When works are printed bearing sheimot, any one of the ten divine names sacred to Judaism, they are cared for with love. If a page or bound work bearing shemot falls to the ground it’s a Jewish custom to draw up the page or book and kiss it. Just as loved ones are cared for after they’ve fallen and passed away, when the binding fails and leaves fall from siddurim and other seforim they are collected in boxes and bins and brought for burial, where their holy words can decompose back into the earth from which their constituent elements once grew, and were once harvested to become paper and books, and ink, string, glue. While teaching at the Teva Learning Center last Fall 2010, I collected all pages with shemot that we had intentionally or unintentionally made on our copy machine, or which we had collected from the itinerant teachers who pass through the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center on so many beautiful weekend shabbatonim.

Leafing through the pages left for the darkness of the genizah, granted to be studied by the Yeshivah shel Sheol, I preserved one. It’s a page with the declaration of the Shema written on it with the whispered refrain, barukh shem kavod malkhuto, all but obscured by copy toner ink. You can imagine some teacher of Jewish meditation coming to the copy machine with a much plainer page, and then alerted to the copier’s distress, opening its guts to extirpate the misprint or misprints jammed inside like God freeing Yonah from inside the giant fish. Teva’s Program Coordinator that season, Gila Lyons, was the first to recognize it. I first noticed it tacked to the wall left of her workspace in the Teva office. At the end of the season, she had left it behind. Later, she admitted, she was glad I found it. I’m happy to share it with the world with a CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license.

In saying the shema, I’ve adopted the custom I first learned while reading Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, to take full breaths between each word of the shema, visualizing the letters comprising each word and translating the meaning of the divine names and their connection one to the other in this sequence of words. With my eyes closed, I open my ears to hear and appreciate the meaning in the sound of others saying the shema around me, entwined together with the sound of my shema. With my minds eye, I come to the word eḥad, and remember Rabi Shimon Ben Zoma’s warning in tractate Berakhot, not to dwell on the letter ḥet, ח, a lintel and doorway into pondering divine oneness without end, ‘eyn sof אֵין סוֹף. Through the shema, I’ve limited my visual awareness and bound my hearing and breathing and loving, to my imagination, the only recourse I have to perceiving the divine as Transcendent.

Then, I tear myself away from this vision by deliberately opening my eyes, and blessing with some humility what I perceive, saying, really desperately to see the world in its precious immanence with all the beauty that is hidden by its sheer ubiquity, I whisper: barukh, blessed, is the shem kavod malkhuto, the vast Name writ in the Glorious Kingdom — the natural world about me, even with its real sorrows. Barukh haShem, with empathy and mitsvah actions, I can help redeem its suffering and cultivate more compassion in this beautiful world, and because with free will, I can choose not to add to this suffering by avoiding predatory actions as much as possible.^[1] I do this by being stringent in not eating other animals, and to make the mitzvot of bal tashkhit, v’ahavta l’reyakha kamokha (each one of us is tselem elohim), and tza’ar baalei ḥayim central to my practice of Torah. This is why on Yom Kippur, when I am taken so completely out of the cycle of predatory nature that I am not consuming any other forms of life, I can proclaim without whispering or deference, barukh shem kavod malkhuto.   Through the barukh shem kavod malkhuto, I bind all of my senses and empathy with my imagination. perceive Nature in all of its beauty and sorrows with my sensory awareness (poteiaḥ ‘ivrim), and signify this reality as that which is immanent by naming it the Shem Kavod Malkhuto. By linking signifier (the Name) with the signified (the unNameable), I unify the Immanent world I can perceive with the Transcendent world I can only ponder — endless in its abstractions and endless in its the interdependent relationships expressed in the infinite multiplicity of evolving lifeforms and ecosystems. Perception and imagination: I need both to know and feel, to nurture and rescue. From kavvanah to mitsvah — from intention to action.

Given that the Torah forbids impressing our imaginations with illustrations of the divine, some other method is necessary to perceive divine Oneness. One method is found in the verse in Psalms 16:8, “I have set YHVH before me at all times.”

But does the verse enjoin one to perceive divine Oneness at all times, or to ponder the Tetragrammaton (the ineffable, four letter divine name) at all times, or to perceive the world as an expression of a Divine Name writ in nature? This ambiguity is at the root of the tradition of the Shiviti, a recursive illustration of the verse’s meaning set as a visual meditation and reminder. Because the object of any given practice is to condition behavior through repetition, the practice of perceiving the world as an expression of divine Oneness can begin as soon as one gains consciousness, and this is where Psalms 16:8 enters into the morning liturgy. Shmueli Gonzales explains more in his post on the Shiviti,

Those of you who have visited any Jewish shrines know exactly what I’m talking about when I mention charts and mystical diagrams. We call them Shiviti and they often take on the form on an enlarged writing of the Four-Letter name surrounded by verses of Psalms or prayers. The most famous of these is probably Psalms 67 drawn in the shape of a menorah. Others incorporate many mystical ways of reading Divine Names, but that are not meant to be pronounced.

Now one might ask, how intrusive into the text of the siddur can these mandala like meditations be? I mean, if they are useful why are they left out of the Baal haTanya’s siddur? You might say, who is he to leave out these things that are so authentic and sacred? Well, if we use a siddur as a seder (an order) of prayers and devotions, and go through it from waking up to going to sleep, then the first occurrence of shiviti is at the beginning of the siddur. That’s right. When one wakes up they are to immediately have in mind this verse “I have set haShem before me at all times.” For this reason in many Sephardic and Edut haMizrach siddurim the first words you will see is these words “shiviti Hashem l’negdi tamid.” [Read more at Shmuel’s blog, Hardcore Mesorah.]

This particular shiviti was originally drawn by a sopher (scribe) in Israel under the pseudonym, בעל הכוכב and shared on a popular message board with the intention “** חובה בכל בית **” — “It’s a duty [to place this] in every home.” Thank you to Andrew Meit for converting this shiviti from a raster image to a vector art SVG. With attribution to this psuedonymous sopher, and respecting his intention for sharing the shiviti he drew, with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Public-domain dedication of the derivative vector art.

Many institutionalized religions appear to prize knowledge and intellectual learning. Yet we also often find, in tension with this, an awareness of the disadvantages of endlessly pursuing intellectual knowledge. In Zen Buddhism, which greatly values the study of its scriptures or sutras, practitioners are taught to cultivate “Beginner’s Mind,” a state of not-knowing – that is, not clinging to our previous certainties, but rather being open and eager to learn, as if from the beginning.

In Judaism too, we find this tension. The great esteem our tradition has placed on knowledge and learning is balanced by our obligation to cultivate our own relationship with not-knowing. The most famous example of this is in the following talmudic teaching, where we learn of a controversial practice for the holiday of Purim. Why do you think Rava’s teaching has proved so contentious, and yet so enduring? What is the deeper meaning of the practice he is pointing us toward?

Haman, the villain of the Purim story, thinks he has everything figured out and meticulously planned. The rabbis even call him ‘Mr. Prepared’ (Memukhan – see Megillah 12b). But so often in life, we are lacking just one piece of information, and that completely changes the entire picture. And sometimes it is precisely our certainty that we already know everything that prevents us from seeing what we are missing. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.”^[1] Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 20 November 1850 — Fair Haven Pond. 

What is Haman missing, according to the teaching below, and why do you think he missed it, despite his thorough preparations? How might this one little fact affect the outcome of his plans?

Ḥasidism often developed radical ideas which were already present in traditional Judaism. R’ Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730 – 1797) is also known as the ‘Chernobyler Rebbe’ or the Me’or Einayim (Light of the Eyes), after the name of his most important book. He is one of very few who learned with both the founder of Ḥasidism, the Ba’al Shem Tov, and his successor, the Maggid of Mezritch.

From teachings such as the one below, we can see why the rabbinic opponents of Ḥasidism, who valued talmudic learning for its own sake, were quick to label Ḥasidism a heretical and dangerous movement. What is R’ Menachem teaching us here about the difference between knowledge and wisdom? What is the spiritual practice that his words might lead us to explore?

Practice Instructions for Cultivating a State of Not-knowing

 

1. Decide how long you want to practice for. If you’re new to meditation, try ten minutes.
   When you feel ready, gradually increase the practice time by five minutes at a time.
   Twenty minutes is a good sit for an intermediate practitioner, whereas more advanced meditators might practice for 45-60 minutes.

    

2. Sit quietly in a comfortable position, with the spine upright, and the body balanced between relaxation and alertness.
   (Lying down is also possible, but brings with it the possibility of falling asleep).

    

3. Close your eyes and let out a few yawns or sighs to relax your body.

    

4. Now just sit, not trying to change or do anything.

   Observe whatever arises in your body and mind – thoughts, feelings, whatever comes.

    

5. After a minute or two, set your intention to bring your attention or awareness to a specific place in the body that will be your anchor or object for this practice.

   If you are new to this,
   then you may want to use the soles of the feet,
   the backside and its contact with the chair/cushion,
   or any other relatively neutral place in the body.

   If you already have a meditation practice, please use whatever anchor works best for you at this time.

    

6. Whatever thoughts, feelings or sensations arise, try to notice them,
   gently release them without judgement, and keep returning to your anchor.

   This may or not be easy in this moment, but the key thing is the effort.

   Keep trying to bring your attention, focus and curiosity gently back to the anchor that you have chosen.

    

7. After a few minutes, we are a little more settled and ready to introduce the work of cultivating not-knowing.

   Whatever thoughts, feelings or sensations arise,
   notice them and welcome them with a gentle greeting
   such as, “What a mystery!”
   or perhaps, “Maybe, maybe not”
   or, “I have no idea what that is or where it comes from”
   or even, “Could be, I don’t know for sure.”

   Use whichever formula works best for you.
   Trust your intuition and keep it simple – don’t get lost in thought about which words to use.
   Maintain some focus on your anchor to help you remain in a meditative state.
   Keep doing this diligently to whatever the mind presents, no matter what it is, for the duration of your practice, and notice what happens.

    

8. When you have completed the practice, take a moment to check in with yourself.
   What is happening inside you?
   Is there anything you would like to express or record for yourself?

I created this Shiviti in the lead up to Shavuot 5784 (2024) to use in a Shavuot learning class on the Shiviti. My scalable vector graphic (SVG) Shiviti is based on many traditional ones I’ve seen, and inspired by my love of Judaism, mysticism, art, computers, and coding. Since it was generated for the purpose of study on printed worksheets over Shavuot, the letters of the Tetragrammaton are separated by dashes. (A maqaf may be preferable but was not available in the scribal font “Stam Ashkenaz CLM” I utilized.) Elsewhere in the letter art, the traditional circumlocution for the divine nameא-ל is used. The overarching concern here was to prevent the work from requiring the same treatment given to works in which divine names are explicitly printed. (For a teshuva on this topic, find “YD 276 – On the Exodus (and Genesis) of Shemot” (Avram Israel Reisner, CJLS 2003).) A second version of the Shiviti using the original divine names in unchanged forms is also provided for viewing on screen (not recommended for printing).

The first Shiviti I created was one I made by hand around 2014 at Kol Zimra,^[1] A chant leader’s professional development program led by Rabbi Shefa Gold.  at a craft shiviti making workshop taught by art therapist Judith Dack with Rabbi Shefa Gold. I was later inspired by the Shiviti rendered in vector art (SVG) by Andrew Meit published on Open Siddur. Andrew had converted a Shiviti from a raster image provided by Aharon Varady, that had originally been shared by the sofer, Ba’al haKokhav (a pseudonym of the author of a now inaccessible post of a once popular messaging board online.)

The SVG file was created by hand coding XML in a text editor with Unicode Hebrew and hyperlink sources for texts to Sefaria and Open Siddur (no design tools were used). The open-source vector art application Inkscape was used to render the PNG (raster graphic at 400dpi resolution) and PDF (with embedded font and hyperlinks) directly from the SVG. The only technical requirement should be availability of the font “Stam Ashkenaz CLM”.