With Your Heart, Soul and Body

July 19-20, 2013 / 13 Av 5773

Shabbat Va’etchanan/Shabbat Nachamu

Torah Portion: Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11 / Haftarah Portion: Isaiah 40:1-26

  

“With Your Heart, Soul and Body”

Dear Friends,

This week’s torah portion, Va’etchanan, includes the famous “Shema Yisrael Adonai elohainu Adonai echad - Listen Israel, the Eternal One is our God, the Eternal One alone.”  The Shema stands out as the main faith statement of the Jewish people for more than two millennia.  It is the first line of Torah taught to children; it is recited daily in prayer services and it constitutes the last words to be recited at the time of death.  Its meaning seems evident and clear at first, yet our sages tell us to cover our eyes during its recitation because the meaning is so profound and unfathomable that we must find a way to go deeper.  The Shema has been the focus of great philosophical exploration by the greatest of our scholars.  Let me share two insights:

From Jacob Weinstein…

“The Shema is against the plurality of small gods and half-gods and no gods; it is against the fragmentizing idolatry of worshiping a part for a whole…  It is a unity against the duality that would neatly package life into good and evil compartments and assign evil to a lesser scapegoat god, leaving to the chief god the dignity of presiding over unalloyed good…  The Shema is for the common parenthood of God…  the unity of humanity.  It is for that diversity found in a family…  The Shema says: Hear, thou! God is one; therefore, God’s children must be one.”

From Morris Adler…

“’Hear, O Israel…’ means that every Jew is a member… of a community that extends not only in many lands but throughout history.

‘Adonai our God’… means whatever be our condition… we will not… deny life or despair of the ultimate vindication of righteousness…

‘Adonai is One’… means this is not a universe in which evil has a chance of winning….  The ultimate authority, the final sovereign is not the force of army and legion but the God who in time will assert sovereignty.”

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Eitan Weiner-Kaplow