As I am sure many of you know well, Rabbi Ignaz Maybaum was the first Rabbi of the Edgware and District Reform Synagogue section of EHRS. He became our Rabbi in 1948 having escaped from Germany as a refugee with his family in 1939, the kind of person that the far right were protesting against last week and he remained Rabbi of EDRS until 1963.
In 1950 Rabbi Maybaum told a remarkable story in the Synagogue Review, which was the magazine of the Reform Movement. It was found for me by the historian of our Movement, David Jacobs. The first remarkable thing was that just a few years after the Second World War he was writing about his experience in the Austrian army. The second was the story itself.
Rabbi Maybaum wrote: “In the year 1917 I was a soldier in an Austrian regiment on the Russian front. Our regiment was brought face to face with a Russian unit; and a truce was to be arranged. The Russians shouted over to us that they had an interpreter speaking German. In my regiment, consisting of Hungarians, I was the only one who could speak German; so I was chosen to talk the Russian.
At his first word I realised that he was not speaking German at all but rather he was speaking Yiddish! I said to him: ‘Shema Yisrael’; he continued at once: ‘Adonai Eloheynu Adonai echad.’”
Jews have been saying the Shema for at least two thousand years. What we do in every morning and evening service, reciting the Shema, was done by the priests in the Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago (M Tamid 5:1).
Why though should we say the Shema every day – after all it is just five verses in the Torah Deuteronomy Chapter 6 verses 4-9- we don’t say the Ten commandments every day so why the Shema? Let me give you three different explanations.
The first is from Israel Abrahams, one of the founding members of the Liberal Jewish movement. He explained that saying the Shema at least once a day enables a Jew to express through his or her own words four fundamental concepts of the Jewish religion.
First, the fundamental Jewish belief – that God is one.
Second the fundamental Jewish duty – that we should love God and therefore humankind, God’s creation, by extension.
Third the fundamental Jewish discipline – that we should speak of, learn and teach about our religion.
Fourth the fundamental method of Judaism – to be Jews by dong Jewish acts illustrated in the Shema by fixing a mezuzah to a house and acting as if the words of the Shema were bound upon our hands. (adapted form Hertz commentary)
A second explanation as to why we need to say the Shema each day is from Claude Montefiore a contemporary Jewish scholar to Israel Abrahams. The Shema contains the words “And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart”. It is as if the prayer itself is being created anew each time we say it and indeed – as Montefiore explains (Introduction to Bible p39) the first line of the Shema has meant different things in different ages because the Hebrew Adonai Echad is actually a little confusing.
Might it mean God is a unique force? That God is alone – so there are no forces of darkness in the world which are not under God’s control? That God is the only God? – When it was first written down it probably meant to the Children of Israel that God is the only God of the Israelites who were surrounded by other cultures who worshiped their own Gods. Then, by the time of the Talmud it meant that there is only one God to be worshiped by all.
What can we make of these words now? They have a meaning that is different to each of us -that is why each person needs to dwell on the meaning of Hear O Israel, The Eternal One is our God , the Eternal God is One – and to do that they need to say it regularly. What indeed does it mean to you that the words or Torah are on your heart?
My third explanation, I heard recently from a person who had for some time attended the lively South Hampstead Synagogue. He had enjoyed the services, he had got a lot out of Rabbi Shlomo Levine’s shiurim, he had met some lovely people there – yet he felt a bit uncomfortable. He told Rabbi Levine that he was worried because he had no real faith in God and he did not keep any of the mitzvot incumbent on a Jew. How could he be an honest Jew if he attended synagogue despite this? Rabbi Levine gave him one simple piece of advice and one which has really helped – say the Shema every day – it contains the bedrock of Judaism and simply observing this one mitzvah will help him to move towards a more fulfilling Judaism because by saying it he begins each day on the right track.
Saying the Shema is a simple act and one which takes no more than two to three minutes per day. Yet it is an act which connects us to Jews of the past two millennia who said the Shema, to every observant Jew of the present day who says the Shema and which, as long as we think about the implications of what the Shema says, can help to focus and motivate the Jewishness of our lives.
Because it is simple to say it is can be the first prayer taught to a Jewish child, so that they can pray meaningfully each night and morning. Yet its words have such power that it is also the prayer which every Jew is encouraged to say on their deathbed – saying by its words, Despite what is happening to me God is still God and I will try to love God and the values that Judaism stands for and teach my children to as well.
Many of us may have had the experience when visiting a Synagogue abroad that the security folk will ask you to say the Shema, almost a secret password to the synagogue to identify that you intend only good in your visit. I really don’t like this screening practice as it is in the Rabbinic phrase ‘ using Torah as a spade to dig with’ but as Rabbi Maybaum’s First World War experience relates you never know where you might be when you need to know it. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad!
