The Sh’ma Is the Jewish Safety Net

There is an elegiac quality to this week’s reading of Va’etḥanan (Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11). It begins, as David Wolpe noted here last week, with Moses having to accept that he won’t be receiving what he was promised, and won’t be crossing over with his people into the land. And then it gets worse. Moses is deeply worried that without him, when the Israelites are left to their own devices, all will be lost.

In this light, the Sh’ma and all the instructions that surround it, which are at the heart of Va’etḥanan, and which like many other passages in this reading have made their way into the siddur, turn out to be instances of Moses warning the Israelites of trouble ahead and thus protecting his investment in them. Do this, he exhorts them, don’t do that, watch out:

Look after yourselves lest you forget
The deal the Lord your God struck with you
And make yourselves an idolatrous image of anything, of which the Lord your God instructed you,
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, He’s a possessive God.