By Sadie Benjamin

Illustration of Indian Jews (Bene-Israel) praying Shema Israel on a book cover, 1937

My father’s Shema Israel is rough and low, like wind gusting over rocky sand. He chants in a whisper crouching next to me at my bed. Eyes shut, head bowed slightly. His voice has a quality that mirrors my own—childlike, in awe. I love that he chants it as though it were very special, as though each word is imbued with a magical essence that he is lucky to be able to touch simply by speaking the word aloud. The words, as I see it in him, are items he carries in his voice and delivers to me, each one a new gift. My own childlike voice, high and thin, blends with his. We chant together. Even as a toddler, I sensed the words’ power when we had this nightly ritual.

My great-aunt’s Shema is a rapid-fire Hebrew that is shot through with a Marathi lilt, the emphasized “s” and the careful “r”s she could never quite shake. She whispers it fast and tuneless, a time-worn habit before bed each night. When I sleep over at her house, she whispers it over me. After “amain” I get kisses, all in a line— forehead, nose, chin. “I love you. Goodnight.”

My beit knesset’s Shema is less of a chant and more of a song. The cantor belts it as if this is not a synagogue but the Lyric Opera downtown; his Shema is replete with vibrato and operatic flourishes, holding obscenely high notes that he knows no one else can hit. The rest of the congregation stumbles along; the result is a simple, strange, but beautiful chorus accompanying his soaring tones. That Shema feels like home.

The way I say the Shema is a more recent creation. When I chant the Shema—-quiet under my breath as I lay awake in bed— I take the utmost care with every syllable. I hold each word in my mouth before releasing it; I am tasting it, feeling it. Each word is soaked through with history. Four thousand years’ worth of Jews have formed their lips around these very same words. I am assured and comforted that my ancestors and their ancestors once found solace in these same lines, that they too whispered them into the darkness before bed. Shema Israel, Hashem Elokaynu, Hashem Ahad— a thread that connects me to them through space and time, knitting us into the same cloth, making us one. Hear, O Israel. My people are listening.

Sadie Benjamin is a writer and artist of Indian-Jewish background. Her work has been featured in The Dawn Review, YouthBeHeard, JGirls+, and others.