2A
Maimothai
The mishna, the first mishna, starts in the middle. It starts with the middle letter.
The first mishna asks the time form when we recite the shema at night.

1. It assumes that we know that we have to recite the shema.
2. It assumes that we know what the shema is.
3. It assumes that we know what recitation means.

Having grown up traditional, I have an unexamined sense of these things.

This, in turn, leads to an understanding of the ambiguity of these things.

The question of a commandment to recite the shema is comfortable. The gemarrah asks the source and identifies it as the passage: Vhayoo hadvarim haale .... bishachbecha oovikumecha. That these words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart ... when you lay down and get up. of course, in context, I would not have thought that "these words" correspond to "these words." Rather, I would think that it refers to the antecedent.

In fact, it is our tradition to say the immediate antecedent word, " Shema Yisroel..."Thus, we fulfill the sense the ordinary sense of the verse.

The unusual aspect is that we we also say the verse that seems to instruct us regarding the recitation. This seems to reflect the idea of the instructive nature of Torah. It is a fundamentalist approach and, as we subsequently see in both the gemarrah () and in Rashi( d"h) , the fundamentalist approach is not uniformly shared.

The meaning of recitation ( kriah) is not entirely clear to me. Saying the words seems to have alot to do with it. The issue of intent, kavanah, is also here.