Nephesh / Soul

The Shema prayer sums up God’s greatest command, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one, and as for you, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Begin your study of this ancient prayer by looking at the first word, “shema,” meaning “listen.”

YHWH, Adonai, LORD, Jehovah–God seems to have a lot of names. So what exactly are we supposed to call him? Dive into this fascinating look behind all the different names Jews and Christians have used to refer to God and discover the power of the personal name of the God of Israel.

Love can be a confusing word in the English language. It's used to refer to everything from your feelings to your mom to your feelings about pizza. But the biblical authors had more than one word for love. In this video, we explore the Hebrew word used for love in the ancient Shema prayer, *ahavah*.

Different cultures have different conceptions of the human heart, what it is, and what it does. The biblical authors are no exception, but there is no biblical word that better captures the essence of human thought, feeling, and desire, than the rich and wonderful word for “heart,” “lev.”

The English word “soul” usually refers to the non-material essence of a human that survives after death, but “nephesh” means something different. It refers to humans as living, breathing, physical beings—or just to life itself.

What does it mean to love God with all of your strength? In this final installment of our Shema series, we explore the Hebrew word me'od, which we translate as "strength" in the Shema. But this is only one of the many ways this rich Hebrew word can be translated.