Tefillah 048

107:
Having completed our study of all three parashot of the Shema we can now turn our attention to the sole benediction which follows it. Just as the first benediction before the Shema has a name, Yotzer (see Tefillah 039) and the second has a name, Ahavah (see Tefillah 041), so this benediction too is given a name, Ge'ulah. Yotzer referred to the creation of light; Ahavah referred to God's love for Israel as demonstrated in the giving of the Torah; now the Ge'ulah benediction is concerned with Israel's redemption. (In the evening service this benediction is followed by a fourth, Hashkivenu, which is concerned with God's protection from the terrors of the night; but this is not our present concern.)

108:
The Ge'ulah benediction begins with the Hebrew words Emet ve-Yatziv, and can be found in Siddur Sim Shalom on page 113 and in Siddur Va'ani Tefillati on page 340. In actual fact the Ge'ulah benediction consists of two discrete parts. The first part is not really concerned with redemption at all, but is an emphatic peroration to the Shema itself. Thus the section of the Ge'ulah benediction which immediately follows the Shema is an affirmation that everything that we have said in those three paragraphs are not just biblical quotations but are the very basis of our religious beliefs and behaviours.

109:
First there comes an agglomeration of sixteen (!) sequential adjectives which describe the nature of our attachment to the Shema:

It is, of course, impossible to render into English all these synonyms because the Hebrew genius delighted in the agglomeration itself more than in its exact meaning. The operative word in this sentence is 'true': for us, everything that we have said in the Shema is true. The next sentences make clear that the main reference is to the credal line of the Shema itself, because they emphasize Israel's allegiance to God and His Torah throughout all generations:

110:
Even the most cursory reading indicates to the trained eye that we have here a combination of several earlier independent 'affirmations'. It is a well-established tradition in Jewish liturgy that when several versions of a particular formulation have come down to us and all are equally admirable we just combine them all into one statement. (See, for example, what the Gemara [Berakhot 11b] says concerning the benediction over Torah study or what it says [Berakhot 60b] concerning the benediction Asher Yatzar.)

111:
In the ancient liturgy of Eretz Israel the same text usually was used for both the morning and the evening versions of this benediction; but in Babylon two distinct versions were used (and this divergence was gradually adopted in Eretz-Israel as well):

To be continued.

In the last few shiurim we have been discussing (both in the shiur and in the discussion) various aspects of the law of tzitzit (or tallit). In Tefillah 046 (and again in Tefillah 047) I wrote: The sages who developed the oral tradition took the command to "look at it" at face value and decided that the requirement to wear a four-cornered garment with tassels attached applied only when it would be possible to see the tassels in natural light: that is to say, daylight.

Irene Stern Friedman, prompted by that comment, now asks:

Do blind people wear a tallit?

I respond:

The response of the Shulĥan Arukh [Oraĥ Ĥayyim 17:1] to Irene's question is quite explicit:

Let me rephrase that in order to make it easier to understand. The command to wear tzitzit occurs more than once in the Torah. In Deuteronomy 22:12 we are commanded to wear tzitzit on the four corners of garments with which we cover ourselves. No reason is given there; therefore the command is quite general. The limitation "to look at them" in Numbers 15:39 is understood as referring to the time of day – when they can be seen by those who can see – and not to the physical capabilities of each individual.