Vaetchanan

וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ ׁכְבְּךָ֖וּֽבְש וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃

Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.

– Deuteronomy 6:7

The Jewish people, I believe, is one of the most resilient peoples on the planet, having been tested over and over throughout our history. As a people, we’ve developed a number of survival mechanisms to help us make it through. Prayer can give us hope. Ritual can give us stability. But the most important tool that has helped us stand the test of time can be found in our Torah portion this week.

Vaetchanan, the second parashah of the Book of Deuteronomy, is packed with great material. We find Moses’ final plea to enter the Promised Land, alongside a reiteration of the Ten Commandments, and yet we also find the “watchword of our faith”, the first paragraph of the Shema, words that are traditionally recited twice a day and, in many ways, define who we are as a people.

One of the most incredible things about the Shema is, like the Cha Cha Slide or the Hokey Pokey, the prayer itself tells you how to use it. We’re meant to put it on our doorposts as mezuzot. Many Jews put them in front of their eyes and on their hands in the form of tefillin. Most importantly for our purposes, we are told to recite the words when we’re at home or when we’re elsewhere. For most of our history, we have been far away from home. Many empires have oppressed us or even expelled us, taking everything we owned in the process. But they can never take away the words that define and unite us. In the face of exile, the Jewish people made religion portable. Yes, we have temples and Torah scrolls, but our stories, prayers, and values can never be taken away.

The Shema reminds us that wherever we are can be holy space and that our home can be anywhere we have people to live and pray with. So long as we live inspired by the words of our Torah, hope and kindness can blossom even in the darkest places or moments.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Michael Weiss