From when may the Shema be recited in the evening? From the time that priests enter to eat their terumah. Until the end of the first watch is the opinion of Rabbi Eli'ezer; the rest of the sages say 'until midnight', while Rabban Gamli'el says 'until first light'.
An incident is recorded in which his sons returned from a celebration and told him that they had not yet recited the Shema. He told them that if first light had not yet broken they were required to recite it.
And not only here; but wherever the sages say 'until midnight' the mitzvah [duty] is actually in force until first light. In which case, why did the Sages say 'until midnight'? – in order to keep a person far from wrongdoing.
1:
Tractate Berakhot is concerned with the most basic elements of our liturgy: the Shema, the Amidah,
Birkhot ha-Nehenin [Blessings recited before enjoying the produce of this planet], Grace After Meals, and
Birkhot ha-Shevaĥ [Blessings recited on auspicious occasions]. The first topic to be considered is the Shema, which is the subject of the first three chapters of the Tractate.
2:
The first mishnah of our new tractate consists of three sections. When a mishnah may thus be divided up, we refer to the sections as reisha [first section], emtza'ita [middle section] and seifa [last section] respectively. We may now commence our study of the reisha.
3:
We have mentioned before that the Mishnah, compiled by Rabbi Yehudah the President of the Sanhedrin around the beginning of the third century CE, is not a comprehensive halakhic code, but rather a compendium of halakhic opinions and teachings of the sages who lived and taught up to its compilation, and that these are arranged according to certain "ground rules" to permit their swift interpretation by the initiated. Its format is terse (to permit conning by rote) and assumes prior knowledge of the part of the reader: it was not a work for the layman nor was it a philosophical or apologetic work. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that our first mishnah assumes that we already know what the Shema is, what it contains, why it is recited and what its spiritual meaning is for the faithful – so none of this is discussed in the Mishnah! We, today, can make no such assumptions!
4:
The Shema, in its basic essentials, is an anthology of three passages from the Torah that are to be recited twice daily, morning and evening. The three passages are: Deuteronomy 4:6-9, Deuteronomy 11:13-21 and Numbers 15:37-41. The purpose of the recitation is, presumably, to inculcate daily into the consciousness of the worshipper certain basic elements of Jewish belief and practice. A very broad description would state that the first passage – the passages are termed parashah in Hebrew – is concerned with kabbalat ol malkhut shamayaim – our acceptance of Divine Sovereignty; that the second parashah is concerned with skhar mitzvot – the consequences of observance and non-observance; and that the third parashah is concerned with the mitzvah of tzitzit [fringes, tallit] or, possibly, the duty to be ever mindful of the Exodus from Egypt.
5:
The fact that these three passages are not recited in the order that they appear in the Torah, has suggested to modern scholarship that they only gradually formed a complete unit of the liturgy, and that their present liturgical order reflects the chronological order of their acceptance into the liturgy. Traditional scholarship, of course, put forward other reasons for the sequence of the passages, based upon the philosophical and logical connections between the contents of the passages.
6:
The first parashah of the Shema starts with what is probably the most famous sentence in the whole of Jewish experience: Shema Yisra'el Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Eĥad. According to tradition this first sentence should be the very first item in an infant's religious experience: the moment children can formulate a coherent sentence they should be taught to recite this line. Furthermore, according to tradition, if a person is conscious when their death is fast approaching, they should be encouraged to recite this first sentence of the Shema. And during all the hopefully long years between these two events the recitation of the Shema should be the most meaningful element in the worshiper's daily communion with God and express the concepts of the faithful concerning God.
To be continued.
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