Mina's Musings: Ekev 2016

Ekev, the Second Paragraph of the Shema, & Middle Child Syndrome - 2016

Shabbat Shalom.  Last Shabbat those of us who were present were treated to a very interesting and thought-provoking look at the first paragraph of the Shema as explained by our congregant Ken Cliffer. 

Since we are experts now on the first paragraph, it seems fitting that just a short while ago during this morning’s Torah reading we chanted the second paragraph of the Shema.  Now let’s be honest.  If the three paragraphs of the Shema were each people, children in a family, the second paragraph would suffer from middle child syndrome, feeling just a little left out of the love heaped on the rest of the Shema.  I mean, the Shema and V’ahavta are one of the first paragraphs that children learn in religious school, and they are recited at least four times a day by traditional Jews.  The third paragraph has all the hoopla surrounding the kissing of the tzitzit and like the V’ahavta is usually chanted out loud during morning services.  And then there’s the second paragraph – the longest of the three paragraphs in the Shema, it is virtually never chanted out loud, many people skip it, some people who don’t skip it will gleefully tell you they don’t “like” the second paragraph or “believe” it, and for decades the Reform movement actually REMOVED it from their siddurim – only to return it to its rightful place in the last decade or so.    

So, what is in this oft-overlooked middle paragraph?  Let’s look at it in full:  “V’hayah im shamoa tishme’oo al mitzvotai – If then you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late.  You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil – I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle – and thus you shall eat your fill.  Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them.  For the Lord’s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is assigning to you.  Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart:  bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, and teach them to your children – reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up; and inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates – to the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth.” 

If you had to characterize this middle section of the Shema, it has two parts.  The first is a basic description of reward and punishment.  God says, “If you do what I want you to do, everything will be OK.  If not, I will punish you and things won’t work out the way you want.”  This simple and straightforward idea of reward and punishment is one that quite honestly doesn’t resonate with many Jews today.   That is why the Reform movement removed the paragraph from its liturgy for so many years.  On the other hand, some Jews simply skimmed or skipped it despite its presence in the prayer, and others have read it repeatedly, rotely, never giving as much thought as they give to either the first or third portions of the Shema.   

This is going to sound strange, but one of the happiest moments of my rabbinate was when I read back in September of 2007 that the Reform movement was putting the Shema back in the siddur.  You see, I believe deep in my core that as with most – albeit not all - of the difficult texts of our tradition, that we need not ignore, skim over, or remove difficult texts.  Instead, I believe that we can and must continually reinterpret the texts of the Torah in ways that draw us closer to God rather than distance us.  Removing the text doesn’t remove the problem, it removes our opportunity to grapple with and come to terms with the text!  In any case, the first step in the reinterpretation is to acknowledge that unlike the V’ahavta, the first paragraph of the Shema which appeared in last week’s Torah portion, the word “you” in the second paragraph is like they say down south, “y’all.”  That is to say that Hebrew, unlike English, has four forms of you – you for a single male, you for a single female, you for multiple females, and you for either a group of men or a group of men and women together.  The V’ahavta is in you male singular.  The second paragraph, V’hayah im shamoa is in you mixed group plural.  Thus the second paragraph of the Shema tells us that we as a whole group – and in particular our crops, our habitat - will suffer if we as a community do not do what God wants of us. 

And what is it that God wants of us?  The Torah teaches us that one of the first things God ordered Adam to do was to tend the earth and all that is in it.  We are taught to observe the mitzvah of tza’ar ba’alei chaim - care for animals, not hunting them to extinction.  We are told that when we grow crops that we cannot overwork the earth, observing the mitzvah of sh’mita, letting the land lie fallow every seven years to enhance its fertility and show our trust in God.  We are reminded to observe bal tash-heet – not wasting our resources.  There is a reason why Israel has the best techniques for water reclamation and desalinization on the planet – it’s not just that Israel is a desert, it’s because they take bal tash-heet seriously.  On the other hand, if we don’t do what we are commanded to do, respecting God and God’s creation – our earth and all the creatures in it - then indeed we can wreak havoc with the planet, change its rain patterns, dry out lakes, cause deserts to expand, hunt animals to extinction, poison the air and more.

The choice is simple – following God’s ways means taking our job as caretakers of this planet seriously. As it says in Ecclesiastes Rabbah, a rabbinic midrash – or commentary – on Ecclesiastes: “When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 1 on Ecclesiastes 7:13) 

And this leads directly to the second half of the middle portion of the Shema.  The first is about reward and punishment.  The second half tells us how we are to accomplish our task of leading a godly life – by binding them physically and spiritually to us, teaching them to our children, not being afraid to discuss our commitment to God and planet earth both at home and away, hanging them in the mezuzot we place in our doorways so we cannot enter or leave a room without being reminded of our obligations, and more. 

May we all take the time today and every day to take the words of the second paragraph of the Shema to heart, to join together to do what we can to bring God’s love and bounty into this world for ourselves, our children, the animals that share this planet with us, and for the earth itself.