The Shema is not a creed in the Christian sense — it makes no list of beliefs and asks for no assent. It is a summons: hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, followed by the command to love God with everything and to teach these words to your children, speak them at home and on the road, bind them on your hand and write them on your doorposts, which is where tefillin and mezuzah come from. The second paragraph makes rain and harvest conditional on obedience, and Reform prayer books removed it for that reason while Conservative and Orthodox ones kept it. It is said twice daily, at the bedside before sleep with the four archangels named around the bed in Ashkenazi custom, at a deathbed, and by martyrs, which is why Akiva's death under Roman torture is told as him drawing out the final word One. The right hand covers the eyes for the first line, a gesture whose purpose is only to remove distraction, and which every Jewish child learns before they can read the words underneath it.