"Hasidic Interpretations of the First Verse of the Shema" From Norman Lamm's "The Shema: Spirituality and Law in Judaism."

According to the mystic tradition as expressed in the Zohar, the first verse of the Shema represents the "Higher Unification" and the sentence immediately following, which is not found in the Bible at all, indicates the "Lower Unification." This classification arose out of the need to connect the non-biblical verse to the first verse and harmonize it with the phrase, "the Lord is One." Within the hasidic tradition, there arise two fundamentally different interpretations of …

…Onkelos and Maimonides. This synthesis effectively incorporates the views of Lubavitch, Zidovitch, and Onkelos into a single, coherent interpretation while remaining true to the basic premises of all three. However, it rejects the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic tendencies of prior Jewish commentators which are key proponents of that view. The personal, warming aspects of the Shema which Lamm desires for his interpretation were already present in the Ziditchover, thus making the ancient Jewish perspective largely unnecessary.