Shabat Najamu - Parashat Vaetjanán - English

Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.

Hear (understand), O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

      (Deut. 6:4) 

Six words sum up the essence of Jewish identity.  Six words, recited twice each day (in the morning and at night) to reaffirm who we are.  Six words that enclose stories of faith, martyrdom and hope.  Six words that overflow with transcendentalism, with eternity.  Six words that project the faintest light on the divine knowledge, but radiate a powerful energy to point us on our way.

Six words, 26 letters that match the numerical value of God’s name (the Tetragrammaton in Gematria is 10+5+6+5).  Six words that end with Echad, which means one and unique.  Both close and remote, transcendent and immanent.

Those six words, central to the Jewish thought and experience, appear in Parashat Va’etchannan (Deut. 6:4).  And although they constitute a very important part of the daily liturgy, they cannot be strictly considered a prayer, since they are not addressed to God.  The Shema is a declaration of faith we recite to ourselves.

In the Torah scroll, the Shema possesses an outstanding particularity.  The letter ayin (in Shema) and the letter dalet (in Echad) are both written in a larger font than the rest of the words.  On his Torah commentary,  the Baal Ha Turim (Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, Germany 1269 – Spain 1343) explains that both large letters form the word ED, “witness”, hence the Shema constitutes a summons such as the one God puts in prophet Isaiah’s mouth (43:10):   “Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord.”

These beautiful words, motto of the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano Marshall T. Meyer and very close to the hearts of all of us who studied there, summon us to transform our faith into actions.  To be God’s witnesses constitutes a call to give testimony of His presence in the world through our acts.  Faith demands works of faith.

Precisely in this spirit, Rabbi Heschel, one of the more distinguished Jewish theologians of the 20^th century, wrote:  “A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought” (God in Search of Man).

But there is more.  The Shema asks us to love God (“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”, Deut. 6:5), and isn’t love of God the same as loving His creatures?  Thus affirms another great scholar of the past century, Martin Buber:  “Love for the Creator and love of that which He has created are ultimately one and the same” (The Silent Question).

As a last resort, the Shema questions us because it asserts that the authentic faith, as well as the love of God, should necessarily manifest itself in actions.  Actions in the real world, in our daily life, in the way we relate to the people around us.  Therefore, no faith exists without the act of faith, no love of God without love for our fellow men.

Shema Israel

6 words,

26 letters,

1 summons. 

We must answer through our actions.


Shabbat Shalom,
Gustavo