by Rav Yair Strauss, yeshiva.org.il, translated by Hillel Fendel.
This week's Torah portion of VaEtchanan – D'varim 3,23-7,11 – is the continuation of Moshe Rabbeinu's parting speech to the Children of Israel before they entered the Promised Land. It contains not only the Ten Commandments, but also the first paragraph of Kriat Shma, beginning with Shma Yisrael: "Hear O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One." The Medrash tells us that Yaakov Avinu, on his deathbed, wished to reveal the End of Days to his 12 sons - but he saw that his spirit of prophecy had been blocked off. He feared that perhaps one of his sons was not loyal to the tradition, just as Avraham's son Yishmael and Yitzchak's son Esav. His sons sought to comfort him: "Hear, O Israel [another name for Yaakov], our G-d is one; just like in your heart you have no other God, the same is true for our heart." The Medrash continues: "At that moment, Yaakov said, Barukh shem k'vod malchuto l'olam va'ed" – "Blessed be the Glory of His kingdom forever and ever" – which we recite today immediately after saying the verse Shma Yisrael.
What is the significance of this Medrash? Why did Yaakov respond by saying the words Barukh shem…? Why did our Sages add these words to our daily prayers in Shma Yisrael? And why do we recite them in a whisper?
The attainment of true faith involves two levels. The first one is understanding and knowing the presence of G-d by looking at nature and history. The higher level of faith is what Rav Kook calls tviut ayin, an instinctive inner sense that the world is ordered, that it is directed from without, and that our reality is constantly rising up towards the great G-dliness with ever-increasing harmony and unity. This is daat Elokim, knowledge of G-d – the internalization of the concept of G-dliness within us.
The verse Shma Yisrael expresses the higher level of attaining faith, in which one senses the Divine unity constantly rising and intensifying. Yaakov Avinu's desire to reveal the End to his sons was his will to show them how this unity progresses along up to the point of completion in the End of Days. However, he felt that his sons were not on the appropriate level to understand this.
The sons reassured him that they believed in One G-d, just as he did – but they emphasized the heart aspect: "We believe in our heart just as you believe in your heart. In the depths of our heart, we are willing to hear the Divine unity." This was not sufficient, however. The heart is important, but what about their bodies and intellects? Those, too, must be linked with the Divine unity. This is why Yaakov was unable to reveal to them the End, but only "the glory of G-d's Kingdom" – only the lower level of faith, that of intellectual perception of G-d's glorious presence in our reality, without a genuine and internalized intuitive grasp of the Divine on the level of Shma Yisrael.
The intellectual comprehension of G-d that arrives from our external world, from the Kingdom of G-d – Barukh shem k'vod malchuto – is a low level. We are forced to use it to reach the higher level of G-d's unity via the spiritual intuition that is expressed in "Shma Israel" – but we are not proud of this. Rather, we recite the words of this lower level quietly, almost in secret. Every day when we recite the Kriat Shma, we pray that our spiritual intuition be restored to us, the sense of cleaving to the harmony and perfection to which the world is ever marching. But at the same time we do not neglect or abandon the intellectual comprehension of Barukh shem k'vod malchuto, from which we are able to reach the higher level of deep internal faith.
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