Listen up, y’all — an interpretive rendering of v’haya im shamoa by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat

Contributor(s):

Rachel Barenblat

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21 August 2024 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

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Shema

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21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Prayers as poems, paraliturgical shema, והיה אם שמע v'haya im shemo'a, interpretation as prayer, English vernacular prayer, Midrashic interpretation

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	“Listen up, y’all,” says Shekhinah who looks today like a teacher in corduroy dress and sedate boots.
	“Let the smartphone rest a bit, or learn how to hear My voice coming through its speaker.
	Let your love for Me well up like unexpected tears. Everyone serves something: give your life to Me.
	Let the channel of your heart open and My abundance will pour through. But if you prefer profit, if you pretend —
	if you’re not real with Me your life will feel hollow and your heart be embittered.
	I won’t punish you; I won’t need to. Your hollowness will be punishment enough, and the world will suffer for it.
	So let My words twine around your arm, and shine like a headlamp between your eyes to light your way.
	Teach them to everyone you meet. Write them at the end of your emails and on your business cards.
	Then you’ll remember how to live with the flow of all that is holy — you’ll have heaven right here on earth.”

“Listen up, y’all (An interpretive rendering of V’haya im shamoa)” by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat was originally published 1 February 2016 at her website, Velveteen Rabbi. There she provided the following description, “This is a creative rendering of the second paragraph of the shema, Deuteronomy 11:13-21. It was written for the service I’m leading this morning with Rabbi David [Evan Markus] at Rabbis Without Borders. (I offer deep thanks to David both for co-leading davvenen with me, and for reading an early draft of this poem and offering wise suggestions.)”

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“Listen up, y’all — an interpretive rendering of v’haya im shamoa by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Rachel Barenblat

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (a/k/a the Velveteen Rabbi) serves Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of six volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). A founding builder at Bayit: Building Jewish, she resides in western Massachusetts. She has blogged as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.

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Lightpainting (aka, jumping around with a headlamp) in Catacombs Cave, Lava Beds National Monument. A composite of several timer-assisted selfies. (credit: Daniel Parks, license: CC BY-NC)

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17