Below are some notes I took from a conversation with Rabbi Shefa Gold in preparation for my presentation "LISTEN! ...the path to Oneness" at the 11/13 Global Day of Jewish Learning at Temple Beth Israel in Eugene, Oregon... Enjoy, Lisa Kaye
Five Pathways to ‘Listening’
a conversation with Rabbi Shefa Gold
- The blessing that precedes the Sh'ma, the Ahava Rabbah, is chock-ful of delicious chants - each one of them a key to Listening and to the possibility of entering into the Oneness.
- The important thing is to make the Sh'ma an Experience rather than a statement.
- Chanting is a way of preparing for that experience.
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The first pathway… Being receptive to love
Unending Love
אַהֲבָה רַבָּה אֲהַבְתָּנוּ
Ahava rabbah avtanu
With an unending love, you have loved us.
What are the prerequisites, the preparations, where do we want to STAND when we say the Shema?
If I do not feel, or cannot receive love, it’s very hard for me to listen because I am always trying to manipulate, trying to get that love that I need, focusing on that perceived lack.
In a sense you are becoming ‘receptive’ when you say Ahava rabbah ahvtahnu… you are opening up to this great love that is flowing into the world. According to this prayer, it is flowing into the world through Torah, through history, through nature, through different ways, but it’s ‘the Great Love’.
This is a different kind of love than the love that ‘I’ love with. It’s a pure flow of G-d energy that G-d is loving me with. It takes lots of different forms; it comes in the form of my ‘life’. That’s how G-d loves me - through this, and this, and this.
I want to become receptive to that force. This is the first step I need to do in order to come to a place of ‘listening’ when I’m in that relationship and I’m allowing that love to flow through me to you.
But when I do that, I find my resistance. If G-d doesn’t love me in the way I want to be loved then I just shut myself down and I don’t receive anything. And then I can’t listen either. There’s some kind of relationship between the feeling of accepting and feeling loved and the ability to ‘listen’. What I notice is that when I can really receive that love then something in me relaxes and then the listening can happen. When the ‘listening’ happens, then an experience of ‘Unity’ is possible.
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The second pathway… Commitment at all levels
Manifesting Torah
לִלְמֹד וּלְלַמֵּד לִשְׁמֹר וְלַעֲשׂוֹת וּלְקַיֵּם
Lilmod u’l’lamayd lishmor v’la’asot u’l’kayaym
To learn and to teach, to uphold and to practice and to manifest
When I chant this it is energizing me towards not ‘settling’. To learn, yes, but you can’tjust learn…. you have to teach. And you can’t just teach, you also have to guard and uphold. And not just that, but you also have to practice, to ‘do’ it. And then finally that brings you to, l’kayaym, to manifest Torah.
It’s almost like a ladder. You are upping the stakes with each word. It’s generating this kind of commitment. I have to reach that place of really being motivated and committed to enter that place of the Sh’ma.
There is this kind of paradox with the Sh’ma because part of it is accepting the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. There’s a real surrender in it. But in order to get to that place of surrender I have to rev up my level of commitment to ‘show up’ for it.
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The third pathway… Taking off the veils; Torah is everywhere
Eyes, Hearts and Hands
וְהָאֵר עֵינֵינוּ בְּתּוֹרָתֶךָ וְדַבֵּק לִבֵּנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתֶיךָ
V’Ha’ayr aynaynu b’toratecha, v’dabayk libaynu b’mitzvotecha
Enlighten our eyes with Your Torah, and connect our hearts to Your Mitzvot.
This inspires us to take off those veils and to really see that the Torah is everywhere. So as we chant this ‘V’Ha'ayer aynaynu’, we pause and see that “Oh, the veils are off and G-d’s Kingdom is everywhere. Everywhere we can point to, ‘Your Torah’, ‘b’toratecha’.” ‘V’dabayk libaynu b’mitzvotecha’ – we embody these words in all the actions of our hands in the world.
This is how we come to the Sh’ma… With our eyes completely open. With our hearts and our hands connected. It’s that sense that we’re not just doing things unconnected from our heart. This is the ‘unity’ of ‘eyes, hearts and hands’.
If we come to the Sh’ma from a place that is divided inside us then we won’t be able to be receptive. We won’t be able to hear. We won’t be able to experience Unity because we ourselves are divided.
We are the microcosm of the universe and so some of the path of spiritual practice is about experiencing that Truth through the world of ‘me’. The Sh’ma is a declaration of unity, but you have to start with yourself. And just realizing how divided you can be, how you can compartmentalize your own life, where you can ‘know’ something and not live it, or you can ‘see’ something and not take it into your heart… all of those places of division in us need to be healed. The healing of the world happens inside us. It’s really true.
I love looking at Torah and realizing that there is nothing in Torah that is not also in me. That Torah is ‘sending’ me to look at those places inside me.
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The fourth pathway… Balancing awe and love
Unifying the Heart
וְיַחֵד לְבָבֵנוּ לְאַהֲבָה וּלְיִרְאָה אֶת שְׁמֶךָ
V’yachayd l’vavaynu l’ahavah u’l’yirah et sh’mecha.(from the liturgy)
Unify our hearts to love and to be in awe of Your Name/Essence.
There is a psalm that says “V’yachayd l’vavaynu l’yira et sh’mecha.” Which translates to ‘Unify our hearts to be in fear and awe of Your Name, of Your Essence.’ And the rabbis who wrote the liturgy looked at that psalm and said, ‘You know, I think we want to tweak this a little bit (and they added ‘l’ahavah’).
Whenever you see something like that in the liturgy where they want to edit or amend something that’s given, then it’s important. And what they are saying is that love is essential if we want to encounter G-d, which is what the Sh’ma is about. The Sh’ma is about a Divine Encounter but we must balance the place of love with all of that awe. You can’t come to the Sh’ma without that, without doing that work of unifying.
To come to the Sh’ma, we need ALL of ourselves. We need to be fully present to be able to really listen and perceive. The ‘listening’ is the listening of the heart so we have to do the healing of our own hearts.
When I think about what happens to my heart when I get hurt is that some place in it sort of goes numb. I can’t even feel that space in my heart anymore. I’m cut-off from the wholeness of my heart. And I think the Sh’ma is really about ‘whole-heartedness’.
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The fifth pathway… One-pointed focus
Gathering In
וַהֲבִיאֵֽנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם מֵאַרְבַּע כַּנְפוֹת הָאָֽרֶץ
V’Haviayni l’shalom mayarba kanfor ha’aretz
(Bring us in peace from the 4 corners of the Earth.)
Uriel! Mi’cha’el! Rafa’el! Gavri’el!
This is the ‘gathering in’ moment. This is when we gather the four corners of the tallit that represent the four corners of the world.
Part of the preparation for the Sh’ma is the ‘gathering in’, is becoming one-pointed. It is the time in the liturgy that is considered the central time of focus. It’s o.k. for your mind to wander any other time in the liturgy, but for the six words of the Sh’ma we have to find a way to focus our attention.
So the ‘gathering up’ is also the gathering of our attention, gathering the parts of ourselves, of the world inside us, of all the energies that make up this universe in one place so that we can be in a state of focus. You are gathering up your energy that is scattered. It’s the same kind of microcosm, we have to gather ourselves together as a community also. And in a sense, with traditional daavening communities everyone is doing things at their own pace, but then they come together for the Sh’ma.
שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל, יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְיָ אֶחָֽד
