וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה' אֱלהֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאדֶךָ: וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּום עַל לְבָבֶךָ: וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ וּבְקוּמֶךָ: וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאות עַל יָדֶךָ וְהָיוּ לְטטָפת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ: וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל מְזֻזות בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ:
לְמַעַן תִּזְכְּרוּ וַעֲשיתֶם אֶת כָּל מִצְותָי וִהְיִיתֶם קְדשִׁים לֵאלהֵיכֶם: אֲנִי ה' אֱלהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר הוצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לִהְיות לָכֶם לֵאלהִים אֲנִי ה' אֱלהֵיכֶם. אֱמֶת:
(ז) הש"ץ חוזר ואומר: ה' אֱלהֵיכֶם אֱמֶת:
YOU SHALL LOVE Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Thus you shall remember to observe all My commandments
and to be holy to your God.
I am Adonai, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God:
I am Adonai your God.
(Translation from: Mishkan T'filah: Shabbat: A Reform Siddur (p. 116). CCAR Press. Kindle Edition.)
Marc Brettler, My People's Prayer Book, (Vol. 1, pg. 100)
...Israel is the child returning appropriate love to the loving [parent].
Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals, pg. 42
Judaism commands love, for its goal is to teach human beings to love.
-- Eric L. Friedland
Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals, pg. 41
You shall love - Repeatedly the Torah instructs us to love: to love God, to love our neighbor, and to love the stranger. We might well take the word "love" to imply an intense inner emotion, but the ancient rabbis frequently understood the biblical injunction to "love" in a more concrete and behavioral sense: love consists of acts of empathy, care, and kindness as well as behavior toward others that is just and righteous. To love God is certainly to recognize our conscious relationship to God. Equally, it may mean that we behave in ways that are pleasing to God - acting morally and fulfilling what God desires of us, to walk through life lovingly.
Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals, pg. 42
"You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all that is yours." You shall love- what a paradox this embraces! Can love then be commanded?...Yes of course, love cannot be commanded. No third party can command it or extort it. No third party can, but the One can. The commandment to love can only proceed from the mouth of the lover.
-- Franz Rosenzweig
Elliot Dorff, My People's Prayer Book (Vol. 1, pg. 88)
The ...paragraphs that make up the entire Sh'ma do not appear consecutively in the Torah... Although all the parts of the Sh'ma appear in the Torah, then, the prayer as we have it is not biblical in origin, but rather a prayer created by the Rabbis. Why then did the Rabbis choose these paragraphs, not others (the Ten Commandments, say) for this central prayer?
Elliot Dorff, My People's Prayer Book (Vol. 1, pg. 89)
[The beginning] of the Sh'ma is phrased in the second person singular, while [later it is] in the second person plural. Both individually and collectively, then we affirm the beliefs and obey the commandments contained in the Sh'ma, so as to merit the promise...of being God's People.
Joel Hoffman, My People's Prayer Book (Vol. 1, pg. 102)
...nefesh and levav together form an idiom in biblical Hebrew...probably used to represent the entirety of human existence, much the way we use "mind and body,"or sometimes "body and soul" depending on the context, but always in order to mean "the whole person."
Elliot Dorff, My People's Prayer Book (Vol. 1, pgs. 112-113)
"I am Adonai your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt to be your God” The [triplet] of creation, revelation, and redemption that marks the three-fold blessing structure occurs within the very paragraphs of the Sh’ma itself...
the dominant biblical view, and the view the Rabbis adopted, is that history has meaning precisely because it is not circular, but linear: we progress from creation through revelation to ultimate redemption...
Consequently, this sequence of creation-revelation-redemption does no less than proclaim that history is meaningful, that our current efforts to make a better world can bear fruit, and that life itself has meaning.