The second blessing immediately preceding the Sh’ma tells the story of love between G-d and the people of Israel. This love is expressed as “chosenness,” and in this prayer, that chosenness has precisely one purpose and one manifestation—learning and living Torah. One might imagine that this relationship is straightforward—G-d loves us, gives us Torah, expects our devotion to it. But the prayer adds an unexpected and somewhat peculiar twist: “Deep is your love for us…Our Father and King, for the sake of our ancestors, who trusted in you, and to whom You taught life-giving laws, be kind and teach us too.”
This sentence makes reference to a fascinating Jewish concept: zchut avot, “the merit of our ancestors.” This is a concept found in the very first paragraph of the Amidah, repeated three times a day, so it obviously carries some importance. The idea is that when someone acts in a particularly meritorious fashion (with great moral depth, for example, or through demonstrating commendable character traits like courage or devotion), not only do they find favor in the eyes of G-d, but their descendants will be beneficiaries as well.
Understanding the concept only deepens the mystery. Why do the rabbis writing this prayer evoke the merit of the ancestors in order to evoke the kindness of G-d in order to get the Torah? On one hand, it serves to underscore the fact that Torah is a gift. The Jewish tradition can all too often be seen as a weight, a set of demands under which we feel crushed or smothered. Rabbi Shefa Gold, whose commentaries we will be studying next year, wrote, “I grew up sensing that there was something tragic about being Jewish. I knew that my inheritance sensitized me to the suffering in the world and that there was something noble about this sensitivity. I knew that Judaism was so deep in my blood that it was useless to deny it or avoid it. So I accepted being Jewish as the work I was being given in this lifetime. Often I felt its weight as a burden that would either break me or teach me about some kind of strength that I could not yet imagine.” She, thank G-d, came out stronger. Many Jews, perhaps even most Jews, were broken. So to be taught Torah in such a way that it gives strength, rather than takes strength, is a gift (and may G-d grant it to us because of zchut avot!).
There is a deeper level of meaning, though. By being reminded in this prayer of zchut avot, we are reminded of the importance of our relationship with the future. In other words, the prayer is subtly reminding us that we, too, will someday be “the ancestors.” And as such, we have the possibility—through Torah—of shaping the life of our descendents—not only in this generation but in all generations. If we take the gift we have received to heart, and devote ourselves to the study of torah, to learn and to teach, to build and be rebuilt, then we will offer our gifts to the future, just as surely as we have received those gifts from the past.
Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff