The Fundamentals of Prayer part 3

okay so this morning we're continuing and ending our last of our uh three classes through project inspire a wonderful organization uh regarding the fundamentals of prayer and the foundations of prayer and just a quick review our first class was really about the three r's right that hashem wants a relationship with his creations and one of the ways that we develop this relationship is through talking to hashem is through having a relationship through prayer also he wants us to ask from him request the second r he wants us to ask him for our knees and for what we want and for what we're missing and in the largest and the smallest aspects of our lives there's never something that we that is too small or too big to ask for and the third idea of prayer is the idea of reflect self-reflection self-judgment right lahit pal-el is a reflexive word that when we stand in prayer before god or even in terms of our own introspection when we ask for things we want to know what the purpose is of our gaining that or acquiring that thing what we're going to do with it how it's going to help us in terms of deepening our relationship with ourselves with others and of course with the one who gives us everything that we have god himself okay secondly in our second class we focused on the morning blessings and we said that the cornerstone of judaism is gratitude right the very beginning of the tour begins with adam and father and the sin and basically them showing little gratitude adam says you know it was this wife that you gave me god that caused all the problems and basically the idea of not being grateful without gratitude really relationship with god is very very difficult to have so what i want to do today is i want to go to a deeper aspect of the relationship between god and the jewish people specifically by looking at the shema prayer the central one of the central prayers of the jewish people really it's our pledge of allegiance our declaration of faith and when i talk about shema and i'm talking about relationship i'm talking about a deeper kind of relationship that's based on commitment because that's really what the shema prayer is about it's about our commitment to god and god's commitment to us and of course commitment it may be not such a you know it's a bit of a dirty word today right i mean people don't like committing i remember when i was studying in israel my rabbits and said to us you want to destroy a good friendship get married you know that was like sort of what was going on you know in the 80s and the 70s and i guess it's continued to this day but the idea of commitment in judaism is integral to developing and deepening this relationship that we want to have and establish with god and of course this prayer the shema is one of the central prayers as i said it's the pledge of allegiance it's our declaration of faith and it's funny my son we we lived in america uh for a while and we lived in a small place called binghamton new york and my son must have been about i don't know eight and he came home from school the first day he was horrified he said i think we said something not jewish in class today and we said what are you talking about he said well we had to put our hand on our heart and we said i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one god anyway he was just and we of course started laughing and you know he was going to a jewish school it was the smallest jewish day school in north america existed in binghamton new york and he came home and he of course and we said oh it's okay that's all right that's just american patriotism you know you don't have to worry about it being a contradiction to you know pledging allegiance to god like we do in the shema okay now interestingly the shamaya swirl in the torah the word shema actually is written with an enlarged iron and shima israel hashem eloqueno hashem erhad the at the end of the phrase is written enlarged as well with a large dullet and of course the question is why there are no nothing is haphazard when it comes to the torah and the letters ayan and dalit actually spell the word aid and aid is a witness so the idea is is that when we say the shema israel when we say those words at the beginning we are basically testifying as jews to the concept of god's oneness which was a very revolutionary idea by the way when it came into the world okay there's so many times that we say the shema first of all from a a halacha viewpoint we're supposed to say the shema twice a day in the morning when we wake up and in the evening when we go to sleep there's other times that we say to shema i don't know if you know this but for example be the night before a new a newborn baby boy is about to have his breasts the night before the brisk there's a custom to bring over all the little kids from the neighborhood and give them treats and candy and they say shamai israel around the baby's crib as a protection for his operation in the morning okay because nighttime is always associated with danger with evil even and so that's one of the reasons also that we say the shema before we go to bed at night we also say it on yom kippur at the end of naila right right before yom kippur ends we shout it out very loud and it said again uh we say it before we die i have to tell you just recently we watched this movie from 1984 with jacqueline bessette called forbidden it was a movie about the holocaust and it was really a story about a very very assimilated german jew who could not accept the fact that the nazis were doing what they were doing it was just beyond his comprehension to the point that even when he was supposed to be in hiding he couldn't help himself and went out to his old neighborhood and walked around as if he was a free man of course the that episode ended and somebody some other jew who was actually being um the nazis were allowing him to stay alive if he would catch 10 jews a month so he actually met this other jew and who was trying to get him to admit that he was really a jew anyway he ends up running away from him but the point is is he was completely assimilated at another point in the movie they allow in this other jew to hide with them and this jew starts talking to him and says so you never had a bar mitzvah probably he said no he said did you ever even go to synagogue in your life and he says well maybe once and his as i said his father was an illustrious german judge uh very much a part of german society anyway this this man who's hiding with them begins to teach him the shema israel which he's never heard before and he's saying it to him teaching it to him while they're in hiding and he's repeating it after him anyway at the end of the movie when the russians are bombing berlin and the war is basically over the russians find this man with the woman who he's hiding with who's a non-jewish woman true story they end up being getting married um and she's yelling at the russian soldier going he's not a german he's a jew he's a jew he's a jew and of course the russian soldier doesn't believe him and doesn't hear him and doesn't understand what she's saying and he's you know butting him with his rifle and he's about to kill him and then all of a sudden he cries out what he learned from this jewish guy who was hiding with him shema israel hashem eloquenu hashem echad and this russian soldier says to him revyed he turns out to be a russian jewish soldier so this was the end of the movie you know and it was so poignant to see how a mitzvah like shema could literally save a person's life and there are so many countless stories like that where either you know a mitzvah specifically the shema could save a person's life or the opposite right how many jews went to their death with the words of the shema israel on their lips as a matter of fact i heard once that a nazi who worked in the concentration camps horrifically said that the way that he knew that every jew was gassed successfully and dead was when he heard the last shamayas royal emanating from the chamber so this is a very powerful prayer it's a prayer that if we say nothing else right it's a prayer that we should try to incorporate into our day into our morning into our evening of course morning is the time when you are most fresh evening is the time again when you're also more open right you take it with you into your night time and it's a very powerful way um to go through your day with the shema uh morning and night okay we don't want to rab noah weinberg who began asia torah said something very powerful he said know what you're going to die for and then live for it whatever you would give up your life for that's what you should be living for and we know that so many jews were willing to give up their lives with the shema on their lips professing that there's only one god in the world and not turn their back on their jewish beliefs and robertson heller once said they weren't necessarily taurus scholars they weren't necessarily people who you know came from illustrious families that even the most simplest jew throughout history was willing to give up their lives for this truth and the the bitter truth is is sometimes it's actually easier to die for something than it is to live for it you know dying is a one-time act living for god is a constant uh practice discipline it demands certain things as certain sacrifices sometimes not not giving up our lives but other kinds of sacrifices you know and so living for god is often people say even harder than dying for god so where did this expression come from shema israel hashema hashem so first of all the idea of monotheism let's talk about that for a minute were there monotheists before avraham well of course there were right adam and eve were created by god god was their parent it was very clear to them that there is one god however not to give a an in-depth history lesson what happened is basically from the time of adam until noah which was 10 generations the concept of one god was completely lost the rambam maimonides explains that people had trouble with an invisible god and so they basically rationalized or deduced you know what instead of worshiping god we can worship god's servants we'll worship the sun and the moon and the stars we'll worship nature and we'll make many many gods and that's what would eventually happen until the time of noah we know that noah and his family still had this tradition of one god okay noah's son he had three sons one of his son's names was shame shame is where the jewish people come from from the word semites anti-semites literally comes from anti-shame right and shame and avail another person i'm not sure where he how he what he was what his source is they literally had a yeshiva in those 10 generations between noah and avraham that was learning and studying whatever they knew at that time maybe they had access to the torah before it was given they were studying about the one god but it was very cloistered it was an ivory tower there was no interest in teaching it to the world now ten generations from noah we have avraham now a lot of people think of avraham as the first jew but he wasn't a jew there was no such thing as jews until after mount sinai until after we got the torah who avraham was was he was called a hebrew right we know we're called hebrews avraham ha ivree now where did we get that word from the word every hebrew actually means to cross over and what we're told about avraham is avraham was a man who crossed over to the other side meaning the entire world believed in idol worship believed in you know offering all kinds of things up to these gods and avraham had developed a belief in god from the age of three until he was about 40 which he continuously delved into and he was standing so to speak on one side of the world with his understanding of monotheism against all of the idol worshipers including his own father there's an interesting madras that tells about how avram's father owned the biggest idol worship shop in town and you know was very successful he had the you know he was very successful and how abraham as a young child breaks all of the idols in his father's shop and places the axe in the in one idol that he leaves intact the largest idol and when his father comes into the shop and says what happened to your abram says to him well don't you see what happened this idol broke all the other ones they had a war and he was the winner and of course his father says what are you talking about this idol doesn't move it doesn't talk it doesn't it doesn't it can't do that and avraham's explains him exactly dad like don't you get it you know i know you're making a lot of money out of this but you know this is a bunch of baloney so this was abraham he was the first hebrew and he not only believed in monotheism as did noah as did adam and as did shame and abra he was going to teach it to the world he was the first ki rabbi and he and sarah writes they leave their home and they start to travel and they have this open tent and they're inviting everybody in to learn about the one god right there's a beautiful a story too about how abraham would feed them and lodge them and give them to drink and take care of their every need anybody who came to him in the desert and when they were leaving they'd say how much do we owe you and he'd say well you don't owe me anything. who you owe is god himself because i'm just i'm just a conduit for god's blessings and i'm just sharing them with you and the way abram would handle these guests is if they would say well yeah i don't believe in god and he'd say okay if you don't want to thank god then you owe me you know fifteen hundred dollars for your week here uh at my hotel so if they didn't want to say thank you to god he'd make them pay down you know to down to everything okay all right so what do we say let's look at the prayer itself it means hear o israel the lord our god the lord is one so one of the famous commentators rashi says that a central idea here here is that hero israel the lord our god our god the lord is one that now he's our god but one day he will be the god of all of mankind okay now where do we hear about this expression this is something i learned once on a plane ride to israel i was sitting next to an older man he was probably in the 70s i never forgot him because he actually ended up singing at our wedding he was a cousin as well and a songwriter but this was one of the first ideas i learned about judaism was from him on my way to israel as a young 18 year old and he told me do you know where this comes from israel hashem he said it comes from the madrid tells us when yaakov jacob was on his deathbed he had all of his children gathered around him if you remember the scene if you know it in the torah this is when he's blessing his sons before he dies and he's a little bit nervous he's a little bit nervous about whether or not they're going to carry on this tradition of monotheism whether they're going to be able to pass it forward you know avraham had a yeshmael isaac had an asap and he was worried that maybe there were some of his own children that were flawed in some way that would not be able to pass this important message to the world and all that it means and contains pass it forward so they felt his worry and this is what they said to him shema israel listen our father of course jacob had two names right his higher name was israel we're called the banaya straw the children of israel okay so they answered him they said to him shema israel listen israel hashem eloquene we've got it hashem is our god and god is one and we're told the midrash tells us that when yaakov heard that he answered back baruch right the next line in the shema which is blessed is god's name forever and ever and his kingdom forever and ever so this is just one of the sources for how to read the shema and understand so what about the word shema i want to talk to you a little bit about the word shema what do we mean when we say hear and i'm going to quote from rabbi jonathan sax who talks about the spirituality of listening he says the word shema means to hear to listen to pay attention to understand to internalize it can mean all of these things in english he says sorry in hebrew to respond to obey it appears no less than 92 times in the book of devarim in the last month of moses's life he tells the people shema listen heed pay attention hear what i'm saying hear what god is saying listen to what he wants from us and he says and he explains that judaism is a religion of listening and this is one of its most original contributions to civilization in contrast he says this idea that knowing is seeing seeing is believing remains the dominant metaphor in the west even today but judaism offered a radical alternative it is faith in a god we cannot see a god who cannot be turned into idolatry as moses tells the people after they ha after um they have this um they have this revelation with god you heard the sound of words but you saw no image there was only a voice god communicates in sounds not sights he speaks he commands he calls that is why the supreme religious act is shema when god speaks we listen when he commands we try to obey and he goes on to explain that active listening is so important for a relationship not only between people but between us and hashem and god because when a person listens it shows that they care it shows respect it shows an interest to the point where we're saying what's important to you is important to me even if i don't understand it so there's the word shema pay attention understand and the next word israel is swirl is talking to the jewish people beautiful idea in the word israel we have all of the initials of the avot and ima of our fa forefathers and our foremothers the word israel contains a yud which is for yaakov and yitzchak jacob and isaac a sin for sarah a race for rifka and rahul and aleph for avraham and alamed for leia so in the name of of israel we're called the children of israel we have the bedrock the foundation stone of the great people that began this message into the world of the one god the god who is god of all of mankind who began the world with adam and chava from which every human being springs from and therefore the interdependence of all of us together as a people the jewish people may be called the oldest child but all of the people in the world are god's children we may be called the firstborn meaning we have parents always have great expectations of the firstborn right the firstborn on the one hand gets all the goodies but they also get the biggest punishments when they go astray because the understanding is that you're supposed to be the example right you're the one that everyone's going to copy so this idea though that god belongs to everybody now there's 72 different names of hashem by the way in the jewish tradition we have 72 names of hashem which express obviously different aspects of hashem in this bracha hashem kenu hashem we have two names of hashem one is the one that well they're both very familiar to you i'm sure hashem with the yud hey vav hey and eloquent which comes from the word elohim elokim right we don't right now the yudhi bhavan is a name that we don't pronounce the way it's written we just say hashem or adoshem right when you're praying you use the real word um and it stands for he was he is and he will always be i always like to tell this story that i was once teaching that to some russians when we were living in new york and one of my russian students gashed and i said what and she said that's what they taught us to think of every time we say the name lenin we were supposed to think he was he is and he will always be and it just brought home to me wow how these dictators of the world really were trying to replace god right and that's what you know hitler yamashima and all of these people paro from the beginning of time it's the reason i have to get rid of the jews is because the jews as hitler said represent god consciousness in the world and if i can get rid of the jews i can get rid of god consciousness and i can be god right the the true god consciousness so that's one uh explanation for anti-semitism okay but we have two names here hashem eloquenu eloqueno also represents a power tremendous power the powerful aspect of god but another thing hashem the name hashem always connotes compassion the compassionate and merciful side of god and elohim always corresponds to god's din his judgment his justice god as king you know there's laws there's rules you do them then it will be good for you you don't do them then it's off with your head strict judgment now it's very interesting if you look into the torah you will see that the only name that is used for god until man is created is the name elohim the god of strict judgment because when it comes to animals and plants and all the things that were created before man god doesn't need to have compassion however as soon as the first human being is created after adam and khaba come on to the scene this is the first place where it says and hashem god hashem elohim formed man from the dust of the earth because now with man in the center of the stage god will need to combine both his compassion and his judgment and his justice to be able to keep man alive because if he only uses strict justice when it comes to human beings we wouldn't survive for a day maybe not even for an hour right we were endowed with free will with free choice unlike any other creation and therefore god gives us the ability to do what we want to do to make our own choices we want to shoot ourselves in the foot we can do that right if we want to completely ignore what is good for us we'll do that because we'd rather take the easy road maybe the point is is now god will need to mix mercy together with judgment to be able to allow us the space to say i'm sorry to be forgiven to try again because god knows the nature of his creation that you know we will make mistakes that we will do things that are counterproductive not only for ourselves but to god's world and god allows us to have that space by giving us the two names hashem elokim which we have in that shema israel hashem eloquenu hashem is our god hashem hashem is one now what do we mean when we say that hashem is one [Music] what do we mean by that and why do we cover our eyes when we're saying it right if you're right-handed you take your right hand and you cover your eyes and you say these words why do we do that and how are the two connected okay so the first idea about the oneness of god the best way that it's that it's explained is that the oneness of god is like a ray of light a single ray of light that's seen through a prism and of course when light goes through a prism it creates many many colors and instead of getting confused and thinking that all those colors are different gods if you will right the recognition that they're all coming from the same light from that same one source of light is this concept of monotheism god has 72 names he reveals himself in many different ways he has different aspects to him he's not just one uh character type if you will and even with all we know about god you know god is unknowable in jewish terms he's beyond anything we can comprehend but manifestations of god are given to us in order for us to know who god is to some degree okay now we cover our eyes when we say shema because it's very hard to believe in one god with your eyes the nature of the world is a world of duality the torah itself begins with the letter bet bereishit to allude to this idea of a world of duality right we have darkness and light we have sadness and joy we have good and bad we have men and female there's a lot of duality in the world and so a person can get very confused you know other religions create god and an evil force against god because of this idea of duality judaism has no such thing we cover our eyes because the world around us confuses us with this duality and so when we're saying god is one we don't want to use our physical eyes we have to go deeper we have to go deeper than that of course the question why is it that righteous people suffer right this is part of the duality of life why do the righteous suffer and of course this is a question that goes back thousands of years it was a question that moshe himself asked of god and there in the torah god explains to moshe in this world you will only see my back in other words you will never really understand the answer to that question in this world i can't even tell it to you in this world and in the in the next world you'll so to speak be able to see my face because in this world you can't see my face and live right as physical human beings it's too powerful so you'll only see my back now there was a i don't you know there was a famous book that came out by a conservative rabbi i think he called himself a kushner i'm sure you've heard of it it was a faint very uh popular book asking this question he wrote it in response to his own child i think who had died from a terrible disease and unfortunately his uh answer to that question is was extremely heretical in jewish terms because what he basically said is that god only does good and god cannot do anything but what we would call good and therefore there's some kind of evil power in the world that god himself cannot control now to say that god can't control something is completely heretical to say that god is powerful but not as powerful as you imagine right so this is not a jewish idea the jewish idea is that what the oneness of god is that everything is in his power and if he allows bad and negative and evil to take place in this world it's only because that's what keeps our free will our ability to choose intact right if we lived in a world where every time you did something good you know money fell out of the sky or your bank account went up right without even putting any money in it and every time you did something bad you know you spoke negatively about your friend your tongue fell out or you got a blister on it right there wouldn't be a lot of room for error or free will we would just be good robots as rav noah weinberg used to say you'd be a good robot you know don't want to do that ah i know what happens when i put my hand in the fire so we cover our eyes when we're saying that god is one because it can be very confusing now i i'll share with you one of my favorite stories about this idea so there was a famous rabbi hold on one second rabbi yehoshua who lived in talmudic times and rabbi yehoshua being lady and he had this question why do the righteous suffer and one day he was outside and he actually met eliyahu hanabi now you all know who eliola navi is he's the one who comes in the door on pesach night and drinks the wine you know your father your father probably shook the table like mine did when he when he came in to say look look he's drinking he's drinking right and you wondered how he didn't get really drunk going to every jewish home all over the world right but anyway elio anovi was a real person and this rabbi yoshua ben levy meets him one day and he asked him this question he says i want to know why good people suffer and elliott says oh you want to know that and he says well listen i'm going to allow you to travel with me for some time so that you can be enlightened about this question on one condition however you are not allowed to ask me any questions along our journey about what i do and what transpires so rabbi yeshua ben levy agrees and they travel together and they come to this broken down cabin and they're greeted by this lovely couple this older man and his wife who invite them into their broken down place they've got one cow that's very thin but that they get their milk from and it keeps them alive and they offer elijah hanavi and rabbi yoshua everything that they have including their own bed meanwhile the next morning when they get up and they're doving in chakris and getting ready to leave ravioshuben lady overhears eliah praying to god saying um their cow should die god please let their cow die and of course yo rabbit yoshua is thinking what after all they've done for us this is what you pray for i don't i don't get it and he starts to ask helio and nabi and ellie and i says remember you promised you're not allowed to ask any questions anyway they go on to the next place and they come to the home of an extremely wealthy man and they knock on the door and nobody answers and they knock again and they knock again and finally one of the servants comes to the door and says there's a bunch of beggars at the door and this wealthy man says what do they want you know put them outside they can sleep on the stone bench in the backyard and um he doesn't offer them anything to eat and he's in an extremely grumpy mood even more than usual because one of the walls of his house has collapsed okay so they leave that place the next morning they're dovening they're praying to god and rabbi yoshua overhears eliyahu saying that that wall of his house that collapse should miraculously be restored and of course rabbi yoshi was thinking what why would you dumb like that i mean this guy was rotten to the core anyway elio says no questions no questions you promised they continue on they come to a beautiful beautiful shul and they go into the shul and the people there are very very wealthy but nobody invites them home and the few people that see the matures they say here's some bread some water a little salt you can sleep in the synagogue so they sleep on this hard bench in the synagogue the next morning eliel prays and he says may it be your will god that all of these people become leaders and important people and of course rabbi yoshua is very perplexed but he's not allowed to ask not allowed to say anything they go on to the next city people are not so wealthy very poor not only before they even get there the people come out to greet them and welcome them they give them the best that they have of their food and their drink they sit with them and keep them company and open up their homes to them and when they're about to leave there the next morning elijah prays that they that hashem should grant them only one leader okay their journeys are over and they're beginning to depart from one another and finally you know rabbi yoshoub and lady can't take it anymore he says i don't understand please please show me a little bit about god's hidden ways about why it is that the righteous suffer so elio and avi begins to explain to him he says do you remember that first couple where i where i prayed for the cow to die he said well there was a decree in heaven that the wife should die and i asked god don't take the wife please take the cow instead in the second place we went with that horrible wealthy guy who didn't give us anything to eat who made us sleep outside he said he didn't realize it but behind that collapsed wall there was a treasure that was had been hidden there from the former people that was full of a large treasure of gold and because the wall was rebuilt miraculously like that he'll never find it he'll never find it he said in the third place i went in the shul where they didn't give us a thing i prayed that they would all become leaders because where there's arrogant people who all become leaders they will have no blessing and no peace because they will be constantly quarreling and being contentious with each other but in the last place where i prayed that there should only be one leader that the best man should lead there they'll have blessing and peace and happiness and anyway that story i even though it was a long one i wanted to share it with you because it helps us all to recognize the idea that we cover our eyes when we say the shema because we don't really understand the ways of god and the ways of the world you know it says about the tree in the garden of eden that god told adam and eve not to eat from it says it was desirous it was good it was beautiful but of course for them it's it's spelled death and destruction to the whole world right we call something bitter medicine you know we take the medicine it's going to make us well but it's bitter to drink so we don't always know what's good and what's bad and that's the point of the idea of god being one that we recognize that god knows what's good and what's always good even if it doesn't feel good okay um we've got a little bit more time so let's say a little bit more about this prayer so we say shema israel hashem eloquenu you god are the god of compassion hashem eloquenu you're our god using the word elokim you're the god of justice and then we say hashem again as if to say that we want god to lead with his compassionate self echad let's talk about that word so interestingly i said at the beginning of the class that the dalid is written larger in the word echad so one of the reasons is that the dalit also looks very similar to another letter in the hebrew alphabet the letter raish right you could confuse the two so the the uh the whoever wrote whatever the the torah was written with an extra-large dalit so people shouldn't think instead of saying it says meaning there's another god the word means another god we also have the same idea with the word shema why does it say ayan because god forbid the jewish people in our thousands of years of exile should write the letter aleph instead of ayan because again they're both silent letters because shema with an olive means maybe or perhaps there's one god so they wanted to make no mistake that in this pledge of allegiance it would be clear for all times that the iron and the dullet again which means testifying being a witness to the concept of one god which is our mission and our purpose in this world right our we we get our our mission and our our mission statement is to spread this idea in the world that god is one and he's our god now but he's the god of everyone now the word eloquenu also means he's a personal god who loves you he wants a relationship with you when we say the word echad we're actually supposed to draw out the second syllable and emphasize the final consonant so if you go into a school where the people are very religious you'll hear them saying and they really prolong it and they really emphasize it now the dullet at the end of ahad represents the four directions of the world and it's telling us that hashem is the master of the four directions also the aleph represents the oneness of god the first letter of the alphabet the hat is the is the number eight and we say that there are seven heavens you know that a secular expression i'm in seventh heaven well it comes from the jews we believe there's seven heavens and that god is up on top of the seventh heaven so that's the number eight and of course dalit is the four directions of the world um now while you're saying the word shema is you're actually supposed to be you're supposed to be concentrating on this concept called which means accepting the yoke of heaven accepting the obligation the responsibility to spread this teaching and this practice to the world and what is a yoke well we know about the word yoke when it comes to human to animals why do they put a yoke on an animal because the the yolk gives the animal direction right it's there you know like when they put uh blinders on a dog because they don't want them to go other ways a yoke was always meant to direct the animal so and it actually allows it to pull a heavy load if the rope was tied around its neck it would choke the animal so it's put on their back and i had a teacher once who said you know everybody in this world wants a yoke everybody wants to feel that they have a purpose and a reason and a cause one of the higher levels of pleasure or noah weinberg spoke about and abraham maslow even speaks about as a secular psychologist is to have higher level pleasures of having a cause or a purpose or something you'd give up your life for and living with meaning and everybody wants this and i had a repetition who used to say you know in the 60s the jewish kids they wanted a yoke so what did they do they put a backpack on their back they schlepped a heavy backpack they left their homes of luxury and wealth and they schlepped their yoke through europe saying you know look at me i'm important i've got my yoke i've got my sleeping bag i've got my provisions and you know i'm i'm becoming somebody because when you're carrying a yoke when you have a responsibility when you feel that you've got a load to carry it gives you a sense of purpose it gives you a sense of self okay um there's so much to say about this prayer we could do like a 10 week series on it we haven't even done the shema israel the first line of it but i want to tell you another beautiful story that i love which is a story about a rabbi named rabbi eliezer silver who was very involved in efforts to save jews during the war during world war ii and the story goes that at the end of the war he went to europe he was an american rabbi and he went to all the different convents and all the places where he knew that throughout the war they had so to speak saved jewish children physically but spiritually of course they had them baptized they were very excited about being able to get jewish children to you know whose parents were wherever they were if they had survived the war were no longer there and now they could make these jewish souls they could save them from damnation and give them a catholic baptism anyway this rabbi knew that there were a lot of jewish kids in these monasteries and he took a trip from one to the other he'd go to the you know maine priest or nun and say i would like to see if you have any jewish children here and of course they would say well no we don't have any jewish children here there aren't any jewish children in our keep if we had them we'd you know try to find their parents we wouldn't do such a thing so rabbi sober insisted he said okay i'm sure you're telling the truth but do you mind if i come in and see the children and he would arrange that he would go around bedtime and he'd ask to be taken and i always uh i picture like madeline you know like 10 10 girls and 10 beds whatever like a room full of beds right with all these little children in them and rabbi silver would come to the front of the room and you know of course the nuns would be beside him saying we don't have any jewish children here and rabbi silver would say okay okay just let me you know let me check and he would yell out from the front of the room shema israel hashem eloquenu hashem and he would watch and any child whose lips moved to say he would walk around and say that's a jewish child there's a jewish child that's a jewish child and he would walk out of one monastery after the other rescuing these jewish neshamers these jewish souls through the prayer shamayisrah so if there was anything that they remembered after being torn away from their parents it was this nighttime prayer that they said in their beds that their parents taught them from the time they were able to speak so the shema israel saves lives another story uh an israeli who actually went to the shul here shari shamayim he told a story about how he fought in the yom kippur war and in his unit was a very anti-religious guy who was an atheist he didn't believe in god he was extremely anti-religious and he said they were engaged in a really tough battle and there was a large explosion that took place next to them and he couldn't believe his eyes but this hello knee as we call in hebrew this non-believing jew anti-religious jew yells out at the top of his voice shema israel hashem al-qaeda and he looks at him in total shock and he says why did you do that why did you say that and this guy answered he said i don't know i have no idea where it came from there's a famous rabbi rabbi yisroel solanter who says that it's easier to make a god the king over the whole world than to make him king over yourself right he can be king over the world but don't tell me what to do okay don't tell me what to do you could be king over the world in general in abstract theoretical but don't don't get too involved in my life right and that is the challenge and that is the cognitive dissonance that we all live how much do we let god in how much do we allow him to you know structure our lives to put a yoke on us and say go this way don't go that way right and this is part of the relationship the commitment that we as jews have always shown and it's been the secret to our survival we know that we know that it's been the secret to our survival this commitment the the words of the shema there's 248 words in the shema prayer and they correspond to the 248 positive mitzvot right we have 248 positive myths vote 365 negative mitzvot meaning don't do's we have 248 dues you know do this do that and the positive mitzvot always represent love right they're positive meaning they're ex they're they're outward they're um as opposed to the negative mitzvah which are based on fear or awe or respect right and those um ask us to restrain ourselves to pull back to say no and we need both but the shema prayer is primarily a prayer of love we're going to end now we can't really get into this unless the project inspire wants to continue this uh series if you want them to do so you can let miriam leibowitz know um but really you know the idea of love um and loving god when you really love somebody you want to do what makes them happy you don't want to do anything that would create some kind of discord in the relationship a disappointment when you truly respect and care and love and of course the love is based on again gratitude recognizing all the blessings in your life the rambam says the love is based on looking around the world and gaining knowledge and appreciation of god through all of the incredible nature and the food and the flowers and the smells and the incredible blessings that surround us and of course love is fostered by giving so it's not only that god gives to us but judaism tells us that we can actually give to god and that is incredibly empowering because we know god doesn't need anything god is perfect god lacks nothing and yet judaism is set up in such a way where god is saying i left the world unfinished and i need you to help me complete it and god tells us i love you so much i need you to love me in the same way back and that's what the shema prayer is about and of course there are so many reasons for us to be able to love god if we do the work of recognizing our blessings being grateful asking from god and seeing ourselves getting some of those things and okay we're going to end here maybe thank you so much for listening and if you can incorporate saying just the first line of the shema in the morning when you wake up at night before you go to sleep and think about some of the things that we've spoken about that is huge that brings more light into the world it brings mankind to a a greater clarity about the concept of the oneness of god who is god of all of mankind hey thank you