Vaetchanan
PARASHA VAETCHANAN DEUTERONOMY CHAPTERS 3—7
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and thoughts…
Vaetchanan
I pleaded
Moshe continues to reiterate the events of the last four decades to the Israelites as they get ready to cross over to the Promised Land. He tells them of how he pleaded with God to allow him to set foot on the land, but God denied his request because of his sin, which came as a result of their behavior. He reminds them of the ten sayings they heard through the thunder and the fire on Mount Horeb. And he pleads with them, reasons with them, to hold fast to Torah when tempted by the lifestyle of the cultures that will surround them, even as he knows they will succumb.
hear, o israel!
This is also the parasha in which we find the sh’ema. These few words are so chiseled into our DNA that even secular Jews, even atheist Jews, know these words. Ask “the Jew on the street” and they will probably tell you that it’s the holiest Jewish prayer.
But is it a prayer?
We usually think of a prayer as either a “please” or a “thank-you.”
Either we’re asking God for something, tangible or intangible, or we’re thanking God for our various gifts.
But the Sh’ema is not a request. It’s not a show of gratitude. It isn’t even praise. Nor is it a question.
The Sh’ema is a statement, or perhaps an imperative.
Sh’ema Yisrael! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel! Adonai is our God, Adonai is One.
When we say sh’ema we cover our eyes to block out distractions and fully concentrate on those six words. We say it loud—it’s the loudest part of the liturgy—accentuating and dragging out the first word sh’emaaaaaah! and pronouncing the final D of echad firmly, not letting it trail off.
Here’s a bit of Torah trivia—the sh’ema is the only verse in the five books of Moses that includes two oversized letters. The Alef in the word, sh’emA, and the Dalet at the end of the word, echaD, are both written larger than the other letters. Alef is the first letter of the alef-bet. It’s what Was Before the Beginning of Creating, when everything was Echad, One. An oversized dalet reminds us that One is complete in itself.
Most often, when I say Sh’ema I’m alone. The People Israel can’t hear me.
So, who am I talking to? God? God knows that God is One.
Am I talking to myself? I know that God is One; I was taught that by my non-observant parents from the time I was a toddler.
Am I just pausing my day to remind myself of that fact? If so, why give it voice? Why not just think it?
The Sh’ema is a meditation. It’s a mantra. Its sound is a vibration that acts like a knock on a door. It’s the secret password.
It is the door.
There’s a problem, though. When you knock on a door, you have to hit the door with enough conviction for your knock to be heard, or no one will open it. If you miss the door and knock on air, nothing will happen. So, you have to know that there is a door, that it can be opened, that there’s something on the other side, and that it’s worth having a look at. That’s why we implore ourselves and each other to HEAR! To be aware that something is happening and to pay attention to what’s in front of us. We’re repeating the words that God says to us in Parasha Vaetchanan.
God is giving us the secret password that will allow us entry into the higher realms and God is telling us to use it.
Whether we can (and should) only peer through the doorway, tentatively step through with one foot, or temporarily journey through it depends upon how prepared we are mentally, physically, and spiritually to take on so esoteric a practice. It’s tricky business. If one isn’t tethered strongly to this side, one may not be able to return. But we should all be able to at least take a peek.
So, what are we looking at?
Before we can answer that question, we need to keep reading.
Inextricably tied to the sh’ema is the va’ahavta, the words that follow echad:
V’ahavta
and you will love
The first paragraph starts like this:
V’ahavta et Adonai Elohaycha… And you will love Adonai your God…
Wait! Back up! Hold the phone! What do you mean, “You will love Adonai?”
Am I being commanded to love God?
Why would God command us to love God, after having gone through the trouble of giving us free will? Free will gives us the ability to choose whether or not to enter into a reciprocal relationship with God.
And, as creatures with free will, how could we possibly be commanded to love?
Love doesn’t work like that. If it did, there wouldn’t be so many songs about broken hearts.
So, what’s going on here?
I’m thinking that this isn’t a command at all… it’s a prophesy.
A hint, one of the few real hints in the Torah, about the shape of things to come.
One of the things that sets the Jewish religion apart from most others is that there’s almost no focus on what happens when we die. Our Torah and our teachings assure us that there is an “Olam HaBa,” a world to come, but it’s not something we need to concern ourselves about. The Torah is an instruction manual for how to live, and for how to have a relationship with God in this life.
This one line, You Will Love, is a promise for us to cling to even when we’re sadder than sad, even when we feel abandoned and alone, even in moments of utter hopelessness.
It’s a promise that answers the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
No matter how we feel right now, we will love Adonai our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our might.
All our sorrow, and the feeling of being disconnected and alone, is only temporary.
We’re being told to know that and to trust in it. We’re being told that it’s our mission, the mission of Yisrael, to pass on this secret information to the world until it’s no longer a secret.
God is One. And just as each drop of rain that falls upon the ocean is, at the same time, itself and one with the ocean, we are individuals, but are also a part of the great One.
When our current lives are over and we enter back into that oneness, we will love Adonai our God with all of our hearts, with all of our souls, and with all of our might.
Because—and here’s what we’re looking at when we peer through the crack—on the other side of that doorway there is only love. Nothing else. Just love.
Everything else is illusion.
I know this with conviction because I accidentally opened that door and stepped through with both feet while the shell of me lay on the ground.
And all I could do was exclaim, “Oh!”
I don’t have the words to describe the colors I saw or the feelings that surrounded and permeated my being in those few minutes.
But I can say this—It was so simple. There was Love. With a capital L. And there was nothing else. We make things so complicated, and it’s really so simple.
I was permitted to make the choice to continue forward, past the point where there’d be no turning back, or to turn around in that moment and return to life.
I hesitated.
I was only in my early 20s. But why return to the struggle and the pain? Why turn away from the magnificence I saw before me? And then I remembered my little boy, and in that moment the decision was clear. I turned back. Perfect love would have to wait.
For that moment, all the love I needed was in the eyes of a four-year-old with curly red hair and an impish smile.
That was so long ago. Long enough that sometimes it seems that it was all a dream. But I know it wasn’t. I chant the sh’ema and I remember.
We enter into this life for a reason. We come to give and we come to grow. And, to a point, we’re meant to lose ourselves in it, to be completely immersed. But twice a day we take a moment to be aware of the Greater Truth, to remember that we have that lifeline. This knowledge is our gift as Jews.
And so, we hold these words in our hearts and teach them diligently to our children. We speak of them when we’re sitting at home and when we’re out and about, when we snuggle into our covers at night or when we stare at the ceiling as the hours tick by, thinking about the difficulties that plague us. We speak of them when we rise up in the arms of a lover to the sound of singing birds, or to a harsh alarm that demands us to give more than we have. We bind those words physically to our third eye and to our heart meridian in the form of tefillin (phylacteries), and we nail them to our doorposts, ensconced in a pretty case that states, “this is the home of a Jew.”
Because, when we move through this life knowing in every moment that we are part of the Great One and that Love is the only reality, we move through life differently than we do when we’re under the delusion that separation, alienation, anger, and pain are more than a passing dream and a tool for growth.
And what could be greater than to be encompassed by that Love when it’s coupled with the Joy that will come from a Life Well-Lived?
But that’s a question for much later.
That little boy’s 50th birthday approaches, there are new impish smiles to fill my heart (Baruch Hashem!), and I still have so much more living ahead of me.
So what shall we eat?
Going back to the basic tenets of Judaism, to my earliest teaching, makes me long for the basics, for the meal that takes me back to the scents and the security of childhood, to the aroma of love that wafted from my grandmother’s kitchen. I’m going with the classic Ashkenazi Shabbat dinner. You can pick and choose among these dishes, or make them all!