Keep Yourself Secret
The Radical Message of the Shema
Therefore impress these My words upon your very heart: bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, and teach them to your children—reciting them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up; and inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates—to the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth. (Deuteronomy 11:18-21)
AND YOU SHALL PLACE MY WORDS [UPON YOUR HEART] — Even after you have been banished make yourselves distinctive by means of My commands: lay Tefillin, attach Mezuzot to your doorposts, so that these shall not be novelties to you when you return. Similarly does it state, (Jeremiah 31:21) “Set thee up distinguishing marks” (Rashi, quoting Sifrei Devarim 43:34).
There is no difference between the [Holy] books and Tefilin [Phylacteries] and Mezuzzot [scrolls placed on the door posts (Deut. 6:8-9)], except that the first mentioned may be written in any language, but the latter in Hebrew only…(Mishnah Megillah 1:8)
The full text of the Shema is one of the most “meta” texts in Jewish tradition. It is a text that commands us to remember it—to recite it, to place it on our bodies and homes, to repeat it to our children. When we do those things, we fulfill the commandment, but we also end up in a strange loop. What, precisely are we remembering? Perhaps we are remembering to remember to remember to remember…the Shema is paradigmatically self-referential.
When the written text hangs on the doorpost or the head or the arm it is no longer there simply to be read. It’s as if the text itself has an aura, becomes a charm. The text inside a mezzuza or inside a tefillin box is not waiting to be read; it’s there, doing its job, precisely by not being read. Tefillin and mezzuzah remind us that texts are not just written documents, but things. Anticipating the collages of Susan Howe and the koanic compositions of John Cage, the Shema is a text that points at itself pointing beyond the moon.
One of the more overlooked aspects of the Shema is its context in Deuteronomy. Originally, the text is offered as a prophylactic against diaspora. Ironically, it has become a paradigm of a text that keeps us company even in our exile. The most unschooled Jews, and even the most uninformed Gentiles, know something of the Shema. Far from being a prayer that signifies thriving in one’s homeland, the Shema is a sign, a trace, of the desire for wholeness. In Bereishit Rabbah 98:3, the Midrash reads the Shema as a consolation spoken by Jacob’s sons to Jacob on his deathbed. “It might seem as if we’re lost and estranged, here in Egypt, but don’t fear; God is one, ie., is with us wherever we are. We have not abandoned our quest, nor discarded your lineage, father.”
Rashi, following the Midrash, sees Shema as a rehearsal or preparation for return to the Land. It’s an act of faith that one day it will be useful again. I doubt most people who say the Shema hold this intention, but it’s fascinating; it almost makes the text into a kind of locket, all that remains of a lost lover with whom one hopes to reunite.
If you consider that Shema is typically recited on one’s deathbed, and that it is also the martyr’s prayer (the last words on Rabbi Akiva’s lips as he is being tortured by the Romans), the promised land becomes a metaphor for the World to Come. To recite the Shema is to remember that there is more to life than what appears to us. To close one’s eyes when one says it is to say that there is another realm one can see beyond the visual and tangible.
It’s funny—tefillin boxes and mezzuzot involve texts which are covered. In this, they mirror the covered face of the Shema reciter. Why would a textual reminder need to be covered? Would you keep a calendar in a black box, only opening it once every few years to ensure the ink hadn’t smudged?
A clue comes from the Midrash which Rashi cites. The words of the Shema are referred to as “distinguishing marks.” That is, the Shema exists less for the sake of what it says than what it does. To say the Shema is to be distinguished, set apart. This is also deeply paradoxical. The content of the first part of the Shema proclaims the unity of God, while the act of proclaiming it renders the reciter differentiated. Shema is about the unity we can find and disclose only by being different. The tefillin and mezzuzah scrolls need not be opened, because the point is not what they say, but what they conceal. To be different is to hold untranslatable secrets. To thrive in the promised land, one must become differentiated; one must individuate. According to Hermann Cohen, echad (one) does not mean “numerically one” but “singular.” Monotheism is not about there being one God, but about the one God (and the human being created in the divine image) being non-generic. Just as no theological thesis can capture the essence of the singular God, no theory of human nature can capture the essence of the singular human being. We cover that which cannot be and need not be shared to remind ourselves of the singular.
As I wrote about here, the Mishna makes a theoretical, legal distinction between Torah scrolls and Tefillin and Mezzuza. The former can be translated—or at least written in a non-sacred language—and maintain their holy status. The latter cease being holy as soon as they alter their form. Strikingly, it is the text which we read and seek to understand that maintains is holiness despite morphographic changes; it is the texts which we do not read, however, that must stay as they are. This shows that language has at least two qualities—one is the sense we make of and from it; the other is the sign-value that it has for us. As I wrote about in a recent thread, Franz Rosenzweig thought that it was important for Jews to encounter Hebrew even if they didn’t understand what it meant, because religious life is as much about the awe of the ancient as it is about the clarity of the intelligible. In translating the Bible with Buber, he sought to maintain the experience of Hebrew even as he wrote in German. The sound and breath mattered more than the meaning; or rather, the meaning was more likely to be found in the sensory qualities of the word than in categories and definitions.
Why does a preservation of the singular matter so much? Why is it connected to homeland, mission, and fidelity? Well, what causes one to stray after false gods? To envy others? One possibility is a lack of a sense of self. A desire to be more like someone else than oneself. We are mimetic creatures, but individuation is about reigning in the tendency to measure oneself in comparison to others. One God is enough; we don’t need other gods. We are enough; shopping or travel aren’t going to make us worthwhile nor will they alleviate our existential burden.
At the societal level, we need to find commonality to function, plan and cooperate; yet societies which leave no room for individual expression (and difficulty) sacrifice dignity on the altar of efficiency. Empires have the best returns to scale; but communities protect that which cannot be scaled. Technologist and venture capitalist, Paul Graham advises his mentees, “Do things that don’t scale.” Ironically, when they follow this advice, they end up producing singular and scale-able businesses, like AirBnB. In innovation, the more singular one is the more one can avoid competition altogether. Good societies facilitate not just commonality (which breeds competition), but singularity (which is inimitable).
Being oneself in one’s land may be peak singularity; but the call to singularity is not conditional upon the land or the language. It is a call, on the contrary, to be oneself regardless of one’s conditions; a call not to imagine that one should be elsewhere, but to accept one’s current fate as the best possible set-up for becoming who one is.
The Shema is a bridge between a present in which we are aspirationally singular and a future in which we are effortlessly so. Each time we kiss a mezuza or wrap a tefillin strap or place our hands over our eyes, we discover that we do not need to be someone else or somewhere else. We discover that others are likewise exactly as they are meant to be.
In the paradoxical glimmer of texts which are legible precisely as they are closed, we find that the best path towards self-improvement is self-acceptance.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins @Etz Hasadeh
P.S.— I’m leading a salon on “Heidegger and the Meaning of Life” on August 3rd @ 9pm EST. You can sign up here. Do spread the word!
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