The Light Lab Podcast Episode 8: We Are/Will Be One (Shema and Aleinu)

10:58PM Dec 15, 2021

Speakers:

Eliana Light

Keywords:

vav

shema

interconnectedness

connected

talk

liturgy

oneness

gap

moment

life

statement

adonai

torah

learned

work

amazing

prayer

feel

wrestled

worship

Shalom, everyone! Welcome to the Light Lab Podcast! Today it's just me, Eliana Light coming to you with something that I have been thinking about, turning over in my mind for a while about two particular pieces of liturgy. And I just wanted to share it with you see what you thought. So we have in our Siddur the kind of main idea or I learned this as like the thesis statement of Jewish life, which is the Shema. The Shema, which comes from Devarim in the Torah, this line, which is more of a statement than a prayer appears in the morning service, the evening service, also traditionally said before bedtime, the bedtime schema, and I'm going to say it out loud to you. Note that in this first time, I am going to use Adonai in place of yud hay vav hay. Yud hey vav hey is the unpronounceable name for The Holy One. The proper name just like my name is Eliana. G? has kind of like the job description, yud hay vav hey or Elohim, in that case. Yud hey vav hey is the name of the Holy One. We have been taught to replace it with Adonai, a lot of us, which means My Lord, and that's the way a lot of us have learned it. So I'm going to say it for you now. And I invite you to take a moment and just see how it feels in you to hear this said aloud. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. You know, now that I'm thinking of it, it's a six word prayer, six word memoirs, those have been going around this kind of encapsulation of so much in six words, and some of them repeat. We're really doing a lot with a little here. The translation I learned growing up, was Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G?d, the Lord is One. And yet there's so many different ways to translate each of those lines. Storahtelling and Lab Shul do a lot of great work with that. I remember when I brought them in, when I was on the Hillel board at Brandeis University, we brought them in and they did their signature, Shema translation, exercise, and I think we came up with Yo G?d Wrestlers, which was then something we would say to each other all the time, Yisrael being the name that Jacob received after he wrestled with a messenger of the Divine. We can link to that text. It's an incredible story. But that is what we are named. So, listen up those who wrestled with the Divine those who wrestled with G?d. Yud hey vav hey Eloheinu. Sometimes I say That which you call G?d is our G?d. All that is, because yud hey vav hey shares a word with lihiyot, being, that which is the ultimate is ultimate being. Eloheinu is our G?d, it is what we put above ourselves. There's this great quote by Renita Jay Weins that I first learned about in Casper Ter Kuile's amazing book, The Power of Ritual, which is this. We are wired for worship. So we're going to end up worshiping something. Better to be intentional about what that something is, instead of falling into the trap of worshipping money, status, and power. Elohim is what we direct ourselves towards what we put above ourselves. And so instead of putting false idols above ourselves, money, power, greed status, we put yud hey vav hey above ourselves, however you conceptualize that, but it has something to do with ultimate being. And then we go on to say, yud hey vav hey is not only what we put above ourselves, yud hey vav hey is one. Now I have a book on my shelf, I think called The Many Meanings of God is One there's so many different ways of thinking of this. As a kid, I remember learning the most that we're saying G?d is one, as opposed to G?d is two or three are many. That is a statement of monotheism, belief in only one G?d. Or echad can also mean unique. G?d is unique amongst all that could be worshipped. Or G?d is not a human being. As much as we like to describe G?d using anthropomorphic terms, G?d's not a person, and it's not for us to put that on yud hey vav hey. Or we can go a step further. And say that when we say yud hey vav hey echad, we're saying yud hey vav hey is it. Like that's what there, that's what there is, all is G?d, which is one way of thinking of it. Or we can think of echad as a connection, connected interconnected that it is one unit. That all that is Ultimate Being is one complete whole.

And this is the one that I appreciate the most, that we are all connected, not just all people, but our past or present and our future, our Earth, we are part of the same spirit, we are part of the same fabric of life, all of the atoms that make up you make up me and the mountains and the ocean, and the rivers and the trees, and all of the clothes that I can see from my podcast closet. Everything matters every moment is every moment that has come before and every moment that will come after it. It is all connected. That interconnection we say as a fact as a statement. And so it was interesting to me when I noticed that at the end of the aleinu, this prayer that is traditionally said at the end of all services, which originated, we think maybe in the Middle Ages as part of the high holiday liturgy, from Malchuyot, the section on kingship, but some scholars think it is actually older. In any case, at the end of the Aleinu after we have expressed our desire for all peoples of the world to understand yud hey vav hey, as Elohim to understand all that is as G?d, we say: Bayom hahoo yihiyeh yud hey vav hey echad ushemo echad. And on that day, bayom hahu, yihiyeh, it will be, that yud hey vav hey is one, and, ushemo, in the Hebrew, His name, we could say, G?d's name, or yud hey vav hey's name, meaning yud hey vav hey itself, will be one. But that doesn't make any sense. If we look at the schema as a statement of fact, now here in the end of the aleinu, we have something that is aspirational. On that day. What does it mean for something to both be true and aspirational at the same time?

Well, I think it's because at least for me, that the interconnectedness, the oneness of all things is a statement of fact, and that we often forget. We forget all the time that we are interconnected that we are part of the same whole part of the same unit. How would it actually change our actions, the way that we relate to ourselves and others, the way we relate to people we know and people we don't know, the way that we vote, the way that we spend our money? How would it actually change? If we truly, truly understood and lived by this truth of yud hey vav hey echad, of the interconnectedness of everything? How would it shift our Earth and our planet? It would have to! Like if we actually took this seriously, our economies would be totally different. Our governments would be different, the way that we talk to each other and take care of each other, the way that we structure our societies, the way that we care for our planet. I think almost everything would actually change if we took this seriously. Now there's a lot of forces trying to get us to forget our interconnectedness. Right. Nobody makes money off of us realizing how connected we are and taking care of our Earth. But if we actually did, it would be incredibly transformational. And now that I'm talking about it, perhaps the Torah, the society that is laid out in the Torah is a nudge in that direction. Perhaps halacha is a nudge in that direction, and understanding that there's something greater than us at work. That I am, yes, an individual but I am part of something greater than myself. And yet, we don't act like it all the time. But if we did, if we actually did, that's the bayom hahu that Aleinu was talking about. That's the on that day. When One-ness is not just a truth about the world in a spiritual sense, but we have manifested it through our actions. We have moved it in to the practical into the way that we work into the way that we care into all of our structures. And I'm getting like wistful just thinking about it, that is the day that I am working towards, and a lot of us are working towards, and perhaps in some small way you are also working towards.

One of the things I value the most about Judaism, which I think I bring up on the show a lot is that we hold multiple truths at once. We hold the idea that this world is a gift that it is grace that we are here, that it is amazing to be alive, that we should enjoy what we have to feel, awe, to feel gratitude, to bless, to look around the world and think, wow, things are amazing, just as they are. That is Shabbat, in a sense, is looking around the world and saying things are amazing just as they are in living in that moment, without the desire to change anything. And yet, we also hold the truth that a lot of things really need to change, like a lot to get to this world where we are living the truth of One-ness of lot needs to change. In last week's episode, Yoshi and I talked about this a little bit, that prophecy is the ability to be in the present moment, see what is going on, and then do something about it, not just to be afraid to say something is wrong here. So that gap between Shabbat and the rest of the week, that gap between the gratitude and our prayers and the help, we are in distress prayers, that gap between the world the prophet sees and the world as it could be. That's the gap between Shema and Aleinu. What are we doing to close that gap? How can we act in One-ness? How can we spend our money and vote and talk to each other and talk to ourselves knowing that it is a fundamental truth of life, that we are all connected.

So I invite you. Let's just end with a deep breath together. Settling into your seat just for one moment, maybe rolling your shoulders back, opening up your chest, feeling connected to the earth through your feet or through your seat, taking a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Breathing in to lift, breathing out to ground. And as you breathe, know that the air that you're breathing is the air that is shared with all life. Trees and the plants breathe it out. Every human breathes it in and out. It is the air that has existed since the beginning of this earth. No new air. We are connected through our breathing through this air. Just as we are connected in all things. So if you ever feel alone in the world, as it is so so easy to do, because there are so many forces trying to get us to forget the fundamental oneness of this universe of this world of this holiness. You have this breath this breath through which you are connected to all life all that has ever been an all that ever will be. Sit in that breath for a moment. What a blessing, each breath. I bless you dear listener with an awareness of oneness in those beautiful and fleeting moments where you truly feel it. I bless you with an awareness of oneness, cognitively, even if you don't feel it all the time. So that we can work towards a world that bayom hahoo, on that day, where we will truly all be one. Thank you so much for listening. And we'll be with you again soon. Take care my friends.