PRAYER · SHEMA · 6 OF 6
Read the first Shema paragraph
Make an explanation the text can support. Read the six verses as one movement, test a claim, and carry your reading into a passage you have not yet studied in this unit.
In this lesson
Begin with a blank page
Shema, “Hear,” names our morning and evening recitation of three Torah passages. We are studying the first, Deuteronomy 6:4–9. Deuteronomy, or Devarim, is the fifth book of the Torah, the five books of Moshe. Here Moshe addresses Israel before our entry into the land. Hashem, “the Name,” is our reverent way of referring to God.
The preceding five lessons explored this paragraph a verse at a time. Now leave their explanations closed. Use the complete passage below as your evidence. You can work entirely in English; the Hebrew keeps the original wording available.
Make three columns on your own page: verse, what I notice and what I think it means. Keep each check closed until you have made an attempt. With a partner, trade the jobs of explaining and asking, “Which words support that?” Alone, write that challenge beside your own least-supported claim.
Read the whole paragraph
Read once without stopping. Read again and give each verse a short label of your own. Do not yet turn the labels into an explanation of the whole.
6:4
שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד.
Hear, Israel: Hashem is our God; Hashem is one.
6:5
ואהבת את יהוה אלהיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאדך.
You shall love Hashem your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.
6:6
והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על לבבך.
These words that I command you today shall be upon your heart.
6:7
ושננתם לבניך ודברת בם
בשבתך בביתך ובלכתך בדרך
ובשכבך ובקומך.Teach them diligently to your children and speak of them
when you sit in your home and when you walk on the way,
when you lie down and when you rise.6:8
וקשרתם לאות על ידך והיו לטטפת בין עיניך.
Bind them as a sign upon your hand, and let them be frontlets between your eyes.
6:9
וכתבתם על מזזות ביתך ובשעריך.
Write them upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
English rendering by Messianic Yeshiva
“Frontlets” renders totafot, the term associated with head tefillin in our tradition. The preceding lesson explains tefillin and mezuzah through Rambam’s code. Here keep the Torah’s words distinct from those later explanations.
1. Compare your six labels. Have you preserved the paragraph’s movement?
A possible sequence is hear and declare → love → words upon the heart → teach and speak → bind as a sign → write at doorways. Your labels may differ if they fit the actual wording.
The sequence is a reading aid, not a timetable in which one command ends before another begins. In particular, “heart” appears in both verses 5 and 6, and the words connect the later acts rather than disappearing when action begins. If your outline contains only feelings or only objects, return to the verses it has left out.
Track the small words
Make three observations before explaining them:
- Find our and your. Who is addressed at the opening, and how does the language of responsibility continue?
- Count all in verse 5. What word or phrase follows it each time?
- Trace these words into the later occurrences of them. What actions share the same object?
Hebrew readers can look for אלהינו, “our God”; the repeated בכל, “with all”; and הדברים האלה, “these words.” The English provides the same starting points for the exercise.
2. What do these observations let you say, and what would go too far?
Verse 4 addresses Israel and says our God; the following verses address “you” in the singular. Verse 5 repeats all three times, with heart, soul and might. The words in verse 6 are then taught, spoken, bound and written.
These features support a reading that joins shared allegiance, wholehearted love and responsibility taken personally. They do not make love private property outside our people, or turn the successive verbs into unrelated commands. The claim about how the features work together is an interpretation supported by observations, not an extra sentence found in the verse.
Give each claim the right kind of support
Classify the following as direct observation, named commentary or our synthesis. Then say what you would need to check each one.
- “Verse 7 names sitting at home and walking on the way.”
- “Rashi explains ‘your children’ in relation to students.”
- “The paragraph joins inward attention with teaching and visible acts.”
3. Check the claim types and the evidence they need.
First: direct observation, checked against verse 7. Second: named commentary, checked against Rashi on Deuteronomy 6:7, not merely the verse’s translation. Third: our synthesis, supported by connecting “upon your heart” in verse 6 with teaching in verse 7 and binding and writing in verses 8–9.
A synthesis can be well supported without being a quotation. It becomes weaker when it ignores a verse that complicates it or claims more than its evidence establishes.
Work one small connection carefully
Here is a model of the method, using only verses 6–7.
- Question: does verse 7 introduce a new subject for teaching?
- Evidence: verse 6 names “these words”; verse 7 says “teach them” and “speak of them.”
- Reasoning: “them” points back to the words already named. The objects of keeping on the heart, teaching and speaking are connected.
- Conclusion: the paragraph carries the commanded words from the heart into teaching and speech.
Notice the scale of the conclusion. It explains this textual connection. It does not settle every question about teaching methods or the legal scope of Torah study.
4. Now do the same work with verses 8–9: a reader says the objects replace the words. Which evidence would you use to test that?
“Bind them” and “write them” continue referring to the words. The actions give the words a physical setting rather than discarding their content. Your explanation should show that connection, not merely state that objects are important.
The Torah wording supports the continuity. The complete written contents and forms of tefillin and mezuzah require the additional sources studied in Signs and doorposts. Keep those two kinds of claim distinct.
Test your reading with a new passage
Read a little farther in the chapter. In verses 10–11, Moshe speaks of entering the promised land and receiving cities, houses, cisterns, vineyards and olive trees that Israel did not build, fill, dig or plant. The passage then says:
ואכלת ושבעת.
השמר לך פן תשכח את יהוה
אשר הוציאך מארץ מצרים מבית עבדים.You will eat and be satisfied.
Take care lest you forget Hashem,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.
English rendering by Messianic Yeshiva
Without reopening an earlier answer, make a new evidence note:
- What situation appears before the warning? What does the warning tell Israel to guard against?
- Choose two different practices from verses 6–9. Explain how each could bear on the danger named here, citing the wording.
- Label that connection as your inference. Name one stronger claim the passage does not establish.
Compare with a partner who chose a different pair, or make a second pair yourself. Does the new pair need a different explanation? Keep the warning’s reference to the Exodus, our departure from slavery in Egypt, in view.
7. Check the new reading only after choosing your own pair.
The warning follows a description of received plenty and being satisfied. It tells Israel to guard against forgetting Hashem, specifically naming him as the One who brought us out of slavery.
Several pairings can work. Teaching the words can pass their content to the next learner; speaking of them at home and on the way can keep them present in ordinary life. Keeping them on the heart connects remembrance with inward attention. Writing them at doorposts gives them a place at the home’s entrances. For each choice, explain the connection rather than only naming the act.
These are inferences connecting nearby passages. The text does not say that every satisfied person inevitably forgets Hashem, that material goods are inherently wrong, or that performing one act makes forgetting impossible. It gives a warning and commands practices; our explanation must preserve both responsibility and the possibility of failure.
Rebuild the reading tomorrow
Close the lesson. Tomorrow, reconstruct the paragraph’s six-verse movement from memory and give two examples of wording that joins its parts. Then explain one connection you made with the warning against forgetting. Reopen the sources and correct what you missed.
8. What counts as a successful return?
You can locate the declaration, love, words upon the heart, teaching and speech, binding, and writing in their order. You can support connections with actual language, such as “our God,” the repeated “all,” “heart” or “them.” You can distinguish the warning in 6:12 from your explanation of how earlier practices address it.
You do not need to reproduce this lesson’s wording. A shorter explanation with accurate evidence is stronger than a memorized paragraph whose claims you cannot locate. Choose one missed detail for your next rereading.
Keep the evidence close
- Deuteronomy 6: the first Shema paragraph in 4–9 and the new reading in 10–12.
- Rashi on Deuteronomy 6:7: the named commentary used in the classification exercise.
- Rambam, Laws of Tefillin, Mezuzah and Torah Scroll 1:1–2: the written passages discussed in the preceding lesson.
For help naming the kind of evidence you are using, revisit Reading a source. To practice comparing several genres around a different question, try the evening-Shema source workshop.