Shamor: I Am the Keeper

A Shabbat Dvar Torah, Shabbat Noach 5787

Two weeks ago, we witnessed a modern day miracle … Flydubai Flight 1073 was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv with more than 170 people aboard, 27 of them children. Over the desert, the co-pilot attacked the captain, and the plane began to fall.

The captain, badly wounded, managed to unlock the cockpit door.

A plumber named Yaniv Hayoun forced his way in and dragged the attacker out. Other passengers held him down and tied his hands with headphone cords. 

Yaniv pulled back on the controls until off-duty pilots on board could take over. A dentist named Shota Musayev knelt on the floor and cared for the captain. Everyone landed safely.

It was a miracle, and desperately needed good news for Jews and for Israel. But it was not new news. 

This is who we are. And the Torah has one word for it.

One Word 

God asks Cain: “Where is Abel, your brother?” And Cain answers with a question of his own: Hashomer achi anochi? “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)

Cain meant it as a way out. But the Torah never answers him. It leaves the question hanging for every generation. And it hangs on one word: shomer.

What shamor really means

The root is shin, mem, resh, שׁמר. We usually translate it as “guard.” But it means much more. To keep. To watch over. To preserve. To pay attention. To hold something precious and not let it slip away.

The very first job God gives a human being is l’ovdah ul’shomrah, “to work the garden and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Before Adam is ever asked where are you, he is told what he is for. He is a shomer.

The Ten Commandments appear twice. In Exodus we are told zachor, remember Shabbat. In Deuteronomy we are told shamor, keep Shabbat. 

Tonight we sang it in Lecha Dodi: shamor v’zachor b’dibur echad, keep and remember in a single breath. 

Remembering happens inside us. Keeping is what we do with our hands. 

And shamor is how God relates to us. 

Yevarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha, “May God bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24). 

Hinei lo yanum v’lo yishan shomer Yisrael, “The Keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121:4). God is the first Shomer. When we keep one another, we are doing God’s work.

So what does a shomer keep? The tradition answers in three circles.

The first circle: keep yourself

The Torah says: V’nishmartem me’od l’nafshoteichem, “Guard your lives very carefully” (Deuteronomy 4:15). 

The rabbis read these verses as a real obligation to care for our bodies and our health (Berakhot 32b), and Maimonides taught that keeping the body well is part of serving God.

Every one of us has heard this on an airplane: put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. That is not selfishness. It is the only way to be any use to anyone else. 

A keeper who never keeps herself burns out, and then no one is kept.

Rest. Sleep. Ask for help. Take Shabbat. This, too, is shamor.

The second circle: keep your own

In 1909, the Jewish villages of the Galilee were small and exposed. A group of young pioneers, among them Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who would become Israel’s second president, decided to protect their communities themselves. 

They chose their name carefully: Hashomer, “The Keeper.” Women stood watch alongside the men. They took Cain’s question and answered it: Yes.

Hashomer was never large. In its whole history it had about 100 members, and 23 of them were women. They began patrolling on foot and soon took to horseback, dressed as bedouins.

Their rule was simple: avoid a fight, drive thieves away, and shoot only if your life is in danger. They did not only guard communities, they built them, founding Tel Adashim, Tel Hai, and Kfar Giladi. 

When Hashomer disbanded in 1920, its members helped form the Haganah, the seed of the Israel Defense Forces.

The third circle: keep the stranger

When disaster strikes anywhere in the world, Israeli rescue and medical teams are famous for being among the first to jump in to help, treating whoever needs care without asking who they are.

And look again at Flight 1073. The captain, a man from India, opened that door while bleeding. 

Off-duty pilots from other countries brought the plane down. Israeli passengers fought for the cockpit and cared for the wounded. 

Everyone on that plane was keeping everyone else.

I am the keeper

Our tradition says it plainly: And whoever saves a single life saves an entire world (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5). Count the worlds on Flight 1073.

So here is a question for our new year: Hashomer achi anochi?Are you your brother’s keeper. Or maybe it’s a statement, Hashomer achi anochi.

I am the keeper. Of myself, of my people, and of the stranger.

Yevarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha. 

May we be worthy of God’s protection and may we be generous in the circles we protect while never forgetting that it is our central duty to guard our own souls first.