Wrestling with the Sh'ma

Dear friends,

There are six Hebrew words that almost all Jews, no matter how rebellious, ignorant or God-hating know: 
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad. 
We’ve heard or spoken this line almost every time we’ve been to a synagogue. Some of us have heard our grandmothers instinctively exclaim the first two words of the phrase whenever they hear something scary. Some of us love the ritual of closing or covering our eyes when we speak the words. Lots of us know that it appears in the morning prayer, the evening prayer, the prayer before we go to sleep and other places in the prayer book. Many of us know the translation of the phrase: Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one. None of us, however, are attuned to the full range of meanings and associations this phrase offers.

The Jews are a people like all others, which is to say in large part nasty, foolish and shallow. The decision to place this verse as the centerpiece of our prayer-life, however, was the opposite; Generous, wise and deep. I’d like to attempt to convey something of the expansiveness of this verse and a few of the echoes and meanings contained within each of its Hebrew words.

Like any piece of Torah, this verse contains the meaning that the reader gives it. One example of this is the final word in the phrase, echad. The word means “one,” and yet most translations will render the final two words, Adonai Echad: “The Lord alone,” rendering the verse in its entirety as an affirmation of the singularity of God. Our God, the Jewish God, it suggests — is the only true God. A different translation flips the meaning: Adonai echad: God is one. Translating it this way does away with any separation at all, between this god and others, between Jews and gentiles, between us and them, between me and you, and puts us all as part of the same oneness; if God is one then all is one since god is all. I’m presenting it as a translation issue, but it’s not exactly that, but rather a choice that each reader makes as they speak the words.

Let’s back up to the beginning of the phrase.

Sh’ma means “listen” or “hear.” In other places in Torah it means “understand.” Whichever meaning you choose, the first word of the verse demands we pay attention.

Yisrael means Israel. In the first couplet, Sh’ma Yisrael — “Hear O Israel,” we Israelites are called upon to listen, to pay attention. But the word Yisrael has a context that we are reminded of whenever we say it. It is the name given to Jacob by the angel when they are done wrestling. The angel says to Jacob: “Your name will be Israel, for you have wrestled with God and humans, and were not beaten.” Israel means wrestling. Sh’ma Yisrael means “Hear Oh wrestler,” a call which not only shows compassion for each of us — I know you are struggling — but also suggests a way out of the prison of our present struggle — nonetheless I ask you to open your ears. We can speak these words of empathy and encouragement to ourselves as we say them, and know that God, or the universe tells us the same.

The one word that appears twice, Adonai, the third and fifth word, is beyond loaded. The four letters יהוה, YHVH are unpronounceable, strange, beautiful to look at. They are the heart of the phrase, and probably the heart of everything. They are an impossible — as well as an impossibly easy — (mis)conjugation of the Hebrew verb “to be,” which includes in it all three tenses: Hayah means was, Hoveh means is, Yihyeh means will be. All three are visibly and meaningfully present in יהוה. God, here being described or expressed, is being-in-time that is as elastic and timeless as it is sharp and coherent.

When we say Adonai Eloheynu, “YHVH is our god” we are saying that Being, Is-ness, time itself as well as its opposite — that is our god. We are attaching ourselves to the past and the future in the only time available to us, the present moment.

The fourth word, Eloheynu, means “our God.” Elohim, here appearing with the ending nu, meaning ours, is the generic word in Hebrew for god. The interesting thing about it is that although we are all about this notion of the one god, grammatically speaking this word is plural. Any Hebrew noun ending in “im” is plural. God in Hebrew means gods. Eloheynu, despite its grammar is never translated “our gods,” but “our god.” But we mustn’t forget that it carries within it the memory of a multiplicity of gods, all of which are, in this verse at least, ours. They are our gods, which although are too many to count, we count them all in the same category: god.

Now we have made our way back to the final phrase: Adonai echad. “God is one.” We began, as a conversion candidate taught me this week, with a duality: Israel, the wrestler wrestling with the angel, with god, with another person. Next we acknowledged multiplicity in the grammar of eloheynu, our god/s. And now we finally come home to echad. YHVH; this time-essence which allows us to be, which connects us with all that is, which reminds us that we will not be forever in this form of our wrestling selves; YHVH is one. And we are a part of that oneness and will forever be all the way back to the beginning of time. This does not, in my view mean that that duality does not exist, nor that multiplicity is a fabrication. All three mindsets are true. We are wrestlers, all of us, at love and war with another. We are also the children of an endless multiplicity of lights and sounds and experiences and people and universes and gods. And ultimately we come to rest in the One.

I invite you to speak this phrase, or whisper it slowly, to contemplate it, meditate upon it, to examine its contradictions, its meaning for you or lack thereof. To pray it. And I would be very interested to hear what you discover. If you are so inclined, please write to me and share your thoughts on this strange and wondrous verse of poetry.

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad

Listen O wrestler, Being is our god/s, Being is One.

Shabbat shalom and happy Fourth of July weekend,

Rabbi Misha