creator, and to the message history delivers to those who strive to understand it. That is what Moses says, time and again in Deuteronomy.

Stop looking: listen.

Stop speaking: listen.

Create a silence in the soul.

Still the clamour of instinct, desire, fear, anger.

Strive to listen to the still, small voice beneath the noise.

Then you will know that the universe is the work of the One beyond the furthest star yet closer to you than you are to yourself – and then you will love the Lord your G-d with all your heart, all your soul and all your might.

In G-d’s unity you will find unity – within yourself and between yourself and the world – and you will no longer fear the unknown.

Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and went on to create a new form of psychotherapy based on “man’s search for meaning,” once told the story of a patient of his who phoned him in the middle of the night to tell him, calmly, that she was about to commit suicide. He kept her on the phone for two hours, giving her every conceivable reason to live. Eventually she said that she had changed her mind and would not end her life. When he next saw the woman he asked her which of his many reasons had persuaded her to change her mind. “None,” she replied. “Why then did you decide not to commit suicide?” She replied that the fact that someone was prepared to listen to her for two hours in the middle of the night convinced her that life was worth living after all.

What or Who is God?

What is G-d- the Not-thing, Tzvi Freeman

When you woke up to life as a small child. There were no things. There was just the experience of being. Of sensing, of living, of breathing and doing. Screaming, nursing, burping. Those were all real. Those are life. Things are not real. Things are fiction. They don't exist. We made them up.

In ancient, biblical Hebrew, there is no word for stuff. Or thing. Or object or anything similar. In raw, primal Hebrew, you don't say, "Hey, where's that thing I put over here?" You say, "Where is the desired (chefetz) that I put here?" You don't say, "What's that thing?" —you say, "What's that word?" That's the closest you can get to the idea of thing: a word. All of reality is made of words. Look in the creation story: The whole of heaven and earth is nothing but words.

The great 16th century kabbalist, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, wrote that everything in Hebrew is really a verb. Everything is an event, a happening, a process —flowing, moving, never static. Just like when you were a small child.

Things are not real. Ask a physicist: the more we examine stuff—what they call matter--we see that it's not there. All that's really there is events: waves, vibrations, fields of energy. Life is a concert, not a museum.

The flow of being: now you have found G‑d. In fact, in Hebrew, that's His name. G‑d's name is a series of four letters that express all forms of the verb of all verbs, the verb to be: is, was, being, will be, about to be, causing to be, should be —all of these are in those four letters of G‑d's name. As G‑d told Moses when he asked for His name, "I will be that which I will be."

In our modern languages that doesn't work. We quickly slip into the trap of thingness again. Who is G‑d? We answer, "He is One who was, is and will be."

There we go with the "thing that is" business again. No, G‑d is not a thing that is or was or will be. G‑d is isness itself. Oy! The frustration of the language. We need new words: Ising. Isness. Isingness. Isifying. Isifier. In Hebrew you can conjugate the verb to be in all these ways and more.

As for faith and belief, those are reserved for greater things. Like believing that this great Isness that isifies all that ises cares, knows, has compassion, can be related to. In other words, saying that reality is a caring experience. Which reduces to saying that compassion is real, purpose is real, life is real. That's something you have to believe. But G‑d's existence—like most ideas that men argue about—that's just a matter of semantics.

Think simple: You wake up in the morning and, even before coffee, there is. Reality. Existence. Not "the things that exist" but existence itself. The flow. The infinite flow of light and energy. Of being, of existence. Of is. Think of all that flow of isingness all in a single, perfectly simple point. Get into it, commune with it, speak to it, become one with it —that is G‑d.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, “How Does Our Jewishness Influence Our Thinking Process? Marx, Freud, Einstein, and the Jewish Search for Unifying Principles”

The monistic perception is more than just seeing a single all-embracing law. It assumes there is a fundamental principle for the entire aggregate of existence in all its manifestations, and that everything within this aggregate is generated from that basic law.... The belief in one God is not merely an abstract statement about some kind of reality that exists outside of ourselves.

It also implies the supremacy of this single essential entity within all reality: all particularities with their differences and divisions, are unified and subject to a single authority. In this regard, every monistic perception is a kind of comprehensive statement—even if not in religious language—of the very same thing, that is to say, the presupposition of the existence of a unified essence from which the different particularities are constructed and are given significance. Sometimes the monistic perception is completely unified. That is, it sees everything as emerging from a single point of origin. Sometimes it sees a dichotomous world picture. But even such a dichotomous view is merely a complex form of the unified perception, because according to this perception a single pair of opposites explains all phenomena

What is Our Purpose?