SUMMONS TO PRAYER בָּרְכוּ Bless the LORD: An ancient formula (see Nehemiah 9:􀆩) for summoning the congregation to prayer. From this point onward, communal prayer begins. Prayers of special sanctity require a minyan, a quorum of ten adult males. The ten spies who brought back a negative report about the land were called a “congregation.” In response to Abraham’s prayer about Sodom (Genesis, chapter 18), God assured him that if it contained ten righteous individuals, their merits would save the city. Ten is thus the minimum number to constitute a community. When the Temple stood, sacrifices were offered daily on behalf of the entire Jewish people. Since then, though Jews have been scattered and dispersed, wherever ten gather in prayer it is as if the whole Jewish people were present. The community is a microcosm of the nation.

BLESSINGS OF THE SHEMA יוֹצֵר אוֹר Who forms light: A statement of faith that all things – good and apparently bad – come from the One God. The prayer is based on a verse in Isaiah (45:7). The original has the phrase “makes peace and creates evil”; this last word has been changed to “all” to avoid speaking of evil in the context of prayer. The verse is directed against dualism: the perennial temptation to see in the suffering of the world, a force (evil, darkness, the devil) independent of, and opposed to, God. Dualism sees strife and war, contest and conquest, as part of the structure of reality itself. So profoundly did Judaism reject this idea, that it placed this counter-affirmation at the beginning of our collective prayers.

הַכֹּל יוֹדֽוּךָ All will thank You: A short poem built around the last word of the previous line, “All,” which is repeated here five times, four times at the beginning of a phrase, and once at the end. In monotheism, to worship anything less than the All is idolatry – be it worship of the self, the race, the nation, the ruler or the political system. The paragraphs that follow are an expansion of the usual first blessing before the Shema. The first, but not the other blessings, is enlarged in honor of the Shabbat, because its theme is creation, and Shabbat is “a remembrance of the work of creation.” בְּכָל יוֹם תָּמִיד Daily, continually, renews the work of creation: Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi explained the difference between creation-from-something (Yetzira) and creation-from-nothing (Beria). When a carpenter makes a table from wood, the table continues to exist after the creative act is finished. When one makes something from nothing, however, the creative act must be continually renewed, otherwise the creation would cease to be. Divine creation is creation-from-nothing, and is thus perpetually renewed. This prayer invites us to a sense of wonder at the fact of existence: “It is not how the world is, but that it is, which is the mystical” (Wittgenstein).

אֵין כְּעֶרְכֶּֽךָ None can be compared to You: a fourfold statement of the uniqueness of God, each phrase of which is then expanded in the following lines. The fourfold structure of many early rabbinic prayers reflects the influence of Jewish mysticism, which saw reality in terms of four dimensions of increasing spirituality: the world of action, Asiya; the world of formation, Yetzira; the world of creation, Beria; and the world of Emanation, Atzilut. This world…the World to Come: the prayer itemizes four time-zones: (1) this world that we inhabit now; (2) the World to Come, according to Maimonides, the realm of the soul after death; (3) the days of the Messiah, when the Temple will be rebuilt, the rule of David will be restored and peace and justice will prevail in the affairs of mankind; and (4) the resurrection of the dead, the final denouement of history, when those who have died will live again.

אֵל אָדוֹן God, LORD of all creation: A hymn of praise to God as Creator of the heavens, stars and celestial forces. The poem, structured as an alphabetical acrostic, is longer than its weekday counterpart (see אֵל בָּרוּךְ, “The blessed God” on pages 90–91) in honor of Shabbat. On weekdays each letter corresponds to a word; on Shabbat to a complete phrase. The poem contains traces of Merkava (“Chariot”) mysticism, based on Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot (Ezekiel, chapter 1).

לָאֵל To God who rested: A prayer on the theme of “the Sabbath of creation” at the dawn of time. Here, time itself is personified. Shabbat becomes a living presence, “robed in glory.” The passage reflects a midrashic tradition that, at creation, each day sang its own song to God. The Sabbath sang Psalm 92 – the Midrash taking its opening phrase to mean not “a song for the Sabbath day” but “a song sung by the Sabbath day.” Shabbat is a unique institution. The year is determined by the sun, the month by the phases of the moon, but there is no Shabbat in nature: nothing that corresponds to the seven-day cycle of work and rest, creation and cessation, doing and being. The sages say that the creation of the first man and woman, their sin and their sentence to exile from the Garden of Eden all took place on the sixth day. Out of compassion, God allowed them to stay one full day in the Garden: the seventh day. Thus, the Shabbat is as close as we come to Paradise regained.

THE HOLINESS PRAYER Two prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, saw mystical visions of God among His heavenly host, the choir of angels. These visions, together with the words the prophets heard the angels sing (“Holy, holy, holy” in Isaiah’s vision, “Blessed is the LORD’s glory from His place” in Ezekiel’s), form the heart of Kedusha, the “Holiness” prayer. This is recited three times in the morning prayers – before the Shema, during the Leader’s Repetition of the Amida; and toward the end of prayer, except on Shabbat when the third is transferred to the afternoon. This section of the prayers – the vision of the heavenly throne and the angels – is part of the mystical tradition in Judaism. Prayer is Jacob’s ladder, stretching from earth to heaven, with “angels of the LORD” ascending and descending. The three Kedushot represent, respectively, the ascent, the summit, and the descent: the journey of the soul from earth to heaven and back again, transformed by our experience of the Divine. נַֽחַת רֽוּחַ Serene spirit: The angels’ praise has three elements, and by implication so should ours: serene spirit (naḥat ruaḥ), pure speech (safa berura), and sweet melody (ne’ima). These are the three dimensions of prayer: spiritual tranquillity, cognitive clarity, and emotional-aesthetic beauty.

וְהָאוֹפַנִּים וְחַיּוֹת…שְׂרָפִים Ophanim, Ḥayyot, Seraphim: Three kinds of angels seen by Isaiah and Ezekiel in their visions. Seraphim are angels of fire. Ḥayyot are “living beings” surrounded by fire. Ophanim are “wheels within wheels.” They form a heavenly retinue surrounding the divine throne, an angelic choir singing God’s praises.

אַהֲבָה רַבָּה You have loved us: One of the supreme expressions of love in the liturgy. Having spoken of God’s relationship to the universe, we now speak of His relationship to us, moving from cosmic grandeur to spiritual intimacy. The phrase Our Father, compassionate Father, ever compassionate, have compassion on us, with its twofold repetition of “Father” and threefold mention of compassion in the space of six Hebrew words, is one of the most concentrated expressions of the love and trust we feel in and for God – the God who said, “My child, My firstborn, Israel” (Ex. 4:22). The channel through which this love flows is the Torah, God’s covenant with His people. This contains “the laws of life” in a double sense: laws that guide us in life, and laws that give us life.

THE SHEMA שְׁמַע Listen, Israel: The word Shema is untranslatable in English. It means (1) listen, (2) hear, (3) reflect on, (4) understand, (5) internalize, (6) respond in action, and hence (7) obey. In rabbinic Hebrew it developed yet other senses, such as “transmit, know about, infer, learn.” I have translated it here as “Listen” rather than the traditional “Hear” because listening is active, hearing passive. The Shema is a call to an act of mind and soul, to meditate on, internalize and affirm the oneness of God. Most civilizations have been cultures of the eye. Judaism, with its belief in the invisible God who transcends the universe, and its prohibition against visual representations of God, is supremely a civilization of the ear. The patriarchs and prophets did not see God; they heard Him. Hence, the key verb in Judaism is Shema, “listen.” To give dramatic force to the idea that God is heard, not seen, we cover our eyes with our hand as we say these words. יהוה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ The LORD is our God*:* The sages called this declaration “acceptance of the yoke of the kingship of Heaven,” meaning that we take God as our Sovereign, and our covenant with Him as the essence of our existence as a people. The LORD is One: among the many meanings of this phrase are: (1) there is only one God; (2) God is a unity, indivisible; (3) God is the only ultimate reality; (4) God is One despite the many appearances He has had throughout history; and (5) God alone is our King. This great sentence is the supreme declaration of Jewish faith: among the first Hebrew words learned by a child, often the last words of martyrs.

בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם Blessed be the name: This was the congregational response to the utterance in the Temple of the Tetragrammaton, God’s holiest name. It is said here as a memory of the Temple service, but silently (except on Yom Kippur) because it is not part of the biblical text.

וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם Teach them repeatedly: Education is the responsibility, not only of schools, but also of parents. In Judaism, parents are educators, the home a matrix of learning, and education a conversation across the generations. Alshich connects this verse with the earlier one (“Love the LORD”): How do we teach our children? By showing them what we love.

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמֹֽעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ If you indeed heed My commandments: The sages called this “acceptance of the yoke of the commands.” Having declared God our Sovereign, we go on to accept the laws He has given us, understanding that Israel’s fate as a nation depends on its fidelity to them.

וַיֹּֽאמֶר יהוה The LORD spoke: This paragraph was included in the Shema because: (1) it deals with the third outward sign, tzitzit, which belongs together with the two mentioned in the previous paragraphs, tefillin and mezuza; and (2) it mentions the exodus, which we are commanded to remember “all the days of your life.” After your heart and after your eyes: a principle of Judaism, as of cognitive psychology, is that our perceptions are filtered through our beliefs and emotions. What we feel affects what we see. The heart controls the eye.

אֱמֶת וְיַצִּיב True and firm: Fifteen adjectives mirroring the fifteen “Songs of Ascents” and the fifteen steps to the Temple courtyard. The prayer is structured around a six-part repetition of the word Emet: “true,” mirroring the six-part sequence – the three paragraphs of the Shema and its three surrounding blessings – which leads up to the Amida, the holiest of prayers, as the six days of the week lead to Shabbat, holiest of days. The meaning of the word “true” here is similar to the word “Amen” said after a blessing. It is an act of affirmation and ratification, reminding us that the Shema is less a prayer than a declaration of faith. The passage recapitulates the main ideas of the Shema. Its primary emphasis, though, is on redemption. It contains the word “redeem” eight times, and is filled with redemptionrelated terms – deliverance, rescue, help, shield, Savior, as well as redemptive activity – pleading a cause, raising the lowly, redeeming the meek, and helping the needy. Redemption refers to God’s activity in history, liberating slaves, rewarding the faithful and ensuring justice.

גָּאַל יִשְׂרָאֵל Who redeemed Israel: The sages attached great significance to the principle of “juxtaposing redemption and prayer,” insisting that nothing should interrupt the transition from the words “who redeemed Israel” to the Amida itself (Berakhot 9b). The act of prayer is ultimately a request for redemption, a plea for God to intervene in our lives and the life of our people. The God of the philosophers is a dimension of reality but not a personal presence, a shaper of history. One may meditate on such a being, but we cannot speak to Him, lay our innermost thoughts before Him, and place our fate in His hands. The God of the prophets – the God of redemption – is encountered in events, in history, in life ( Judah HaLevi, Kuzari).