Shema Yisrael ("Hear, O Israel), or the Shema, is the most famous and influential of the Jewish prayers and is central to the Jewish faith. The Shema, in its beautiful brevity, dates back to the prayer services in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. In modern times, the Shema is traditionally recited twice daily at morning (Shacharit) and evening (Arvit or Ma'ariv) services, during the Kedushah service on Shabbat, as well as the final Ne’ilah prayer during the Yom Kippur liturgy, and often as a Jewish person’s final words preceding death. Often times, it is one of the first passages of scripture that a Jewish child will learn and memorize.

The prayer can be said either sitting or standing and incorporates three different passages of scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Deuteronomy 11:13–21, and Numbers 15:37–41, and is reaffirmed by writings in the Talmud.

When one first starts reading the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is addressing Israel as they are preparing to enter the Promised Land and encouraging them to not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors if they want to experience the Lord’s blessings of land, fertility, and prosperity once they reach the Promised Land, lest disobedience lead to curses and punishment. In not repeating the mistakes of their ancestors, primarily involving idolatry and immorality of various forms, one must listen to, obey, and love God first and foremost, which leads to the texts that have become the Shema prayer that we know today.

Obeying God is not supposed to be about legalism or God being an ATM dispensing automatic blessings in return for doing right, but about love. For if we respond to God’s love, and ultimately Yeshua’s love, and are transformed by that love and desire to take on the character of the Creator of the Universe, we are transformed more into the image of God and respond with love, faithfulness, and obedience naturally. Not out of legalism, not out of obligation, but acting in a godly way because the sinful nature of our hearts is being slowly chiseled away and reformed in God’s ways.

The first verse is considered one of the most foundational declarations of Jewish faith, proclaiming that the Lord is our God and the monotheistic nature of God as one. From there, the prayer elaborates on ways by which one’s faith should be lived: love God with all of your being; teach it to your children; recite it when you wake and lie down; bind it as a symbol on your body; inscribe it on the doorposts of your home (often symbolized today by mezuzahs).

The second section of the prayer outlines the blessings and curses that come about depending on one’s choice to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and His commandments or to worship the pagan gods and their ways, as was common at the time between the pagan gods of Canaan and Egypt.

The third section of the prayer specifies the ritual fringes with a blue cord that Jewish people are to wear to remind themselves of God’s omnipresence and goodness. The exception is within some Reform circles, where the prayer books omit this third section from Numbers 15:40. This is because Reform Jews do not agree with upholding the commandment about the fringes.

Jewish people often wear a tallit while reciting the Shema and kiss the fringes (tzitzit) and the end of the prayer as a sign of affection for, not idolatry of, the commandments. Many times, one praying the Shema will have their eyes closed to help them tune out the distractions around them and focus on the meaning of each word they are praying. This partially comes from a directive within Jewish law to apply an even greater amount of concentration to the first verse of the prayer compared to the rest of the prayer, and to this effect, some siddurs even have the first verse of the prayer typed in larger print than the remaining verses.

The second line of the prayer, "Blessed is the name of His Glorious Majesty forever and ever" (Barukh shem kvod malkhuto l'olam va-ed), has been incorporated but is not actually Biblically derived; thus, this line is often said in a soft voice as a congregational response, whereas the rest of the prayer is traditionally said in a normal indoor voice. The only exception to this is on Yom Kippur, when the entire prayer is said at the same volume of voice.

The Shema is not totally disregarded in what Christians know of the totality of scripture today. Despite being an ancient Jewish prayer recited as far back as the Second Temple, Jesus considered this prayer to be the foundation of the greatest commandments of all when he said, "The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29–31).

John also more indirectly references the Shema in the Book of Revelation when he describes God’s people reuniting with their Creator and His Son in the New Jerusalem, saying, "They will see God’s face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:4). It is also interesting that inscribing God’s words on one’s heart, hand, and between one’s eyes in the Shema parallels the Last Day teachings outlined in Revelation 13:16, when "the Beast also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads."

John’s writings in Revelation paint a vivid picture of two choices: one can give their life to Yeshua and follow the Lamb wheresoever He may go, whatsoever the cost may be, or one can give their life to mammon and the ways of the world and be destroyed by the beast powers in the end. The choices are essentially life or death, blessings or curses, not necessarily in this world but in the world to come, which is essentially the same choice that Moses presented in the Shema prayer back in the writings of Deuteronomy.