The first paragraph of the Shema begins with the inspiring pronouncement: “You shall love Hashem, your G-d, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your resources.”

As I wrote earlier (see Blessings of the Shema Part 8:

https://ohr.edu/this_week/counting_our_blessings/9612), Rabbi Akiva Eiger points out that the blessing immediately prior to the Shema declares Hashem’s love for us, “Blessed are You, Hashem, Who chooses His people with love.” Rabbi Eiger explains that true love must be mutual. Healthy and nurturing love exists only when it is reciprocal. This is why we first recognize that Hashem’s love for us is all-encompassing and then we respond, “You shall love Hashem, your G-d.”

Our verse defines how our love for Hashem is supposed to be. We must love Hashem, “with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your resources.” Rashi, commenting on “with all your heart,” writes that it is imperative that we direct our entire heart towards serving Hashem and not let it be a “half-hearted” relationship.

The Talmud (Brachot 54a) points out that the Hebrew spelling of the word “levavcha – your heart” seems to be incorrect. The correct way to spell your heart in Hebrew is ‘lamed, bet, final chaf’ – pronounced “libcha.” However, in the Torah it is spelled with an extra ‘bet’ – ‘lamed, bet, bet, final chaf.’ Our Sages explain that the extra letter ‘bet’ teaches us to serve Hashem with both the Yetzer HaTov – the good inclination – and with the Yetzer HaRah – the evil inclination.

This seems to be a counterintuitive. Without being privy to this lesson, we would assume that it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to uproot the Yetzer HaRah in order to serve Hashem properly. However, the Talmud is teaching us that this is not so. Our Sages are clarifying that it is the Yetzer HaRah that is causing us to grow! Because, without the Yetzer HaRah pushing against us, there is nothing forcing us to stretch beyond ourselves. There is no reason to aspire to greater levels of spiritual connection. In the thought-provoking words of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, our Yetzer HaRah should not frighten us because the ultimate level of serving Hashem is to overcome it.

The verse then continues “with all your soul.” Our Sages teach us that this is an even higher level of connection than “with all your heart.” We need to try and reach such a level of connection to Hashem that we would be prepared to give up our lives for Him. The Maharal writes that a person who can reach a level of “with all your soul” has an immeasurable spiritual influence and impact in this world.

Rabbi Shimon Schwab used an incident that took place in the late 1930s in Germany to describe what it means to serve Hashem with all one’s soul. He writes that there was a Ba’al Teshuvah who was learning in the Yeshiva in Frankfurt. Once, he was stopped in the street by a Nazi officer and commanded to pronounce Hashem’s Name together with a terrible curse word. The Ba’al Teshuva refused. The officer took out his pistol and held it against the Ba’al Teshuva’s heart and told him that he would shoot if he did not do as he was told. The Jew refused again, and, after a brief standoff, the Nazi officer returned his pistol to its holster and told him that he was “just checking to see if he was a Jewish coward.”

Explains Rabbi Schwab: Serving Hashem “with all your soul” does not mean that we have to give up our lives to show Hashem how much we love Him. “With all your soul” means that we have to be prepared to give up our lives to serve Hashem.

Then we say, “With all your resources.” The Rabbis teach that each level is progressively harder to attain than the previous one. It is harder to give up our lives to serve Hashem than it is to serve Hashem with all our hearts. But the hardest and highest level of serving Hashem is being prepared to sacrifice everything we own to be able to continue serving Him. In Judaism, there is a well-known truism that it is “easier to die sanctifying Hashem’s Name than to live sanctifying Hashem’s Name.”

One truly needs to be totally attached to Hashem to be prepared to give up all one’s possessions to be able to remain steadfast in one’s Avodat Hashem. Historically, it was the Jews who moved from one country to another to be able to practice their Judaism. Or, more recently in Jewish history, those who had to find a new place to work each week rather than work on Shabbat and were willing to forfeit everything they had in order to remain sincere God-fearing Jews. It is to these spiritual heroes that King David refers in Tehillim 119:72, when he writes, “I prefer the Torah of Your Mouth more than thousands in gold and silver.”

Rabbi Schwab points out that the word for resources in the Shema is “meodecha.” The root of the word “meodecha” is “meod – very much.” A dear friend related to me an intriguing and challenging thought that he had on our verse. These three criteria of serving Hashem, “with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your resources,” represent three different epochs in Jewish history. There have been times when the battle for the hearts of the Jewish People has been uppermost. Periods in history where we have had to fight to serve Hashem with all our hearts and not to vanish into the great void of assimilation. To fight with all our might the foreign philosophies and belief systems that encroach on the purity and the beauty of our way of life.

In the same way, there have been countless moments where we have had to fight for our lives, and, on too many occasions to even begin to count, to give up our lives simply because we are Jews.

And now we have “today,” when we find ourselves living in a world of plenty. We are living in an era of undreamed material wealth. We are bombarded with adverts for unnecessary luxuries that were unimaginable only a few years ago. And it is in this climate of “meod-ness” of “very-muchness,” where the Shema is commanding us to remain focused on Hashem. To sacrifice the glitter and allure of the hedonistic materialism of secular society. To remember that the only real, lasting aspiration is the one that lets us enhance our relationship with Hashem.