By: Julie Lieber
Chief Jewish Life & Engagement Officer
Do we truly hear one another? What does it take to meaningfully listen to one another? The word Shema (hear or listen) appears 92 times in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses imparts his final wisdom to the people of Israel before they enter the land of Israel. In this week’s Torah portion, in trying to impress upon his people the urgency of hearing all that he is saying, Moses employs a word that is used only this one time in the entire Torah. He says, Hasket u-shema Yisrael, “hasket and listen Israel.” While many familiar with the Torah and Jewish prayer have encountered the word Shema (listen/hear), this other word hasket that precedes shema is unfamiliar and perplexing. The biblical commentaries scramble to come up with definitions for this unknown word, as there are no parallels in the Torah from which to draw or contextualize.
What could Moses be telling the people to do in order to be prepared to hear/shema? What do we need to do before we can truly hear what someone is telling us? Some commentaries suggest that hasket means focus, while others say this word means to be silent or to calm oneself, from the word sheket or shaked. Read this way, Moses is suggesting that if we want to really hear what he or others are saying, we need to focus and be present to their words, to silence or still our inclination to think of what we might say in response.
I recently had the privilege of participating in a workshop with Resetting the Table, in which they taught skills around having difficult but productive conversations around charged topics. One of the goals that permeated the entire training was how to inhabit a space of real hearing and listening. This involved moving ourselves from a “leading” to “following” stance – a mode of listening for what matters to the speaker, and momentarily silencing what matters to you, in order to truly hear.
Perhaps this is what Moses was telling the people in his unusual choice of this uneasily definable word Hasket preceding Shema, Hear. Before we can truly hear, there must be a preparatory step, whatever that means for each of us, one that involves focus and perhaps even silence or retreat from ourselves, to create space for the other.
Moses was well-equipped to teach this lesson. As we know, Moses’ strength was not speaking. In fact, when God first approached him to lead the Israelites and free them from Egypt, he demurred, declaring that he did not like to speak, something which he assumed would be an automatic disqualification. But God quickly teaches him the lesson that our greatest leaders need not be experts in speaking – oftentimes our strength comes from knowing how to truly listen.
Please email Julie Lieber at jlieber@jewishcolorado.org with questions or comments.