שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל
THE SHEMA
‘HEAR, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.’ That is at once the quintessential embodiment of all our philosophy, as well as chief among Israel’s contributions to the everlasting truths of religion. The first prayer of innocent child-lips, the last confession of the dying, the Shema has been the watchword and the rallying-cry of a hundred generations in Israel. By it were they welded into one Brotherhood to do the will of their Father who is in heaven. The reading of the Shema has—in rabbinic phrase—clothed Israel with invincible lion-strength, and endowed him with the double-edged sword of the spirit against the unutterable terrors of his long night of exile.
J. H. HERTZ, 1912.
WHEN men in prayer declare the Unity of the Holy Name in love and reverence, the walls of earth’s darkness are cleft in twain, and the Face of the Heavenly King is revealed, lighting up the universe.
ZOHAR.
אֱלֹהָי נְשָׁמָה
‘THE SOUL THOU HAST GIVEN ME IS PURE’
NEXT to God’s unity, the most essential and characteristic doctrine of Judaism is that concerning God’s relation to man. Heathenism degraded man by making him kneel before brutes and the works of his hand: Judaism declared man to be made in the image of God, the crown and culmination of God’s creation, the appointed ruler of the earth. In him, as the end of Creation, the earthly and the divine are singularly blended.
Judaism rejects the idea of an inherent impurity in the flesh or in matter as opposed to the spirit. Nor does Judaism accept the doctrine of Original Sin. In the words of the daily morning prayer, ‘The soul that Thou hast given me is pure, Thou hast created it, Thou hast fashioned it, and Thou hast breathed it into me, and Thou preservest it within me, and at the appointed time Thou wilt take it from me to return it within me in the future’.