Shema – Do We Know How to Listen? | Va’etchanan 5784

In many ways, Judaism is about one word – arguably, the most famous word and verse in the Torah – “SHEMA Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad – HEAR, O Israel, the L-rd our G-d, the L-rd is One.”

It is the first thing we say on a daily basis – about listening to what G-d wants from us – and the last thing we say at night. It is the first pasuk we teach to a young child, and, G-d forbid, the last thing a person says before they pass away.

The first word of this most important pasuk is “Shema”, and this word is one of the most difficult to translate. It can mean 5 or 6 things in English – it can mean to listen, to physically hear, to concentrate more, to understand, to internalize, and to empathize. All of these English words and ideas are encapsulated in one Hebrew word – “Shema.”

The first thing G-d wants us to do is truly listen. To listen in a way that we are, at the same time, hearing what is being asked of us, internalizing it, and deeply empathizing with it. It is all about connection – the most important relationships, including that with G-d, are those we are deeply connected with, making another person feeling truly heard. Not that you just physically heard them, but that you have put yourself in their place and that that have been truly heard.

Stephen Covey, in his famous book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, has a powerful paragraph called “Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.” In life we have to be empathetic people. He writes how the single-most difficult quality there is in interpersonal relationships is knowing how to truly listen. When we listen, we often have autobiographical responses – we are not really listening, we are reading ourselves into the conversation, trying to advise people, trying to evaluate and judge – but they are not the basis of empathic listening, where you cancel your own autobiography and truly make yourself into a person able to take on what the other person is saying.

May we always be able to listen in an empathic way, so we are really listening to the other person, connecting with them, making them feel that they are truly heard.