Ve'ethchanan: Don't Look - Listen

Ve'ethchanan: Don't Look - Listen

The parsha repeatedly instructs us, the Children of Israel, to listen to the instructions. To pay heed to the laws and rules that Moses transmitted, To neither add to them nor detract from them. This instruction, to listen,  is often accompanied by an admonition: remember that you have never seen (an image of) Gd.  Gd is not the subject of visual (mis)representation,illusions, or imagination. Gd is the source of instruction. 

Hearing, like seeing,  and unlike touching or tasting, is a remote sense. These senses give information about events over  great distances. ( In our times,  we can hear about events over the whole world. ) Visual data feels self evident, despite the physiology that makes  the final, brain interpreted information  highly processed, hence distorted.  Auditory data is always an invitation to interpretation. Is the rustling of leaves on the ground an innocuous animal? an enemy? a friend? 

When constructed into spoken language, hearing affords a combination of definition and ambiguity.  The precision of the law keeps it as an ongoing entity. The ability to consciously interpret the transmitted language is required for it to last over millennia.  As the meaning of words changes over time, understanding the law becomes more problematic. As invention changes the circumstances of our lives, the relationship between the law, as stated, and the issues it is addressing becomes open to question. 

The opening of the parsha is an example of the  interpretation of the spoken sentence.   Moses knew that he had been barred from entering the Promised Land.  Gd insisted that this verdict  not be violated.  This is the first ( and only) time, since his ascendancy to leadership , that Moshe's request is denied.  Because of the simultaneous exactness and  ambiguity of speech, Moshe's request  to see the Promised Land is granted - although he is barred from entry. The assertion of the power of the law over the individual's request for reprieve  is  reassuring. The irony is comforting. 

The crux of this week's parsha is a sentence we refer to as the Shema.  It the call to allegiance.  The usual translation:  Hear, O Israel! The LRD is our Gd, the LRD  is one. cannot do it justice. The Talmud begins with: מֵאֵימָתַי קוֹרִין אֶת שְׁמַע בְּעַרְבִית : From what time may one recite the Shema in the evening?  assuming that there is an obligation to recite an entity called the Shema, which we traditionally understand to be something that certainly includes this bewildering declaration.  Uttering this phrase is so fundamental, the obligation itself needs not be addressed,  the only question is when. The meaning is left open

One (?) possible meaning: There are two entities, Lrd and Gd,  that seem to be the same, and we are hearing (shema) that they may be the same, or, more exactly: the Lrd has the properties of Gd.  Gd (E) is the external power,  the power outside of the actions driven by our self-perceived will,   involved in making things happen.  That (single, unified, lone) power rests in the Lrd (J).  

Part of the untranslatable property of this sentence is that we do not say the name of the Lrd (J) as it is written.  We consider that name ineffable, forbidden to expression. Calling the Lord (J) by name imparts too much definition.  We refrain from speaking The Name, in part, because naming implies a  level of understanding that we can not have.  The fully expressed  property of the Lrd (J) is unknowability.  Thus, we are declaring that events in the world are endorsed by a (single, unified, lone) entity that we can never understand. 

Twice daily, we declare and listen to reality.