by A.Y. Feldblum (Avi Feldblum)

The Shema — "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One" — is the foundational declaration of Jewish monotheism, recited twice daily and, in times of persecution, spoken as a final testament by Jewish martyrs. In this short D'var Torah from August 1985, Avi Feldblum illuminates a dimension of the verse that most people who recite it daily never notice: its hidden letters, and the twin message they carry. The post was written to relaunch the net.religion.jewish Dvar Torah Project after a summer pause — a communal effort to share weekly Torah commentary over the early internet. In its quiet directness, it carries something essential: the ancient practice of close reading brought into a new medium.

Last week's Parasha (portion) contains the chapter of Shema, one of the few portions of the Torah (Five Books of the Torah) to be incorporated into the daily prayer. It is a central part of the Tefillah (prayer), recited twice a day. During periods of persecution, it was often the last words spoken by many of our martyred brethren. What is so central about these verses?

The first verse is: Hear, Oh Israel, Hashem is our God, Hashem is One.

In a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll), the last letters of the first word (Ayin in Shema) and last word (Daled in Echod) are written larger than the rest of the letters in the Torah. These two letters spell the word "Aid," which means witness. We are the witnesses for Hashem, as He tells us in Isaiah 43:10 — You are My witnesses. We as a people stand as witness that there is one true God in the world. It is for this statement that we have suffered for generations.

But there is also a hope for the future in the verse. Rashi explains the repetition of the name of Hashem as follows: Hashem who is now our God, and not the God of the nations of the world, He will be in the future — Hashem is One. There is a promise that the time will come when all nations and people will acknowledge His kingship.

Other commentators — Klai Yakar, Ketav Sofer — explain that now we see things happening in the world that appear either good or evil, and we cannot see how it is all part of a divine whole, but in the time of the world to come, we will see that "Hashem is One" — all actions are part of His divine will.

Thus in just this one verse, we have a mirror to both the ages of persecution and the thousands who have died as witnesses to the truth of Hashem, as well as an assurance that sometime in the future the Oneness of Hashem will be known in the world.

Colophon

Posted by Avi Feldblum (AT&T Engineering Research Center, Princeton, NJ) to net.religion.jewish, August 5, 1985. Message-ID: <[email protected]>. Feldblum co-ordinated the Dvar Torah Project on net.religion.jewish — an early-internet effort to share weekly Torah commentary across UUCP networks. This post accompanied the announcement of the project's return after a summer hiatus.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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