Sh’ma
I’m in Charleston, SC this week for a conference. As I was walking the streets of this lovely and historic town this afternoon, I came to a Jewish synagogue, called Congregation Beth Elohim, that has a beautiful garden. The gate was open to the garden, so I walked in, thinking I would simply see another one of the beautiful secret gardens for which this city is well known. It was a nice garden, but what caught my attention was the inscription that was chiseled in the stone over the entrance to the stately sanctuary. It was a wonderful English translation of the heart prayer of Judaism, the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4), that I had never heard before. Most of us who come from a Judeo-Christian background recognize the Sh’ma even though Christians may not know its common Hebrew name. We know it as, "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one." Listen with your heart to the different language that I discovered this afternoon:
"Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is the sole eternal being."
I’ve always had trouble with "The Lord our God is one", because I interpreted it as a way of turning the Israelites against the religions and deities of their neighbors, who had many gods and goddesses. To me, the Sh’ma represents the ancient Hebrew patriarch’s systematic obliteration of Goddess-worship - in ancient, earth-based religions, a Goddess was often accompanied by gods (usually Her son) or She went by many names. To say that "The Lord our God (notice the male implication) is one" declares not only that monotheism is the ticket but that the Hebrew God is the only way - the Lord God’s way or the highway, so to speak. I take a dim view of the ascendancy of any religion over another, so this assertion goes against the grain for me. And, as Kristin (me) the teenager would often assert, what about the Christian Trinity - isn’t that a polytheistic view of divinity? What’s so wrong with polytheism, I would ask my Sunday School teachers. They did their best to describe it in a way I could grasp, but I don’t remember being satisfied by the answers.
So, back to the present and the inscription at Congregation Beth Elohim. God is the sole eternal being. I can really get that. The concept of a "being" is much less discrete than a "god", so my mental image of the Divine is more formless when we describe it as a being. Being can be a state of consciousness, which I also like as a description of the Divine. Solely eternal - yes, I can buy that - God is the alpha and omega, the ground of our being, the Source, the Infinite Intelligence, the eternal. I like it!
I’ll just add that I believe that we, too, are part of the eternal being. A Course in Miracles tells us that "God is incomplete without you." We share in the eternal being-ness of the Divine, and we are all one. One with each other and one with the Divine.
I am so glad I diverted my walk into that synagogue’s garden. Thank you, Congregation Beth Elohim, for a new perspective on this ancient wisdom.
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