Shema Yisrael in the context of "Shacharit"

In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Traditionally, Judaism holds that God—that is, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites—delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah. Jews believe in a monotheistic conception of God ("God is one"), characterized by both transcendence (independence from, and separation from, the material universe) and immanence (active involvement in the material universe).

God is seen as unique and perfect, free from all faults, and is believed to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and unlimited in all attributes, with no partner or equal, serving as the sole creator of everything in existence. In Judaism, God is never portrayed in any image. The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the un-pronounced Tetragrammaton (Hebrew: יהוה, romanized: YHWH) and Elohim. Other names used to refer to God in traditional Judaism include Adonai, El-Elyon, El Shaddai, and Shekhinah.

A mezuzah (Hebrew: מְזוּזָה "doorpost"; plural: מְזוּזוֹת‎ mezuzot) is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew verses from the Torah, which Jews affix in a small case to the doorposts of their homes. These verses are the Biblical passages in which the use of a mezuzah is commanded (Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 11:13–21); they also form part of the Shema prayer.

According to traditional Jewish law, a mezuzah must be placed on every post-and-lintel entrance to a residence, courtyard, or city. Since the time of Meir of Rothenburg (c. 1215–1293), religious Jews have increasingly also placed mezuzot on the entrances to non-residential buildings such as synagogues and offices, and on each internal doorway of the home or building, with the exception of bathrooms (where the name of God is forbidden) and small closets.

The Nash Papyrus is a collection of four papyrus fragments acquired in Egypt in 1902, inscribed with a Hebrew text which mainly contains the Ten Commandments and the first part of the Shema Yisrael prayer, in a form that differs substantially from the later, canonical Masoretic Text and is in parts more similar to the chronologically closer Septuagint. It has been suggested that the text might have been the daily worship of a Jew living in Egypt at the time. The fragments comprise a single sheet and are not part of a scroll. The papyrus is of unknown provenance, although it is allegedly from Fayyum. The text was first described by Stanley A. Cook in 1903. Though dated by Cook to the 2nd century CE, subsequent reappraisals have pushed the date of the fragments back to about 150–100 BCE. The papyrus was by far the oldest Hebrew manuscript fragment known at that time, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.