When I first began davening in earnest, in my late teen years, I was puzzled by the fact that we didn’t stand for the Shema. Wasn’t it our most important prayer? Wasn’t the declaration that “G-d is One” the very core of what Judaism is about? And, what’s more, how come we would stand for the Amidah, but sit for the Shema?
I asked a wonderful teacher, Rabbi Mandel (I never learned his first name—he was always just Rabbi Mandel!) to explain this anomaly. I wish to honor his memory by sharing his explanation with you. He said that when Moses our teacher was receiving the torah, he did so standing, out of respect for the divine word. But when he heard the Shema, he found it so difficult to comprehend that he had to sit down.
The Amidah, Rabbi Mandel explained, was basically a set of human requests (give us wisdom, forgiveness, health, restoration to Israel, etc.). No problem asking, and, before the King of Kings, standing seems only reasonable. Nothing hard to comprehend here. But the Shema is a different matter.
Which then leads to a second question: what is so hard about the Shema? And this I learned from another teacher, Judith Narrowe, wife of the former Chief Rabbi of Stockholm. The hard part is not that “G-d is One.” We have all come to accept that a god that is truly G-d, as in the G-d, can only be One. Anything less would not be G-d at all.
“Hear, o Israel” is harder. We are much better at talking than we are at listening. Getting ourselves to stop talking to our neighbor and start listening to an inner spiritual voice is difficult at best. And when we finally try to do so, shutting off our internal dialogue is even harder. As my friend and teacher Rabbi Dan Alexander says, trying to meditate is like being stuck in a phone booth with a madman.
But be that as it may, as hard as it is to do, it isn’t that hard to comprehend. Moses our teacher, who could spend 40 days on a mountain with G-d alone, surely understood what it means to listen.
No, the hard part conceptually is the middle passage: “the Lord is our G-d.” How is it possible that the Lord of the entire universe, in all its vastness and complexity, is at the same time a G-d so close, so specific, that He/She/It could align Themselves so closely with one little people on one little speck of the cosmos? How could G-d be, in any way, “ours?”
That’s tough conceptually. Really tough. Enough to make even Moses our teacher sit down. It is a mystery, but it is a mystery asserted over and over again in our sacred tradition. Every time we hear the words “our G-d” (repeated in every single blessing we say) we are referencing this great mystery. It is at the core of what we believe about G-d, about ourselves, and about the mission of Judaism—to make “our G-d” the world’s G-d.
So, to coin a phrase, “sit down for what you believe in.”