The Shema, Part II
The Shema (“Shema Yisrael,” etc.) is rightly thought of as summing up the basic message of the Torah. But what is that message? We saw last week that it was not simply “Don’t worship any other gods.” Certainly, that message was important, but if that were all, the Shema could consist of a single biblical verse, Deut 6:4. It seems that the original idea was to connect Deut 6:4 to the next verse, Deut 6:5, so that the two would be read as a single sentence: Since there is only one God, therefore you will be able to worship Him with an undivided heart, that is, “with all your heart and soul and might.”
But this only raises another question. If that was the original point of the first paragraph of the Shema, why should we bother with reciting the second paragraph, which appears in today’s reading, Deut 11:13-21? The two paragraphs start off by saying quite the same thing. In fact, where the first says, “Hear O Israel,” the second says, “If you truly hear My commandments.” The first continues, “And you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul and might…”, while the second reads, “To love the Lord your God and serve Himim Him with your whole heart and soul.” So what is new?
The Rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud highlighted the fact that, although these two paragraphs of the Shema start off similarly, they have quite different purposes. The Rabbis said that the message of the first paragraph “acceptance of the kingship of Heaven” (kabbalat malkhut shamayim),[1] while the second paragraph they called “acceptance of the yoke of the commandments” (kabbalat ‘ol ha-mitzvot). What the Rabbis meant by these two descriptions—and why, in fact, the Shema ended up including both of these paragraphs—tells us something crucial about how these Rabbis saw the world.
To understand “acceptance of the kingship of Heaven,” you have to know first of all that the word Heaven (shamayim) was, for the Rabbis, a way of referring to God without saying His sacred name. (Thus, in the Talmud yir’at shamayim means “the fear of God,” biydei shamayim means “by the hand of God,” and so forth.) So the Rabbis’ phrase “acceptance of the kingship of Heaven” really means: accepting that God is king.
There really is no word in rabbinic Hebrew that corresponds to our word idea, but the phrase “acceptance of the kingship of Heaven” implies something like accepting an idea. Underlying this phrase is the assumption that most of the time, people aren’t really aware of God’s role in the world. The world seems to run on automatic pilot. It was only when God intervened in some obvious way—such as when the waters of the Red Sea parted and the people of Israel walked across on dry land—that people actually saw God in action. When this happened, the Rabbis said in a familiar prayer, “Your children [Israel] saw Your kingship at the Sea.” But most of the time, in the rabbinic view, we don’t see God’s kingship. So we need to be reminded that God stands behind all of reality, and this is the purpose of the first paragraph of the Shema. In reciting it, we accept God’s kingship—that is, accept the idea that God is indeed like a king—even without the confirmation of our eyes.
The second paragraph of the Shema (Deut 11:13-21) starts off like the first, but then it moves on to a new subject, the reward that people can expect for keeping the Torah’s commandments and the punishment to befall those who disobey them. Submitting to keeping the commandments is certainly not easy, which is why the Rabbis referred to this second paragraph as the “acceptance of the yoke of the commandments.” A “yoke” was the heavy wooden beam placed on the necks of twin oxen to prepare them for plowing. An ox bowed his neck to accept the yoke, and Israel similarly ordered to bend down and accept God’s commandments.
And so, in the Rabbis view, the first two paragraphs of the Shema are sequential. First comes the acceptance of the idea of God’s kingship, and only after that the acceptance of the burden of keeping the commandments.
And what about the third paragraph of the Shema, which deals with the law of fringes (tzitziyot)? That’s easy. Since the Shema was originally recited when people first got up in the morning, the third paragraph was added to make sure they remembered to put on their tzitziyot as they were getting dressed.