Shema/V'ahavta

The Shema/V’ahavta prayer is made up of three sections of Torah

1. Deuteronomy 6:4-9
2. Deuteronomy 11:13-21
3. Numbers 15:37-41

While the first paragraph appears in our reform Siddur, the second paragraph does not.

David Ellenson, My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 1

The commentary in the present-day Reconstructionist Kol Han'shamah aptly describes the problem in this paragraph: Its detailed description of the "bountiful or devastating consequences of Israel's collective relationship to the mitzvot...offers a supernatural theology that many contemporary Jews find difficult." Simply put, it presents a doctrine of reward and punishment that most liberal Jews have found problematic, if not offensive. It has therefore been removed from most liberal prayer books in the modern era.

Elliot N. Dorff, My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 1

Abiding by God's commandments seems to guarantee reward; disobeying them incurs God's punishment. As the Rabbis themselves painfully notes, this poses the problem that in life "the righteous suffer and the evil prosper" (tzaddik v'ra lo, rasha v'tov lo). They consequently devised a variety of ways to justify God in the face of the apparent failure of Deuteronomy's neat moral calculus.... Most biblical authors--certainly in the First Temple period-- applied the doctrine of God's justice to communities,not individuals... the doctrine of communal providence at least enables us to understand how God could be just even if individually speaking, some righteous people suffer....

[Yet] are we really willing to say that every people victimized by drought or famine must be wicked?

...My own approach combines two doctrines of the Rabbis. I too admit that in the end, we cannot fathom God's justice: whether we are talking about individuals or communities, it is simply not true that the righteous always prosper and the wicked suffer and I do not know why that is. I also believe that "the reward of performing a commandment is [the propensity and opportunity to perform another] commandment, and the result of doing a wicked thing is [the propensity and opportunity to do another] wicked thing" (M. Avot 4:2). That is, we should do the right thing because it is the right thing and not out of hope for reward, and we should avoid evil acts because they are evil and not out of fear of punishment.

This approach is a far cry from the direct, reward-and-punishment thinking of the second paragraph of the Sh'ma, and yet I recite the Sh'ma each day because it proclaims God's justice, and justice must be a critical element in the God I affirm. The calculus of reward and punishment articulated in this paragraph may be too simple and ultimately inaccurate, and, for that matter, it may be immoral in the first place to do the right thing and avoid the wrong out of concern for consequences...The Rabbis too had problems with the doctrine of justice announced in this paragraph, but they included it anyway because they too had a deep faith in the ultimate justice of God as the metaphysical backdrop and support for human acts of justice.

Judith Plaskow, My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 1

[I]t is not necessary to read this paragraph of the Shema as a literal statement about divine reward and punishment. In a world whose survival depends partly on the human capacity to value creation and care for it wisely, it is possible to interpret the passage more naturalistically. If we are able to develop an ecological consciousness, if we treat the earth with respect, if we are aware that we are embedded in a great web of life of which God is the ultimate source and sustainer, then the earth will bear fruit for us and the rain will come in its season. But if we believe we can trample on or transcend the constraints of nature, if we forget the sacredness of all things and make idols of our own wealth and power, "the earth will not grant its produce." and both we and our world may perish.

Siddur Birkat Shalom expresses these ideas in a lovely meditation on the Sh'ma:

"Israel, your covenant with God is made of choices: holiness or profanity, life or its distrcution; you can never keep from choosing. If you set yourself to love God with everything you have...God's gifts will be yours: a vital earth, its sea and continents moving slowly in their own way; the rain and sun and snow and clouds forming and changing....But if you forget God and choose instead to fashion gods of your own..., you may lose everything you have..... This blue-green earth, so beautiful, so solitary, is as fragile as you are and as precious. Beware lest in giving way to excess you risk too much..."

The second half of the third paragraph is a part of our evening and morning services in Mishkan tefillah. The first half of the prayer is only present during morning services.

Judith Plaskow, My People's Prayer Book, Vol. 1

"Make themselves a tassel" With the third paragraph of the Sh'ma, we seem to descend from the sublime to the rediculos. Whether or not one agrees with the theology of the second paragraph, at least it deals with cosmic issues. But why should the creator of the universe care whether we put a "tassel on the corners of [our] clothes in every generation? and what possible difference can it make to God whether the thread in that tassel is green or red or blue?

In moving from the global to the ordinary and concrete, the paragraph on tzitzit addresses the power and importance of symbols. The Sh'ma's exhortations to love God and follow God's will, even its threats and promises, remain on the level of the abstract and general. In our everyday experience, there are a thousand things that get between us and our capacity to focus on the sacred; we are continually distracted from awareness of God as we "follow [our] mind or eyes." Symbols provide us with tangible reminders of our obligations and of their roots in our history.... Again, the Birkat Shalom "Meditation on the Sh'ma captures the essence of this paragraph:

"Gather up some things that remind you of Me, things that speak of the earth and the sky, solid and shimmering, light sand and blue air.... Whatever these things may be, agree upon them. Choose them together and be one people."