The Truth(s)

The Truth(s)
By Rabbi Sarah Berman

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad

Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One

(Deut. 6:4)

Called the “watchword” of the Jewish people, the Shema (which we recite every day, and which we read in this week’s parasha) proclaims the fundamental truth of Judaism—that there is one God.

Imagine yourself among our ancient ancestors: Surrounded by people who worship gods of sun and moon, of river and rain, of birth and death.

They worshipped the powers they could see, and prayed for gifts they could feel.

(Think The Odyssey, and a protective Zendaya-Athena at your back.)

One God, without form, without presence, without even a pronounceable name--what a leap of faith you would have had to take to embrace this abstract idea in such a concrete world.

A revolutionary idea when it was proposed, more than 3,000 years ago--monotheism was an innovation that fundamentally changed the course not only of our people but of the world.

To understand the entire universe to be the gift of one deity--revolutionary.

To feel the love of this deity not through an idol but through your own heart--revolutionary.

To worship this deity in all places and in all ways, but without any physical appearance--revolutionary.

Lo yih’yeh l’cha elohim acherim al-panai, “You shall have no other gods beside Me,” (Deut. 5:7) God declared.

And we, in turn, declared that there is only one true God, and that all other gods or understandings of the Divine were false.

So much of this week’s parasha, Va’etchanan, focuses on monotheism--the declaration that there is only one God, only one truth; and it is our God and our truth--and all else is false.

But for all of its revolutionary good, monotheism created a world reduced to oppositions^[1]:

Adonai your God and ein od, “there is none else” (Deut. 4:34)

True and false

In or out

Right or wrong

“Us,” the ones with a monopoly on truth

Or “them,” who do not

Thinking of our ancient ancestors, I wonder if this is what they heard when Moses and Adonai spoke to them.

Were they embracing a world of clear answers? Of black and white? Of polarization? Is that who the People of Israel was choosing to become?

I think you can probably guess my answer… “yes… and.”

Because God was also calling us to be an am chacham v’navon, “a wise and discerning people” (Deut. 4:6). An “and” people, not an “or” people.

So our ancient ancestors, in choosing this one God, were choosing answers, and more questions; black and white and all the colors of the spectrum; polar opposites, and all the truths in between.

Being able to recognize and affirm multiple truths is a skill that Judaism has spent millennia teaching us--and is a skill we are so blessed to have access to in our time of polarization.

The zugot, the pairs of ancient rabbinic scholars who disagreed with each other, argued with each other, pushed and questioned each other--they are the bedrock of our Jewish tradition.

Hillel and Shammai were the most famous of these pairs--whose arguments were offered l’shem shamayim, “for the sake of heaven” (Pirkei Avot 5:17).

Hillel and Shammai came from the same place, learned from the same teachers, read the same Torah--and came to vastly different conclusions on how to sit in a sukkah, how to grind spices, and particularly relevant for us this week, they even disagreed on how to say the Shema.

For Shammai, “when you lie down and when you rise up” were the physical positions in which to say Shema; and for Hillel “when you lie down and when you rise up” were the times to say Shema (Berakhot 1:3).

But the Talmud tells us that they “practiced affection and camaraderie between them” (BT Yevamot 14b: 10). In disagreeing--they did not attack one another.

That was a revolutionary choice—not one that all Jews made.

Living at the end of the Second Temple period, these two rabbis and their students were surrounded by internecine hate.

It was this kind of disdain of one Jew for another is what, we are told, led to the destruction of the Temple.

The Romans may have been the ones to break down the Temple’s walls, but it was our own internal sinat chinam, “causeless hatred” for one another that tore Jews apart and kept us from preserving our Temple.

This tragedy of Jewish communal history is what we mourned yesterday on Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of our calendar.

But in that darkness of competing truths and polarized hatred, we see the sparkling light of Hillel and Shammai.

In explaining why the opinions of Hillel remain so widely accepted (even today, 2000 years later), we are told it is because the House of Hillel taught both Hillel and Shammai’s opinions (BT Eruvin 13b:11): The House of Hillel taught us not to fear opposing truths but instead to hold multiple truths.

As Jews, when we encounter truths that are not our own, our tradition calls us to hear them--not necessarily to agree with them, but to truly listen to them.

Because, as the Israeli diplomat and writer Daniel Taub teaches, “arguments are won not by those who speak the best, but by those who listen better” (Daniel Taub, Beyond Dispute, p. 129).

In our era of polarization, of competing truths, it’s our duty to look beyond black and white--to, in the words of Daniel Taub, “find questions that will act as keys to unlock doors of understanding that would otherwise have remain[ed] unopened,” (Taub, p. 152).

Because monotheism, the call to worship one God, need not be a rejection of all other people and all other truths.

In choosing God, we were choosing not to bow down to the tangible--to river, rain, sun, and moon.

The importance, the divinity even, of these earthly and heavenly bodies was real--they were just not to be divine to us.

But sun, moon, and stars were “allotted to other peoples everywhere under heaven” (Deut. 4:19).

It’s not that there are no other gods beside God—it’s that we shall have no other gods.

Adonai is our truth, not the only truth.

This week’s parasha invites us to be an am chacham v’navon, “a wise and discerning people.”

It invites us to be a people that questions, that listens, that learns, and that stretches to be able to hold multiple truths.

The multiple truths that our one God calls us to hear.

Listen, people of Israel.

Shema, Yisrael.

^[1] Rabbi Reuven Firestone, reflecting on the insights of German Egyptologist and Biblical scholar Jan Assman in Firestone, “Monotheism and the Problem of Truth,” https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/monotheism-and-problem-truth