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THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE SHEMA LITURGY

The linkage of the Shema verse with the motifs of creation, revelation and redemption caps the whole liturgical composition as a rhetorical success. All three motifs are enlisted in the service of the theme of divine sovereignty. The oneness, or better exclusivity, of God is supported by presenting creation as an expression of divine wisdom, by presenting revelation through the antiphonal mode of reciting the Shema, and by prefiguring redemption through the call for God to be One for all. Through the orchestration of all three, the liturgy discloses the evidence for divine sovereignty in all of reality in order to get Israel to acclaim it as well.

It is clear from this summary that the Shema verse is not just the middle, but the generative center of a whole composition on divine sovereignty. Even the second blessing on revelation was formulated to affirm the thesis of divine sovereignty. Both versions of the blessing found in Seder Rav Amram Gaon and Siddur Rav Sa'adyah Gaon contain requests for the extension of divine sovereignty. Even those versions that focus only on the unity and acknowledgement of God implicitly confirm the thesis, for "to unify" or "to acknowledge" God serves as the liturgical equivalent of realizing His sovereignty. Moreover, as noted, the acceptance of the Torah was the primary expression of the acceptance of divine sovereignty. This has to be emphasized since so many commentators adopt an interpretive strategy that reads the composition only linearly from beginning to end. Such a reading following the temporal flow is likely to conclude that the beginning point is creation, the midpoint the Shema, and the endpoint redemption. The trouble is that ends easily elide into conclusions if not actual climaxes. As goals give meaning to processes, so do literary endings control understandings. This is because understanding so often turns out to be a "teleological process" whereby a sense of totality is the end which governs the process. Accordingly, it becomes imperative to bear in mind which telos is controlling the reading.

Thus a linear reading which ends on the motif of redemption can unduly privilege the theme of redemption. This is not to gainsay the significance of the redemptive motif only its primacy. The hopes for redemption inserted in some rites in the first blessing and their connection with the realization of divine sovereignty in the second blessing attest to the resiliency of the motif. Indeed, were we to undertake a phenomenological analysis of the liturgy incorporating all mentions of redemption, we would find in it "a figure for the integration of past, present and future which defies successive time." We would sense with regard to redemption something like what Thomas Mann noted when he said, "In their beginning exists their middle and their end, their past invades the present, and even the most extreme attention to the present is invaded by concern for the future." Moreover, with redemption as the telos, it could be argued that - from the perspective of the consciousness of the worshiper - the unit as a whole makes the point that as ancient Israel acknowledged divine sovereignty and was redeemed, so contemporary Israel should do so to be redeemed.

Notwithstanding the lure of this reading and its applicability elsewhere, it does violence to the original order of the events of the Exodus where redemption preceded revelation, and fails to give the theme of divine sovereignty its due. Moreover, while such a reading can account for that part of the composition that forms a path from creation to redemption via the Shema, it cannot account for the inclusion of the pre-Shema passage, Ahavat olam/Ahavat rabbah, on God's love, and the post-Shema passage, emet ve-yatsiv, on the affirmation of the covenant. There is need then for a reading with a more comprehensive interpretive strategy, a strategy that can account for all of the components. Such a reading needs to resist identifying the purpose or telos of the composition with its end.

If the Shema verse is not just the middle, but the generative center of the whole liturgy, the structure should adhere to an organizational pattern that underscores the verse not just as middle, but as center or pivot. Such a pattern is available through the literary form of the chiasmus. This ancient literary figure for structuring narratives pervades Biblical, Christian, and rabbinic literature, as well as the second blessing of the Shema and liturgical poetry. The chiasmus, named after the Greek letter chi (x), indicates a "criss-cross" arrangement in which the order of the first column is reversed in the second as in the structure abcba. In chiastic structures, the elements form a thematic symmetry. Such organizational devices prove to be more than literary artifice. In making the middle the literary center, the chiasmus empties the ending of any privileged control over sense. Endings are endings, not culminations.

By balancing the second part with the first part through inversion, the chiasmus of the Shema liturgy accounts for all the parts while underscoring the centrality of the Shema as the spatial and ideological fulcrum of the whole structure. Viewing the Shema and its blessings through its lens produces the following diagram:

A1 -- Blessing for Creation and Angelic Acclamation of God

B1 -- Blessing for Torah: "With Eternal Love"

C -- Shema (all three biblical sections)

B2 -- Covenantal Pledge: "True and Firm"

A2 -- Blessing for Redemption and Israelite Acclamation of God

Structuring the liturgy as a pyramid makes it obvious that the Shema is the literary as well as the theological apex of the unit:

C: Shema

B1: "With Eternal Love"               B2: "True and Firm"

A1: Creation and Angelic Acclamation         A2: Redemption and Israelite Acclamation

The core composed of B1, C, and B2 constitutes a covenantal ceremony. C can be understood in two ways. If C is a single unit, it serves as the apex of the pyramidal structure. If C consists of the original first two paragraphs, the classic chiasmic structure of A1 B1 C1 - C2 B2 A2 emerges. Interestingly, the thirteen Qumran Sabbath Songs also follow a chiastic structure with six on each side, the seventh being the apex. Moreover, the sixth through the eighth songs form a distinctive central structure -- the top of the pyramid, so to speak. Similarly, the common elements, especially the numerous lexical links between B1 and B2 as well as with C, form a distinctive central structure to top off the pyramid. It should be noted in this regard that the covenant ceremony of Deuteronomy 29:9-14, as pointed out in the NJPS Deuteronomy, is also structured chiastically with the central focal point being the verse: "That He may establish you as His people and be your God" (29:12).

In any event, since the core does not exhaust the unit, it is clear that there is present more than a biblical-type covenantal ceremony. By incorporating the events of creation and redemption along with their heavenly and historical coronation ceremonies respectively, the appending of A1 and A2 transforms an ancient pact form into a comprehensive rite for the realization of divine sovereignty. The result is that the biblical understanding of covenant is updated terminologically and conceptually to the rabbinic understanding of the acceptance of divine sovereignty. What the covenant is to biblical theology, the realization of divine sovereignty is to rabbinic theology.

It may even be that the acceptance of divine sovereignty becomes the defining characteristic of rabbinic Judaism. Thus it figures prominently in the earliest rabbinic discussion of the Shema of Rabban Gamaliel (Mishnah: Berakhot 2:5), while absent from the earlier discussion of Philo (The Special Laws 4:141). Initially, the motif of divine sovereignty was also absent from emet ve-yatsiv as this prayer was part of the pre-rabbinic Temple liturgy. It became rabbinized through the incorporation of the sovereignty theme.

The metaphor of God as king is not as common in the Bible as one would expect in view of its prominence in rabbinic Judaism. The Pentateuch contains at most only three references (Exodus 15:18; Numbers 23:21; and possibly Deuteronomy 33:5) all of which appear in poetic selections. The metaphor of divine kingship is most prominent in those Psalms (93, 95-99) that celebrate God's kingship. (See our discussion of Psalm 145 -- Ashrei). The different images of God as king in the Psalms converge to make Him ruler over the divine realm, the natural realm, and the human realm -- that is, over all gods, over all the world, and over all the nations. Outside of Psalms, its use as a liturgical metaphor is rare.

According to the Rabbis, there are other relevant links between the Shema and the Decalogue. For them, the concluding words of the third section --"I am the Lord your [plural] God" -- indicate the sovereignty of God, and correspond to the opening of the Decalogue, "I am the Lord your [singular] God." Moreover, the penultimate thought of the third section, "that you not go astray after your heart and eyes after which you lust," refers, as noted above, "to heretical and idolatrous thoughts." It thus matches the second saying of the Decalogue and the aforementioned rabbinic understanding of the end of the Shema verse, "The Lord is One." With this ending and the Shema's beginning, the three sections comprise a liturgical construct based on an envelope figure which begins and ends on the two concomitant themes of divine sovereignty and the rejection of idolatry/polytheism.

Similarly, the lectionary readings of the Temple service, by opening with the first verse of the Decalogue and closing with the last verse of the third section of the Shema, also form such a literary inclusion. The Decalogue begins: "I am the Lord your God who took you out of the Land of Egypt ..." (Exodus 20:2), and the third section ends: "I am the Lord your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. I am the Lord your God" (Numbers 15:41). The result is the principle of liturgical composition of beginning and ending on the same theme.

The difference between the Temple lectionary unit and the rabbinic one is that the inclusion of the former consists of a verbal tabulation, whereas that of the latter consists only of a conceptual one. This is of major significance in determining the purpose behind the rabbinic Shema liturgy and its chiastic structure.

In addition to supporting the theological agenda of the whole liturgical composition, the chiastic construction helps identify the blessing which preceded the lectionary readings in the Temple, as well as indicate how the liturgy of the Shema and its blessings emerged out of the Temple service. As noted, the Temple readings consisted of the Decalogue and the sections which came to comprise the Shema, followed by emet ve-yatsiv, et al. Originally, the Shema liturgy was composed of a covenantal core, namely, B1, B2, and C.

Consisting totally of Deuteronomic material and motifs, it adhered to ancient treaty-covenantal models. It also corresponded to the Temple service without the Decalogue. By subsequently prefixing to the core A1 with its motif of creation and suffixing A2 with its motif of redemption, a Deuteronomy-based covenantal ceremony became flanked by the themes of Genesis and Exodus. As similar functioning accretions to an original covenant ceremony, A1 and A2 both contain a coronation ceremony -- the first by angels, the second by ancient Israel. Both draw upon past events -- Creation or the Exodus, to affirm divine sovereignty in the present. In contrast, B1, as B2, not only lacks a coronation ceremony (its Deuteronomic bent would preclude any angelology), but differs widely in structure and content from A1 as noted above at the end of the section on the second blessing.

Both literary structure and theological analysis converge to indicate that the original blessing was a Torah-centered one on the order of the second blessing rather than a creation-centered one on the order of the first. Such a Torah-centered blessing originally served to introduce the series of biblical lectionaries beginning with the Decalogue. In the absence of the Decalogue, it was undoubtedly adapted to the needs of introducing the Shema directly.

Such a practice of beginning the morning service with a Torah-centered blessing is paralleled by the Qumran liturgy, Daily Prayers. There the response to the sun shining over the earth is " ‘Barukh’ God of Israel who chose us from among all the nations." The same terminology, "who chose us among all the nations," characterizes the opening rabbinic blessing of biblical lectionary readings, a blessing considered on par with the second blessing of the Shema. Also, the motifs of the hymn of The Rule of the Community that starts: "With the coming of the day and night I will enter the covenant of God, and when evening and morning depart I will recite His ordinances" correlates exactly with the covenantal core of the Shema, particularly the second blessing and the second section.

The first blessing added to introduce the covenantal core also has Qumran parallels. As it blesses God at the daily interchange of the luminaries, so The Rule of the Community blesses God: "At the beginning of the rule of light in its time, and...at the beginning of the watches of darkness. Also the Qumran Daily Prayers contain the refrain: "When the sun goes forth to illumine the earth, they shall bless by responding through saying, ‘Blessed be the God of Israel’. " In addition, 11QPsa as well as The Daily Prayers of 4Q503 and probably those of 4Q408 now provide solid evidence for joint human-angelic praise in the context of blessings for the daily renewal of the heavenly lights. Also the Qumran Sabbath Songs are in large measure an implicit call to imitate the angels: the community should, in so far as this is possible, reproduce in its liturgical life the liturgical activities around the throne of God. This linkage between Qumran and the Shema liturgy is of special import since joint human-angelic praise is rare elsewhere.

In the Bible, the liturgic emulation of the angels is only indicated in Psalm 103:20-22. Psalm 148 calls on all aspects of creation to praise God, but does not indicate any imitation of the heavenly realm. This is also the case in the most of the Apocryphal literature. The exceptions are Heikhalot and Enochic literature.

It is clear that the rabbinic Shema liturgy was not composed ex nihilo. Most of its elements can be accounted for by a combination of Qumran and Temple liturgies. The exception is its generative theme of divine sovereignty. The recognition of the redactional structure hence rounds out the theological argument. A straight linear reading creates the assumption that the temporal integration is predicated on a memory of the past, a perception of the present, and an expectation of the future. It assumes that the unit as a whole is trying to get the reader, in the words of one literary theorist, to experience that concordance of beginning, middle, and end which is the essence of explanatory fictions.

In contrast, the chiastic structure shows how both creation and redemption are adduced as evidence of divine sovereignty. Indeed, it could be argued that the realization of divine sovereignty in the present is what lets the past and future become creation and redemption. Buber, as mentioned above, showed his appreciation of this connection by noting that "both creation and redemption are true only on the premise that revelation is a present experience." Thus the liturgy presents a scenario of beginnings getting perceived as creation and endings as redemption by virtue of Israel's response to revelation. Moreover, once the event of revelation gets constructed as an act of realization of divine sovereignty, creation and redemption become understood also as acts that attest to divine sovereignty.

It is thus misleading both historically and conceptually to present the Shema liturgy as organized around the three axes of creation, revelation, and redemption. Were the liturgy predicated on these three axes, they could account for it in its entirety. In actuality, the theme of divine sovereignty alone has the explanatory power to account for the whole liturgical narrative. Only it explains the presence of acclamation rites in the first and third blessing, whether angelic or Israelite; only it explains the supplanting of the Decalogue by the rabbinic Shema; only it explains the applicability of the term pores to the Shema in emulation of Greco-Roman acclamation rites; as only it explains the insertion of "Blessed be the name of His glorious sovereignty for ever and ever" after the Shema verse.

The motifs of creation and redemption are enlisted in the service of the theme of divine sovereignty and not vice versa. In other words, God is not sovereign because He creates and redeems; rather, because He is sovereign He creates and redeems. The centrality of the theme of divine sovereignty explains why it permeates the whole piece, whereas the creation motif is limited to the first blessing, as the redemption motif is limited to the third except for the aforementioned and easily recognizable accretions in the first two blessings.