The Parve Baker

Va-‘Etchannan

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. - Deuteronomy 6:4

The prayer known as the Shema, which has been central to Jewish religious practice for at least two millennia, begins with a biblical verse that constitutes the most fundamental declaration of Jewish faith.

The last word, echad, has been subject to interpretation for centuries. Liturgically rendered, Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One (Deut 6:4), this is how the verse is best known today. Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, however, read it as Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. This may be closer to the way our ancestors understood it, that is in accordance with the prophetic verse, And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; and in that day there shall be one Lord with one name (Zech 14:9). The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, but they are different. Judaism, as we know it, encompasses both.

In Hebrew, we say: Shema yisrael, Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad (Deut 6:4). It is often written with an enlarged letter ayin at the end of ’shema’ and a large dalet at the end of ‘echad.’ Why is this? According to an explanation following the first reading cited above, the ‘ayin’ and ‘dalet’ together form the word for “witness” (”eid”). Highlighting it underscores this verse’s testimony to the existence one God only. Others, who hold according to the second reading, explain that the two enlarged letters serve to prevent a grievous heresy. The ‘ayin’ might be confused with the similarly vocalized letter aleph and the ‘dalet’ might be misread as a a simlar-looking resh. The resulting vocalization would be, “Maybe, Israel, Adonai our god is another deity” (“She-ma yisrael, Adonai eloheinu Adonai acher”).

In the language of prayer, a biblical verse is like a recipe. It may be interpreted in more than one way, but modification may render it indigestible.