Three Mysteries
Rabbi Shmuel Klatzkin, Ph.D.
The Blessings of the Shema are a basic part of the daily prayers in the Jewish liturgy both morning and evening. The declaration of G‑d’s unity that is the Shema is surrounded by these essential meditations, which give a context to that declaration of unity.
In both morning and evening prayers, those blessings describe a sequence. In the first blessing, we contemplate the natural order, G‑d’s handiwork, within which we live our lives. In the second, we contemplate G‑d’s love to us directly, His choosing of us as a partner through giving us the Torah. In the third blessing, said after the Shema is read, we contemplate who we now are, having been chosen by G‑d, and how now, being set free by G‑d through His love, we can lift up our own song of redemption and let the whole world be redeemed.
Reduced to one or two words apiece, the three topics of this twice-daily meditation pattern could be stated as: (1) the world; (2) G‑d; and (3) ourselves. And what is notable is that each of these serves as a focus for meditation.
For something which serves as an inspiration on a daily basis is something whose meaning is not easily exhausted. There is always something more to know, something presently unknown, something essentially unknown
At the same time, these things are not empty of meaning to us. They refer to things as real to us as anything. So we can turn to them with confidence and invest ourselves in meditation upon them. And since their meaning will not be exhausted or reduced by our meditations, we can turn to them again and again.
We are at home in the world. Our lives sustenance depends on our ability to understand, work with it, and to a degree, control it. Yet the very ongoing enterprise of science shows that we do not know it all, even after centuries of advance of human knowledge. Add to this the testimony of art and literature, the best of which shows us the world as a place of wonder and presence that inspires expression but is never completely contained by any expression.
Living nearly a thousand years after Maimonides, we are all comfortable with the idea of G‑d being unknown. Yet Maimonides was not an agnostic; in the very first lines of his Code of Law he teaches that all of existence depends on G‑d’s necessary being; were one to maintain that G‑d did not exist, nothing else could be maintained as existing either.
And so with G‑d too, we have a certain knowledge. Yet it is never complete, never of the whole essence.
And finally, what is true of G‑d and the world is true of our selves. We have a certain working knowledge of our selves. Very few of us mistake ourselves for someone else. Yet after all is said and done, we realize that we are a mystery even to ourselves. We wonder, “Who am I, really? Where is my authentic work, my authentic presence in this world? And what is my real identity when all the things of passing value are taken away?”
Judaism is about living in the presence of a mystery that includes not only the world and G‑d, but even ourselves. It is about engaging that mystery with all our mind, heart and soul and transcendent powers, and in doing so, unfolding the hidden essences of G‑d, world and self into a unity of surpassing power, goodness, and delight.
In the presence of mystery, being ourselves a part of the mystery, we find that we can through active effort know more and realize more, and bring out into expression a full and integrated unity.
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