LITURGY.Shema.Sources

Sovereignization

The center of sovereignization is... the Shema verse, “the acceptance of the authority of divine sovereignty,”a thesis buttressed by the rabbinic insertion of “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingship for ever and ever” immediately following.

Once the Shema was understood in terms of divine sovereignty, its rays radiated throughout the liturgy forward and backward beginning with the preceding angelic coronation of God in heaven of the first blessing and ending with the ancient Israel coronation of God at the Song at the Sea excerpted in the third blessing.

KIMELMAN REFERS TO:

שְְׁמעַ יִשְׂרָאֵל, יהוה אֱלֹהיֵנוּ, יהוה אֶחָֽד
בָּרוךְ שֵׁם כְְּכוד מַלְכותו לְְעוֹלָם וָעֶד

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korḥa said:

Why did the portion of Shema precede that of VeHaya im Shamoa?

This is so that one will first accept upon himself the kingdom of Heaven

(Kimelman, The Theology of the Daily Liturgy)

Reuven Kimelman:

An example of a whole unit tied together theologically is the Shema Liturgy. It consists of two blessings preceding the three biblical lectionaries and one succeeding. The linkage of the Shema verse, as rabbinically understood, 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 the exclusivity and singularity, of God is supported by the representation of creation as an expression of divine sovereignty. It is further supported by the reenactment of revelation through the antiphonal mode of the recitation of the Shema, known as Poreis et Shema. Finally, it is supported by the prefiguring of redemption through the call for God to be One for all, as the Shema verse was understood. Through the orchestration of all three, the liturgy discloses the evidence for divine sovereignty in all of reality to induce Israel to acclaim it as well.

The Shema verse is more than the middle; it is the generative center of a layered composition on divine sovereignty. This needs underscoring lest we adopt an interpretive strategy of reading the liturgical composition only linearly from beginning to end. Such a reading following the order of events is likely to conclude that the beginning point is creation, the midpoint Shema, and the endpoint redemption. The problem with this emplotment is that it tends too easily to elide into culminations, if not climaxes. As goals give meaning to processes, so do literary endings control understandings. Since understanding so often turns out to be a “teleological process” whereby “a sense of totality is the end which governs the process,” it becomes imperative to bear in mind the telos that controls the reading. It is one thing to note that the blessing of redemption comes at the end of the whole composition; it is another to see redemption as the telos of the whole composition. A linear reading unduly privileges the theme of redemption. This is not to gainsay the significance of the redemptive motif, just 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 in the order of 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, the reading does violence to the original order of the events of the Exodus where redemption preceded revelation. It also fails to give the theme of divine sovereignty its due. Although such a reading accounts for the parts of the composition that form a path from creation to redemption via the Shema, it does not account for the inclusion of the pre-Shema passage, Ahavat Olam/Ahavah Rabbah, on God’s love, and the postShema passage, Emet VeYatsiv, on the affirmation of the covenant. This deficiency argues for a more comprehensive interpretive strategy, a strategy that can account for all the components while resisting the identification of the purpose or telos of the composition with its end. An alternative strategy to a linear reading is a chiastic one. The chiasmus is an ancient literary figure for structuring narratives. It pervades biblical, Christian, and rabbinic literature along with liturgical poetry. The chiasmus, named after the Greek letter chi (x), signifies a crisscross 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 remain endings, not culminations. In the case of the Shema Liturgy, the Shema verse is more than the middle. It is the generative center of the whole Shema Liturgy. The structure adheres to an organizational pattern that underscores the verse as center or pivot. By balancing the second part with the first part through inversion, the chiasmus of the Shema Liturgy accounts for all the parts, underscoring the centrality of the Shema as the spatial and ideological fulcrum of the whole structure. Viewing the Shema and its blessings through this lens produces the following diagram: A1 —Blessing for Creation with Angelic Acclamation of God B1 —Blessing for Torah: “With Eternal Love” C—Shema (the three biblical sections) B2 —Covenantal Pledge: “True and Firm” A2 —Blessing for Redemption with Israelite Acclamation of God The pyramid structure of the liturgy makes it obvious that the Shema is the literary as well as the theological centerpiece of the unit. The core composed of B1 , C, B2 constitutes a covenantal ceremony. Consisting totally of Deuteronomic material and motifs, it adheres to ancient treaty-covenantal models. There is, however, more to the Shema Liturgy than its core of a biblical-type covenantal ceremony. The Deuteronomy-based covenantal ceremony became flanked by the creation theme of Genesis and the redemption theme of Exodus. This produced an outer frame consisting of A1 and A2 , which now brackets the original inner frame of B1 and B2 . By the incorporation of the events of creation and redemption along with their heavenly and historical coronation ceremonies respectively, the appendage of A1 and A2 transforms an ancient pact form into a comprehensive rite for the realization of divine sovereignty. To appreciate the significance of this transformation, one must realize that the original unit of B1 , C, B2 lacked any reference to God as king. Subsequently, each component absorbed a reference to divine kingship. By late tannaitic times, C absorbed “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingship for ever and ever,” after the Shema verse; by early amoraic times, B2 absorbed the kingship motif as did B1 by geonic times. The result is that the biblical understanding of covenant was updated terminologically and conceptually to the rabbinic understanding of the acceptance of divine sovereignty. What the covenant was for biblical as for Second Temple theology and liturgy, especially at Qumran, the realization of divine sovereignty became for rabbinic theology and liturgy. The key element of a biblically based covenantal ceremony, namely the Decalogue, is absent. In Exodus 34:27–28 and Deuteronomy 4:11–13, the Decalogue is the document of the covenant. It thus preceded the Shema lectionaries in the Temple service, as recorded in Mishnah Tamid 5:1. In addition to the many links between the Shema verse and the Decalogue, there are also connections between the Decalogue and the third section from Numbers 15:37–41. According to the Rabbis, the first words of the concluding verse of the third section —“I am Adonai your [plural] God” — indicate the sovereignty of God, and correspond to the opening of the Decalogue, “I am Adonai your [singular] God.” The two whole verses form a literary inclusion. The Decalogue begins: “I am Adonai your God who took you out of the Land of Egypt ... ” (Exodus 20:2); the third section ends: “I am Adonai your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. I am Adonai your God” (Numbers 15:41). This conforms to the widespread principle of liturgical composition that endings should recapitulate beginnings. Moreover, the penultimate thought of the third section, “that you not be seduced by your heart or led astray by your eyes” (Numbers 15:39) was understood to refer “to heretical and idolatrous thoughts.” It thus matches both the second saying of the Decalogue and the understanding of the end of the Shema verse, “Adonai is One,” as also excluding idolatry. It is precisely the equivalence between the Shema and the Decalogue, as rabbinically understood, as acts of accepting divine sovereignty and the authority of the commandments that accounts for the exclusion of the Decalogue from the rabbinic liturgy. By ending with Numbers 15:41 and beginning with Deuteronomy 6:5, the three biblical sections of the Shema also comprise a liturgical construct based on an envelope figure that begins and ends on the two concomitant themes of the acceptance of divine sovereignty and the rejection of idolatry/polytheism. The difference between the Temple lectionary unit and the rabbinic unit is that the envelope figure of the former consists of a verbal tabulation, whereas that of the latter is a conceptual one. This is consequential in determining the purpose behind the Rabbinic Shema Liturgy and its chiastic structure. The retention of the Emet VeYasiv confirmation prayer in the rabbinic liturgy, after the third lectionary (Numbers 15:37–41), despite its independence of the redemption theme of the blessing, attests to the linkage between the recitation of the Shema and ancient loyalty pacts. The Shema-Decalogue connection may also have spawned the Shema redemption connection. As the covenant at Sinai was grounded in the Exodus, “I am Adonai- your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt,” so the covenantal ceremony of the Shema came to invoke the Exodus. Once past redemption is evoked, hope for future redemption cannot lag far behind, except the future redemption encompasses all humanity, not just Israel. Thus, the end of the Shema verse “Adonai is one” was read in the light of Zechariah 14:9, “Adonai shall be king over all the earth. In that day, shall Adonai be one and His name o/One” to indicate that Adonai will be One for all. The point is that the redemption of Israel, prefiguring the redemption of humanity, culminates in the universal acknowledgement of divine sovereignty. Both literary structure and theological analysis confirm that the original blessing was an election-centered one on the order of the second blessing, rather than a creation-centered one on the order of the first. In fact, the second blessing was dubbed “the blessing of the Torah.” 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 adapted to the needs of introducing the Shema directly. Thus, the blessing became as much love-centered as Torah-centered. The Qumran liturgy, Daily Prayers, also starts the morning service with an election-centered blessing. 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 for biblical lectionary readings, a blessing considered on a par with the second blessing of the Shema. The motifs of the hymn of The Rule of the Community (1QS 10:10) that starts “With the coming of the day and night, I will enter the covenant of God; when evening and morning depart, I will recite His ordinances,” also correlate exactly with the covenantal core of the Shema, specifically the second blessing and the first two lectionaries of the Shema. The first blessing of the Shema Liturgy, which precedes the covenantal core, also has Qumran parallels in the offering of a blessing at the turn of the day and in the incorporation of a combination of angelic and human praise. As the first blessing blesses God at the daily interchange of the luminaries, so the concluding hymn of The Rule of the Community states that the Maskil shall bless Him [with the offering of the lips] at the times ordained by Him: At the beginning of the dominion of light, and at its end when it retires to its appointed place; at the beginning of the watches of darkness when He unlocks their storehouse and spreads them out and at their end when they retire before the light. Qumran thus attests to the availability of the type of liturgical material out of which emerged the first two blessings. There is an early text that assumes the Amidah succeeds the Shema without any intervening blessing on redemption. Subsequent versions of the text were made to conform to the later thesis that the blessing for redemption should be adjoined to the Amidah.

The Rabbinic Shema Liturgy was not composed ex nihilo. Much of it has antecedents in Qumran and Temple liturgies. What lacks any antecedent is its generative theme of divine sovereignty. The chiastic

structure underscores the theme of divine sovereignty by showing how both creation and redemption can be adduced as evidence. Indeed, it is through the realization of divine sovereignty in the present that the past and future become creation and redemption. In the spirit of Martin Buber’s comment, “both creation and redemption are true only on the premise that revelation is a present experience,” it can be said that both creation and redemption are perceived as true by virtue of the acceptance of divine sovereignty in the present. The liturgy hence presents a scenario of beginnings perceived as creation and endings perceived as redemption by virtue of Israel’s response to revelation. By construing the Sinaitic revelation as an act of realization of divine sovereignty, creation and redemption become construable 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. Only the theme of divine sovereignty possesses the explanatory power to account for the whole liturgical narrative. It alone is the master 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 role of the Decalogue by the Rabbinic Shema; only it explains the applicability of the term poreis to the Shema as dividing it in two in emulation of Greco-Roman acclamation rites; and only it explains the insertion of “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingship for ever and ever” after the Shema verse. The motifs of creation and redemption are enlisted in its service, not vice versa. In other words, God is not sovereign because He creates and redeems, rather because God is sovereign He creates and redeems. The centrality of the theme of divine sovereignty accounts for its permeation of the whole Shema Liturgy, whereas the creation motif is limited to the first blessing as the redemption motif is limited to the third, except for the accretions in the first two blessings. The Shema verse becomes in the liturgy the covenantal substitute for the Decalogue as well as the theological and literary center of a symphonic composition on the acceptance of divine sovereignty. It became the verse for the mention of the acceptance of divine kingship despite the absence of any explicit mention of kingship. This is due to the perception of Zechariah 14:9, “Adonai shall be king over all the earth. In that day, shall Adonai be one and His name One,” as an extension of the Shema verse. Three of the six words of the Shema verse, namely, “Adonai” twice and “One” once are recycled in Zechariah 14:9. The rest of Zechariah 14:9 focuses on the worldwide extension of divine kingship. Thus, just as Zechariah 14:9 was perceived as adding the explicit mention of kingship to the Shema verse, so the Shema verse came to be perceived in terms of the kingship reference of Zechariah 14:9. The joining of Zechariah 14:9 to Zephaniah 3:9 with its hope that all will invoke God by the same name led to the understanding of the Zechariah verse as implicit in the Shema verse. Thus the “one” of the Shema verse came also to mean “one for all,” or “all for the One.” The liturgical Shema is the eschatological Shema. In the case of the Shema Liturgy, the focus on when, where, and how it came into being enables the grasping of the Shema Liturgy as a coronation ceremony within the cultural context of the Roman Empire.