Echad. Regaining Oneness.

Every Shabbat morning, I spend a few moments with an old friend. Rabbi Arye Yehuda Alter, the Gerrer Rebbe, was leader of a Hasidic community in Warsaw before the first world war. Through his wonderful book, Sefat Emet, we share a little of Shabbat learning together. Here is what he taught me one day:

“The proclamation of oneness that we declare each day in saying, Shema Yisrael, needs to be understood as it truly is. The meaning of “Adonai is one” is not that He is the only God, negating other gods (though this too is true!), but the meaning is deeper than that: There is nothing else but God. …Everything that exists in the world, spiritual and physical, is God Himself.  …Because of this, every person can attach himself [to God] wherever he is, through the holiness that exists within every single thing, even corporeal things.  You only have to [put aside your ego] with the spark of holiness. …A person in such a state lacks for nothing, for he can attach himself to God through whatever place he is. This is the foundation of all the truth in the world.”

According to the Rebbe, God isn’t other. God isn’t up there while we’re down here. God isn’t distant. It’s all God. And it’s all one. Beneath the surface appearance of separate and distinct objects, lies the deeper reality, it’s all one.

The Gerrer imagines the universe as one body, with God as the soul or the self of the universe. And we are cells in the body of God. Just as cells are discrete, individual units of life, each of us is both a uniquely individual expression of God’s being, necessary for the survival of the whole. But at the same time, we are organically bound to the whole, contributing to the whole and drawing sustenance from the whole. The firm and absolute boundary separating us from one another is an illusion. It’s a destructive illusion. Because it tempts us to think that we can go it alone, neglecting the needs of the whole. That’s what we call evil. Evil is to the world, what cancer is to a body – a cell that has gone its own way and has ceased to function for the benefit of the whole.

This truth is the foundation of Jewish spiritual wisdom, Jewish ethics, and Jewish religious practice. Upstairs at VBS there are two beautiful stained-glass windows. They face one another across the atrium. One says the Shema Yisrael, Adonai Echad, God is the One. The other says, V’ahavta l’reacha kmocha, usually translated: Love the other as yourself. These are two reflections of the same truth. If all is one, there is no “other.” Read the verse: Love your neighbor, who is yourself.

This is a very hard truth to live.  For as soon as we achieve a sense of echad, our oneness, the ego screams, Me! So the rabbis designed a system of cues, reminders to keep us mindful of Echad in daily life. The mezuzah on the door, for example, says Shema Yisrael, before you enter your home, listen for a moment, and remember, Adonai Ehad, you are one, with your family who lives in your home, with the community that shares the neighborhood, with humanity that fills this very small planet. They are part of you. And so it is with everything else we do as Jews, every mitzvah and ritual and rite…it is all about quelling the noise of the world and the shouting of the ego, to regain our deepest awareness and to know oneness.

What is that awareness? You are the eyes and ears and hands of God in the world. You channel God’s power -- to bring healing where there is pain, hope where there is despair, light where there is darkness, peace where there is conflict.  You have been entrusted with an ancient truth. And at this moment in human history, when terrifying instruments of death are unleashed against innocent children with impunity, when environmental catastrophe looms close to home, when millions and millions suffer poverty, hunger and want, and so many among the affluent languish without a sense of purpose, the truth of our oneness in whatever language it is expressed must find its way into the consciousness of humanity. It is the only truth that can save us.