Perashat VaEt-hannan has 12 of the Torah's 613 Missvot. 8 positive commandments and 4 negative commandments. 7 of those 12 commandments are found in the short paragraph of "Sh'ma' Yisrael," which is part of Perashat VaEt-hannan. All of those 7 commandments are positive commandments and they are:
- To believe that Hashem is One which is the commandment of Sh'ma' Yisrael.
- To love Hashem. ואהבת את ה, אלקיך
- To study and teach Torah. ושננתם לבניך
- To recite Shema' twice a day. Once in the morning and again at night which is instructed with the verse: ודברת בם...בשכבך ובקומיך
- To wear Tefillin Shel Yad.
- To wear Tefillin Shel Rosh.
- And lastly to affix Mezuzot on your doorposts.
Believing that Hashem is One means that we believe that there are no other powers or forces in the universe that are not under Hashem's total and complete control. That is the meaning of the verse: שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו ה' אחד. Sh'ma' means to accept and believe. The commandment is to believe that HaShem who we worship, meaning אלקינו, is one, and there are no other gods of any sort whatsoever. And the very next Missvah is to love Hashem. How do we love Hashem? Isn't difficult to love one who we can not see, and who does not speak to us? According to the Sefer HaHinukh we fulfill this commandment by thinking about His commandments and His actions that we learn about in the Torah. And by enjoying His providence and involvement in every aspect of the universe and human affairs. So an awareness of what we do know about HaShem from the Torah and the teachings of our Hakhamim leads us to the love of HaShem. HaRambam also addressed this question toward the beginning of the second chapter of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah. His approach is to observe and contemplate the nature of all of HaShem's creations. The beauty, the wonders, and so many natural phenomena which illustrate HaShem's infinite wisdom, will ultimately lead one to love and praise HaShem and increase one's desire to know HaShem as much as possible. However Rashi explains this Missvah as practicing the Missvot with love, not just out of fear. Similarly the Seforno explained when you do a Missvah be happy that you are doing what is good in HaShem's eyes and understand that there's nothing greater than that. So we have love of HaShem through knowing and thinking about his commandments and actions that we know about from the Tanakh and teachings of our Hakhamim; we have love of HaShem by looking around us and observing nature and learning science, and we have love of HaShem through fulfilling his commandments with the right attitude. Based on this we can give a good analogy. Often times we love an author because we read several books that they wrote, even though we have never met them or spoken to them. HaShem is the author of the Torah and the source of what is written in the Nebi'im and Ketubim. Hashem is the creator of the entire universe which we live in and know about. So even though we don't know Hashem directly like we know our family and friends, we do know Hashem through the Torah and Missvot and the physical world that we live in, and that's our path to fulfilling the Missvah of loving Hashem. The next commandment in this short paragraph is to study and teach Torah. In Mishneh Torah, HaRambam has a section on the laws of Torah study, otherwise known as Hilkhot Talmud Torah. HaRambam devoted 7 chapters to these laws. In the first chapter, HaRambam wrote: "Every Jewish man is obligated to study Torah whether he is poor or rich, whether his body is completely healthy or he suffers from afflictions, whether he is a young man or an elderly man who is weak, even a poor person who is sustained with charitable donations and goes from door to door (collecting), and even a married man with children, is obligated to establish a time to study Torah during the day and during the night." HaRambam also added: "Until when is a person obligated to study Torah? Until the day of his death like the verse says, 'so that they don't leave your heart all the days of your life'. And any time that a person is not engaged in the study of Torah, he forgets" The next Missvah in this paragraph is reciting Sh'ma' every day and every night. The Sefer HaHinukh explained that people are forgetful by nature and tend to follow their instincts. Therefore we constantly have to remind ourselves that Hashem is all-knowing and all-powerful in order to remember to conduct ourselves properly all day and all night. So we read it once a day to remind ourselves to behave properly during the day and again at night to remind ourselves to behave properly at night as well. And since the purpose of this Missvah is to make a serious impression on ourselves every time we recite Sh'ma', if one recited the first line of Sh'ma' (שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו ה' אחד) without concentrating on the meaning of the words, they did not fulfill their obligation and they must recite it again. Since reciting Sh'ma' twice a day is a positive commandment governed by time, women are exempt. Still in all of it is nice if they say at least the first verse every morning and every night. The latest time to recite Sh'ma' in the morning is until the end of the third variable hour. You can follow the later opinion of the G"RA which is based on the day beginning at sunrise and ending at sunset. The earliest time to fulfill your obligation at night is at nightfall, which is not more than 27 minutes after sunset in the NY/NJ area. So when you pray 'Arbit before or right after sunset, you are obligated to recite Sh'ma' again after nightfall, which 27 minutes after sunset. Even though we have the recitation of Sh'ma' twice a day to remind us about Hashem, we have other Missvot that also are reminders not to follow our instincts and engage in sinful behavior. Included in those type of Missvot are the next two Missvot in this paragraph, which are wearng Tefillin on our arm and wearing Tefillin on our head. The Sefer HaHinukh listed several Missvot which serve as reminders of our spiritual responsibilities, including studying Torah every day and every night, Ssissit, Mezuzah and Tefillin on our arm and on our head, which are all to remind us not to follow our desire, but rather to adhere to all of the other commandments of the Torah. The Tefillin contain four passages from the Torah, Qadesh Li [קדש לי] and V'Hayah Ki Y'biakha [והיה כי יביאך] which are both from the end of Perashat Bo, and the first 2 paragraphs of Q'riat Sh'ma'. The first paragraph, Sh'ma' Yisrael [שמע ישראל] is from Perashat VaEt-hannan, and the and the second paragraph, V'Hayah Im Shamoa' [והיה אם שמוע] is from Perashat 'Eqeb. In the Yad (Tefillin for the arm) all four passages are written on one parchment. In the Rosh (Tefillin for the head) each passage is written on a separate parchment and placed in its own compartment. The difference between regular Tefillin that follow Rashi's opinion, and Tefillin of Rabenu Tam, is the order of the passages. Rashi follows the order that the passages appear in the Torah, but Rabenu Tam positions V'Hayah Im Shamoa' before Sh'ma' even though he stills writes the passages in the order that they are in the Torah. Meaning for the Tefillin Shel Yad (for the arm) he writes Sh'ma' at the end of the parchment before he writes V'Hayah Im Shamoa' in the middle of the parchment. And for the Tefilin Shel Rosh (for the head) he writes the parchments in the order that they are written in the Torah but arranges them in the compartments with V'Hayah Im Shamoa' in the third compartment and Sh'ma' in the fourth compartment. In order to remember the proper place for the Tefillin on your arm and head the Rabbis coined a phrase, אין מניחים תפילן אלא בשבת Literally that means that we only wear Tefillin on Shabbat! Which is the opposite of what we actually do! But here בשבת (on Shabbat) is an acronym for במקום שער במקום תפוח. That means that the Tefillin on your head goes above your hairline [ במקום שיער] and the Tefillin on your arm that goes on the high part of your muscle [במקום תפוח]. And women are exempt from Tefilin because it is a positive commandment governed by time. The Tefillin for the arm [יד] and for the head [ראש] are counted as two separate Missvot because I can fulfill the Mitzvah of Tefillin for the arm even if I don’t have the Tefillin for the head and vice versa. The last Missvah in this paragraph is the obligation to affix a Mezuzah to your doorpost. As we said previously, this is one of the Missvot that remind you about all of the other Missvot. While the Tefillin have four passages written in them, the Mezuzah has two of those passages, which are the first and second paragraphs of Sh'ma'. Women are exempt from most of the reminder Missvot, including reciting Sh'ma' twice a day and wearing Ssissit and Tefillin all of which are positive commandments governed by time, but they are obligated to put Mezuzot on their doorposts. And one must check all of their Mezuzot every three and a half years. One question that comes up regarding putting up a Mezuzah is should it be straight or slanted or on a diagonal? According to HaRambam and Maran it should be straight, but the Ashkenazic custom is to put it up on a slant in accordance with the opinion of Muram who lived in Poland in the 16th century and appended notes to Shulhan 'Arukh. Normally we follow Maran and HaRambam, but when Hakham Yiss-haq Tawil A"H was asked about the custom in Halab regarding the positioning of the Mezuzah, he answered: מזוזות באלכסון, כך היה בחלב Mezuzot on a slant, that's how it was in Halab. Similarly, Hakham Obadyah Hedaya, who was Hakham Ya'aqob Kassin's brother-in-law, wrote that the custom is to put the Mezuzah slanted in accordance with the words of the Rama, meaning Rabbi Moshe Isrelish who is also referred to as Muram, who was, as we said, an Ashkenazic authority who appended notes to Shulkhan 'Arukh. Also Hakham Yiss-haq Alfiyeh, another Rabbi who was born in Halab, wrote in his book Qunteras HaY'hieli: A mezuzah is affixed straight, on a slant and on a diagonal with the top of the mezuzah which is Sh'ma' tilting inward and the bottom of the mezuzah tilting outward. Hakham Yiss-haq Alfiyeh mentioned both affixing it straight and slanted without specifying who observes which custom. This is because some middle eastern Jews put it up straight while others put it up slanted. According to the Ben Ish Hai and H'Obadyah Yosef, the mezuzah is supposed to be straight. However, the custom of affixing it slanted is also recorded by the Ma'aseh Roqeah in Izmir Turkey in the 18th century, by the N'har Missrayim in Egypt in the beginning of the 20th century, and by the Keter Shem Tob also in the 20th century. Growing up in the community, the common practice was to put mezuzah up on a slant. I remember seeing the Mezuzot on a slant at the home of Hakham Shaul Kassin A"H, who was also the nephew of H' Obadyah Hedaya who was mentioned earlier. It's really in the last 30-40 years when it became more popular to put Mezuzot up straight. So, while our general rule is to follow Maran and HaRambam, there are exceptions, and this is one of them, where in Halab they followed Muram and put their Mezuzot up on a slant.