Every religion has a prayer, “Thee Prayer.”
In Judaism, it is the Shema Israel Prayer found in the Book of Deuteronomy 6:4.
It serves as the centerpiece of both the morning and evening prayers, and the first verse translates as follows: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD Our God, the LORD is One.”
There is an entire blog post dedicated to the meaning here.
We encourage you to take a look and please, let us know your thoughts!
Notice the Hebrew round, circular pendant here with the words of the prayer, Shema Israel in silver. This pendant can be found at alefbet.com
Since the blessing is such a fundamental part of Judaism and for all who believe in the Bible, aka The Old Testament, we continually design new pieces of jewelry with the Hebrew words of the prayer, Shema Israel.
Every time we display a piece of Hebrew jewelry, we receive the same response, and I love sharing it with everyone time after time since we can all relate.
It goes like this:
"What is that piece of jewelry?" asks the customer.
I respond, "It is Hebrew."
And the customer, who right away tells me "I cannot read Hebrew," and will follow up in the same sentence with, "Is it the Shema Prayer?"
Notice how I purposely said before that they tell me they cannot read Hebrew?
Then, how do they know the prayer Shema Israel?
Simple.
It's part of the religion.
And you don't have to be religious to know it.
Nope, not at all.
Each person then will proceed to tell a story about their memories of the prayer.
It is a touching moment for all, a moment we love to hear about when selling jewelry.
The stories, the feelings, the connection made, sometimes renewed, through prayer to our fellow people around the world.
Just having the words close to your soul, the words of the Hebrew prayer near you is a feeling that one cannot describe.
It grounds you, gives you inspiration and fills your soul.
Time after time these are the comments that our customers relay to us, and guess what?
We never tire of hearing the stories.
The most touching stories came to us actually when we donated 100% of the profits from our Shema Israel necklace after the Parkland Shootings in 2018. You can read about it here.
The communal love and support for individuals, of whom no one had ever met, was incredible.
It just simply reaffirmed the good in humanity.
And on that note, we'd love to share with you our Hebrew blessing jewelry, Shema Israel, both on our own website and on our Amazon store.
And while you're at it, if you wouldn't mind taking a few moments to reflect on what the prayer means to you and share it with us!
