"Shema is one of the key words of the book of Devarim, where it appears no less than 92 times. It is, in fact, one of the key words of Judaism as a whole. It is central to the two passages that form the first two paragraphs of the Shema, one in last week’s parsha, the other in this week’s.
What is more: it is untranslatable. It means many things: to hear, to listen, to pay attention, to understand, to internalise and to respond. It is the closest biblical Hebrew comes to a verb that means “to obey.”
In general, when you encounter a word in any language that is untranslatable into your own, you are close to the beating pulse of that culture. To understand an untranslatable word, you have to be prepared to move out of your comfort zone and enter a mindset that is significantly different from yours.
At the most basic level, Shema represents that aspect of Judaism that was most radical in its day: that God cannot be seen. He can only be heard. Time and again Moshe warns against making or worshipping any physical representation of the Divine. As he tells the people: It is a theme that runs through the Chumash. Moshe insistently reminds the people that at Mount Sinai: “Hashem spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). Even when Moshe mentions seeing, he is really talking about listening. A classic example occurs in the opening verses of next week’s parsha:
See [re’eh], I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse – the blessing if you listen [tishme’u] to the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you do not listen [lo tishme’u] to the commands of Hashem. (Devarim 11:26-28)
This affects our most basic metaphors of knowing. To this day, in English, virtually all our words for understanding or intellect are governed by the metaphor of sight. We speak of insight, hindsight, foresight, vision and imagination. We speak of people being perceptive, of making an observation, of adopting a perspective. We say, “it appears that.” When we understand something, we say, “I see.” This entire linguistic constellation is the legacy of the philosophers of ancient Greece, the supreme example in all history of a visual culture.
Judaism, by contrast, is a culture of the ear more than the eye. As Rabbi David Cohen, the disciple of Rav Kook known as ‘the Nazir’, pointed out in his book, Kol ha-Nevuah, the Babylonian Talmud consistently uses the metaphor of hearing. So when a proof is brought, it says Ta shma, ‘Come and hear.’ When it speaks of inference it says, Shema mina, ‘Hear from this.’ When someone disagrees with an argument, it says Lo shemiyah leih, ‘he could not hear it.’ When it draws a conclusion it says, Mashma, ‘from this it can be heard.’ Maimonides calls the oral tradition, Mipi hashemua, ‘from the mouth of that which was heard.’ In Western culture understanding is a form of seeing. In Judaism it is a form of listening.
God, in making human beings “in His image,” was creating otherness. And the bridge between self and other is conversation: speaking and listening. When we speak, we tell others who and what we are. But when we listen, we allow others to tell us who they are. This is the supremely revelatory moment. And if we can’t listen to other people, then we certainly can’t listen to G-d, whose otherness is not relative but absolute.
Hence the urgency behind Moshe's double emphasis in this week’s parsha, the opening line of the second paragraph of the Shema: “If you indeed heed [shamo’a tishme’u] my commands with which I charge you today, to love the Lord your God and worship Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 11:13). A more forceful translation might be: “If you listen – and I mean really listen.”
One can almost imagine the Israelites saying to Moshe, “OK. Enough already. We hear you,” and Moses replying, “No you don’t. You simply don’t understand what is happening here. The Creator of the entire universe is taking a personal interest in your welfare and destiny: you, the smallest of all nations and by no means the most righteous. Have you any idea of what that means?” Perhaps we still don’t."
