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Rabbinic Tefilla Colloquium II

The Current Study Unit  -- by R.Kimelman (Unit 1)

THE SHEMA' LITURGY

Welcome back to our ongoing study of the liturgy. 

(For those just joining us: there is no need to review the last semester's material. If you are inclined to do so, however, go to the archive and take a look at the units on the Shema in Colloquium I.)

Before the summer break we were discussing the idea of God's love for Israel and Israel's capacity to reciprocate that love. We had argued that prefixing the second blessing of the Shema liturgy to the biblical Shema brings within the realm of the possible the mitsvah to love God totally.  It also facilitates discussion of God's love for us.  We also raised the question of why we Jews have abdicated to Christianity the idea of divine love when it is so central to the Torah and the liturgy.  I was surprised that nobody picked up on this issue.  Is it too hot to handle or do we just have difficulty approaching the issue?  Let's get some feedback.

In our next study unit we hope to compare the first and third blessings and thus bring the themes of creation and redemption into conversation with each other.  To facilitate that the current study unit concludes with a chart on the structure of all three blessings and their linkage with the three biblical sections of the Shema

In this unit, which is considerably shorter than others to allow for more give and take, we are concerned with how the liturgy creates a usable past. Its concerns is with the transmission of the redemption from Egypt to keep alive the future redemption.  There is here a serious reflection on the Jewish liturgical memory which could be of great help in our own pedagogy.

Some of the questions to consider:

The third blessing shares along with the third section of the Shema the thesis that God redeems Israel.  Unlike the preliminary blessings, however, there is no readily accessible evidence for redemption as is the sunrise for creation or the Torah for revelation.  The liturgy perforce falls back on the redemption from Egypt as a foreshadowing, if not as paradigm, of future redemption.  

Liturgy is uniquely capable of clasping together past redemption and future hope by grounding them proleptically in the present. Through memory, the past is molded to serve future expectation.  As the memory of redemption sustains the hope for redemption, so past divine conduct serves as a warranty for future divine action.  The rhetorical strategy was articulated in Roman times by the [Jew?] Longinus: "If you introduce events in past time as happening at the present moment, the passage will be transformed from a narrative into a vivid actuality."

It is applied to the liturgy by Max Kadushin as follows:

"In the berakah after the Shema, the redemption from Egypt is felt to be an event which took place in the individual's own day, and not only an event of the remote past.  'True it is,' the individual says, 'that Thou art indeed the Lord our God, and the God of our fathers, our King, King of our fathers, our Redeemer, the Redeemer of our fathers.' In the text as given in Siddur Rav Sa'adia, there is almost a demarcation between the event as an experience of the present and the event as a happening in the past: 'Who redeems us and redeemed our forefathers.' There is indeed so strong an awareness of the redemption, so poignant a sense of the event as a present actuality, that in the evening berakah references to details of the Exodus are couched in the present tense: 'Who performs for us miracles etc.'"

For the blessing, past is only prologue, a promise of the future.    The present proves to be merely the moment where the memory of past redemption is refigured into an expectation of future redemption. By viewing the past with anticipation of the future, its, to use the language of Harold Bloom, "allusiveness introjects the past, and projects the future, but at the paradoxical cost of the present."  By joining in the chorus of past redemption, as will be explained later, the worshiper is found praying for, if not actually announcing, the future redemption.  Thus the recall of the past is reconstructed with anticipation of the future. Indeed, the meaning of the past is precisely in its becoming the cocoon of the future.  The future is not just the past's terminus but also its telos. It is not so much that the past determines the future as the past makes the future possible.   Having once been redeemed, we can again be redeemed. 

This phenomenon underscores the fundamental ambiguity in the recollection of redemption.  The past is not recalled so much for its own sake as for that of the future.  Two processes transpire simultaneously.  Memory is reconstructed so as to quicken the hope in the future while future hope itself becomes the stimulus for the reconstruction of the past.   The result is a remembering forward as well as backward.

This understanding of the narrative mode of consciousness corresponds to what has been called narratological causality, which, has been described by Hayden White as:

"A mode of causality that consists in a seizing of the past by consciousness in such a way as to make of the present a fulfillment of the former's promise rather than merely an effect of some prior (mechanistic, expressive, or structural) cause.  The seizure by consciousness of a past in such a way as to define the present as a fulfillment rather than as an effect is precisely what is represented in a narrativization of a sequence of historical events so as to reveal every thing early in it as a prefiguration of a project to be realized in some future."

Past memory oozes so smoothly into future hope that the border between the recall of the past and the expectation of the future gets blurred.  When the blessing records how "the redeemed intoned a new song of praise," it refers to what they did as well as to what the worshiper is called upon to do.  By adducing testimony from the mouth of the redeemed the breach between past reality and present narrative is closed.  At that moment, the tension between memory and expectation bursts out in song.  In recalling the song of their redemption, we sing our song of redemption.  Indeed, recapitulation of past exultation so elides into present anticipation that their climax, "The Lord shall reign forever," becomes ours.    

Although, as noted, each blessing is implicitly involved in persuading the worshiper of its theological grounding, the third blessing's involvement in such persuasion is explicit.  The blessing is composed of two units: Emet Va-Yatsiv ("true and firm") and Ezrat Avotenu ("Help of our fathers").  The former relates back to the Shema, the latter to the upcoming motif of redemption.  In its present form, they are welded together by the word Emet  which weaves its way through both. 

The first unit opens with a list of sixteen terms, which divide into eight sets of synonyms.  Each extols the subject of the Shema.  Many of them are legal terms for validating contracts or treaties and figure prominently in ancient loyalty oaths.  The first set, Emet Va-Yatsiv, which gave the section its title, affirms the provisions of the Shema.  The penultimate set avers that the text of the Shema was articulated properly and in proper order (metuqan) and thus is acceptable (mequbal).   The final two (tov and yafeh) confirm its validity. 

There follows a series of five asseverations, introduced by the word "true" (emet).  They add up to a credo.  The creed is rattled off staccato-like as follows: 

True! the God of the world/eternity is our king ... True! You are the Lord our God and God of our fathers .... True! You are the lord of Your people ...True! You are the first and You are the last ... True! You have redeemed us from Egypt ...

These asseverations correspond to the three sections of the Shema.  The first four correspond to the first two sections, whereas the fifth corresponds to the third.  He is "our king" "our God" "lord of Your people" who "redeemed us." Save for the first, where God is acclaimed "our king," they are all formulated in the language of direct address: "You are the Lord our God and God of our fathers ...; You are the lord of Your people ...; You are the first and You are the last ...; [and] You have redeemed us from Egypt ...." 

Reinforcing the confessional nature of the material, the beginning of the second unit, Ezrat Avotenu, which appears between the second and third "true" asservation, states that as God delivered in the past so will He in the future. Accordingly, it is emphasized that as we pledged allegiance to divine sovereignty so did our ancestors and so will our progeny. Moreover, it is noted that even though God resides in the heights of the universe, His righteousness extends throughout the world.  The result is that divine sovereignty is noted throughout time and space, throughout the generations as well as in heaven and on earth. All the asservations are professed in the context of the supporting structures of collective memory.  What we have here in toto is nothing less than a catechism intoned as praise.  Through its affirmation, the liturgy induces the worshiper to pledge his/her commitment to God and to take on the yoke of divine sovereignty.

In sum: the first blessing serves as the liturgical overture to the opening verse of the Shema.  It links up creation with God's exclusive sovereignty to make the point that the creator God is the one God.  By portraying God's love as inspiring human love and compliance, the second blessing serves as the prelude to the continuation of the first section ("And you shall love the Lord your God ...") as well as to the second section ("And if you heed my commandments ...") of the Shema.  The third blessing with its theme of redemption corresponds to the third section ("And He said...") of the Shema. 

The full correspondence emerges as follows:

Although the linkage of the "Love" and "Heed" units precludes an exact correspondence between the three blessings and the three Shema sections,  the second blessing's use of the love motif to encourage Israel to reciprocate divine love and to heed the commandments allows for them being grasped as two poles of the same continuum.

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