It’s rare for a stand-alone piece of liturgy to reappear in the prayerbook, especially the Sh’ma. We read it in the rubric dealing with the One God who created, revealed and redeemed. Where others would have attributed these events to individual deities, we affirmed the uniqueness, the One-ness, of ours. And yet we find the Sh’ma virtually dangling in the ritual of removing the Torah from the Aron Hakodesch, the Holy Ark.
Oh sure, you could say that such an important element in worship as the reading of the Torah requires the “Watchword of our faith” in the grandeur of its parade around the sanctuary. But think about it…the message of the Sh’ma is virtually taken for granted; it is only the Reform movement that had its congregants rise when it was said/sung, and today not all of our congregations continue that practice.
So why “plop” it into another rubric, another section of the service?
We Jews might have taken monotheism for granted yet not all our neighbors were monotheists. Actually, most were not and among those who worshipped other gods were our enemies as well. They could not tolerate even the idea of gods other than those in their pantheon of deities, how much the more so ONE God who, as the Jews believe(d), was superior in every way to the whole bunch of theirs! So, we are told, the Romans in particular were determined to eliminate the god of the Jews.
It is said that they knew when this proclamation of Oneness was traditionally affirmed in the young synagogues in their territories (remember, the sacrificial cult was still in effect until the Romans destroyed the second Temple but nascent synagogues existed outside the holy land). There were spies who would listen for the Sh’ma; they knew when it was to appear in the service. We, however, weren’t stupid; we knew Roman sympathizers were hanging around for nefarious reasons. We removed the Sh’ma from its typical spot. The Romans believed they “won” the hearts of the Jews and went about their business since they heard no mention of One God.
Ahah! We foiled them again. What we did was to put the Sh’ma in another place, right after the scroll was removed so we in fact did proclaim the Oneness of our God. When the threat no longer existed we could have gone back to the way it was, but as an old poster of mine read, one I had hanging in my office, “But we’ve always done it this way!” We kept the repetition…it couldn’t hurt.
(Speaking of allergies, sitting in a doctor’s office the next patient had terrible sniffles. The receptionist, hearing the dripping, the nose-blowing, the coughing, said, “Say, that’s a pretty bad allergy you’ve got. What are you taking for it?” The patient replied, “Make me an offer!”)