Recognising and overcoming our spiritual enemy

Clifford Denton continues his series on 'Christianity, Israel and the Jews', taking a closer look at the beloved Jewish affirmation, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One..."

"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to lie upon your hearts. Impress them on your children: talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

Among the literary sources of Judaism the Shema deserves its own study, because of its central place. In Our Father Abraham (Eerdmans 1991), Dr Marvin Wilson lists this as the 'Core Affirmation of Israel's Faith'. This week we explore the background and importance of the Shema.

Listen and Hear

Dr Wilson lists six issues for Christians to address in reconnecting with their Hebraic heritage. Out of the sixth (understanding the sources of Judaism) he gives special attention to the Shema, or Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord is one." According to Wilson, the Shema (p122):

...is one of the most crucial Old Testament texts for the foundational teachings of both Jesus and Judaism. A careful investigation of early sources suggests that Deuteronomy 6:4 must have been the first portion from the Hebrew Bible that Jesus committed to memory. According to the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 42a), Jewish boys were taught this biblical passage as soon as they could speak. Since the Talmud specifies that "the father must teach him" (i.e. the son), we may confidently assume that Joseph, Jesus' earthly father, was responsible for fulfilling this task.

When Moses was instructed to assemble Israel in the wilderness they were instructed to listen to God, or to hear him. The root meaning of Shema is 'hear'. The six words of instruction from Deuteronomy 6:4 are "Shema yisra'el adonai eloheynu adonai ehad", translated as "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."

This has remained the central core of Israel's faith. God requires that his people listen to him and expect to hear him. He brings them together for the family Sabbaths and for the feasts. He speaks to them through the prophets and as they study together, through signs and as his people approach him in prayer. To Israel was given the privilege of hearing God directly and the foundational truth that they heard was that God is one (Ehad).

The central core of Israel's faith is God's requirement that his people listen to him and expect to hear him.

All confusion about the many gods of the nations is taken away in the foundational thing that Israel must know. The God who revealed himself through creation, through the call of Abraham, through the covenants, through the prophets and through all the recorded teaching of the Bible is not many but one. The many aspects of his character, word and works are summed up in the multifaceted nature of one-ness expressed in the Hebrew word Ehad.

This central core to Israel's life and faith is contained in the profundity of the brief statement of the Shema, and so it is the core of Judaism throughout all generations.

Part of the Prayer Book

Among the Jewish sources that a Christian should understand is the Prayer Book. In Back to the Sources (p403), we read:

Judaism is a civilization of remarkable persistences; perhaps the most remarkable is the case of prayer. Bestir yourself on a Friday evening or a Saturday morning anywhere in the world where there are Jews and you will likely find a congregation reciting Hebrew prayers several thousand years old. Nor is this a quaint vestige. Gathering for prayer is the preeminently central activity of most branches of Jewish life today, and it is within the roomy framework of the synagogue service that much else takes place: Torah study, rites of passage, political commentary, and even fund raising.

This combination of antiquity and centrality enjoyed by Jewish prayer is the result of its distinctively composite nature: Jewish prayer is both a text and experience. As a text, Jewish prayer is a prayerbook, a classical written liturgy, a structure of words and ideas, which, like any text, is open to literary and theological analysis within the terms of the historical periods that produced it. As experience, Jewish prayer also incorporates the several means by which the text is brought to life: what takes place in the inner, subjective world of the worshipper during prayer; the communal arrangements and non-verbal techniques of the practice of prayer; and the contemporary interpretations of the meaning of the text of the liturgy.

The Prayer Book is a book of blessings (berakhot), or praising. For example, the morning service contains the praise or blessing to God: "Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the universe who creates lights."

All confusion about the many gods of the nations is taken away in the Shema's profound statement that God is one.

Jewish prayer is concerned with knowing God, the one to whom all praise is given. Closer examination of the Prayer Book shows the cycles of prayer. For example, in the daily morning service (shaharit lehol) there are two cycles, of which the first cycle is the Shema, and the second cycle the The Amidah ('Standing Prayer'), containing the Shemoneh Esreh (the 'Eighteen Berakhot'), also known simply as Hatefilah ('the Prayer').

The Shema itself is put among three Berakhot:

Berakhah One: Creation
Berakhah Two: Revelation
Shema
Berakhah Three: Redemption

"The sequence creation-revelation-redemption forms the essential theological drama of Judaism" (Back to the Sources, p410). This illustrates how the Shema is foundational to the life of prayer and praise of the Jewish world.

The principle of constant repetition and remembering is also key to Jewish life. Human beings need to focus constantly on the character and revelation of the One True God. Human beings are so prone to forget and to drift into error. The Shema is the central part of that remembrance.

The principle of constant repetition and remembering is key to Jewish life – human beings are so prone to forget and drift into error.

The Shema and Jewish Prayer

Kopciowski's Praying With the Jewish Tradition (Eeerdmans 1988) contains further insights on the Shema itself. In the introduction, Rabbi Lionel Blue writes:

...the Old Testament (or Tenach, to use the Jewish term) is not the best book for understanding the religion of modern Jews because it has a limitation which it shares with all Scriptures. Its text is closed...The text of the Talmud, too, is closed. It came to an abrupt halt in Babylon in the sixth century of the common era...

But the Jewish prayer book is different. Unlike other holy books, it is still open-ended and unfinished. It can absorb the faith, the longings, the triumphs and the failures of this generation and the generations that will succeed it, as it found room for all those that went before it.

It includes blocks of biblical faith that cluster round the affirmation of God's unity in Exodus. These are followed by rabbinic petitions, philosophical statements, medieval hymns, psalms, and modern prayers trying to assimilate and interpret the holocaust and the rise of Israel. The collection is too alive to be consistent. Each layer of faith lives alongside the others – they do not cancel each other out. Consistency is found in cemeteries; the untidiness of growth is the quality of life.

Jews have a long history – four thousand years of it – double the Christian length. During that time they have worshipped at mounds of stones, desert altars and moveable arks, in two solid temples, in synagogues, and in shtiebels. Patriarchs, priests, scribes, rabbis, rebbes, seers, mystics, and ordinary folk have been leading their little worship communities in prayer. Each phase has left its mark and its message in the liturgy. If a Christian therefore wishes to understand his fellow Jews, he should attend their prayers, and give attention to the holy book which is best known among them – their prayer book.

Why should he or she do so? There are many reasons. First, there has been a subtle but definite change in Christian-Jewish relations since the end of the last war, for reasons which we do not completely comprehend – the horror of the holocaust perhaps, or the Holy Spirit. But the medieval cold war seems to have died down, and a real desire to understand each other has replaced it.

For a Christian there is also another reason. Both Jesus and his early disciples lived in the world of rabbinic Judaism, when the modern prayer book took its present form. They prayed its prayers, in the synagogues of their time. They could not know the liturgy of the Church which would proceed from them but were familiar with the forms of worship still used by Jews today. Christianity therefore, for its own self-understanding, needs to know those forms. Otherwise Jesus is torn away from his historical and human background, and is limited to an icon...

The Shema is strictly only the verse from Deuteronomy 6:4. However, this has been expanded by the addition of two further verses which complement it, for the purposes of the liturgies of the Prayer Book. This combination is now generally known as the Shema. Kopciowski writes:

The Shema is the main part of the daily liturgy, recited morning and evening. The Shema is above all the solemn proclamation of the unity and uniqueness of God, entailing the duty to love him and obey his commandments and to instruct children in the holy doctrine, so that it may be handed down for ever. The Shema consists of three prayers from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41). (p26)

A prayer that follows the Shema at evening prayers, compiled from biblical verses is:

In the palm of your hand
You hold our souls
Which we entrust to you:
The souls of the living
And the souls of the dead.
In the palm of your hand
You lovingly hold
The divine spirit
Of all things living.
To you, O Lord,
O God of truth,
I commit now the spirit that is within me.
Heavenly Father,
Your name alone is holy,
You are unchanging
And your kingdom is eternal;
You will reign over us for ever.

Hear, O Israel,
the Lord our God,
the Lord is One.
Love the Lord your God
With all your heart and with all your soul
And with all your strength.
These commandments that I give you today
Are to lie upon your hearts.
Impress them on your children:
Talk about them when you sit at home
And when you walk along the road,
When you lie down and when you get up.

Summary: Israel's Statement of Faith

The world of the first Christians was embedded in Judaism. Paul and the apostles would all have attended the prayers at the Temple and in the synagogues. Christians today would benefit from a fresh look at these ancient traditions and how they centred on knowledge of the One True God, who called Israel to hear him in the wilderness and know that he is Ehad.

Since the world of the first Christians was embedded in Judaism, Christians today would benefit from a fresh look at its ancient traditions and their focus on knowledge of the One True God.

The Shema is placed among the benedictions but is not a prayer itself. It is more to be seen as the core of Israel's statement of faith. Dr Wilson writes:

Of the 5,845 verses in the Pentateuch, "Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" sounds the historic keynote of all Judaism. This fundamental truth and leitmotif of God's uniqueness prompts one to respond by fulfilling the fundamental obligation to love God (Deut. 6:5). Accordingly, when Jesus was asked about the "most important commandment," his reply did not contradict this central theme of Judaism (Mark 12:28-34; cf. Matt. 22:34-40). With 613 individual statutes of the Torah from which to choose, Jesus cited the Shema, including the command to love God; but he also extended the definition of the "first" and "great" commandment to include love for ones neighbour (Lev. 19:18). (p124)

For Reflection and Comment

Should the Shema be as important to Christians as to Jews?

Next time: Covenant

Series note: 'CIJ' (Christianity, Israel and the Jews) is a study series about the relationship between the Church and its Hebraic heritage.