Oneness
By Rabbi Dr. Hillel ben David (Greg Killian)
Our pasuk says:
Tehillim (Psalms) 147:2 HaShem doth build up Jerusalem, He gathereth together the dispersed of Israel;
The ingathering of the exiles, consisting as it does of the complete return of all the exiles, is regarded as belonging to the messianic age. The Talmud states that "the day of the Ingathering of the Exiles (kibbutz galiyot) is as great as the day on which heaven and earth were created"[1] Rashi to Debarim (Deuteronomy) 30:3 says, "Great is the day of the In-gathering of the Exiles and it will come about with difficulty as though God Himself will be obliged to grasp each one actually in his hand, each one from his place".
kibbutz galiyot occurs, and it is the official name given to the tenth blessing of the daily Amidah. "Why is kibbutz galiyot mentioned after the blessing of the years", and the messianic aspect is reflected in the passage which follows, "When the Ingathering of the Exiles takes place judgment will be visited on the wicked". Basing itself on Isaiah 27:13 the formula is: "Sound the great shofar for our freedom, and raise the ensign to gather our exiles and gather us from the four corners of the earth to our land", and concludes, "Blessed art thou, HaShem, who gatherest the dispersed of Thy people Israel". The theme is repeated both in the prayer for the New Moon and in the Musaf Amida for the festivals.
The process begins, with the ingathering of Klal Israel, with Yehezekel’s words:
Yehezekel (Ezekiel) 20:33-34 I will bring you from the nations and gather you from the countries where you have been scattered--with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath. I will bring you into the desert of the nations and there, face to face, I will execute judgment upon you.
Question: What will come first, the קִבּוּץ גָּלֻיּוֹת - kibbutz galiyot,[2] the ingathering of the exiles or the rebuilding of the Holy Temple?
Answer: There is a difference of opinion between the Zohar and the Midrash, over which will take place first. The difference is based on differing interpretations of a verse in Psalms (147:2), “G-d will rebuild Jerusalem, He will gather in the dispersed of Israel.” The Zohar interprets this verse in the order it is written: first G-d will rebuild Jerusalem, and then He will gather in the dispersed. However, the Midrash Tanchuma (and other sources) explain differently. G-d will rebuild Jerusalem, having already gathered in the dispersed of Israel.
Halachically, Maimonides rules according to the Zohar. In Hilchot Melachim, Maimonides writes a description of the Messianic era, in which he writes: “He will rebuild the Holy Temple in its place and gather in the dispersed in Israel.” However, the Lubavitcher Rebbe refers to the principle that “These and these are the words of a living G-d.” In other words, whenever contradictions are found between sayings of our sages, each one is expressing a different truth, and they are not mutually exclusive.
The two opinions can be reconciled as follows: First there will be an ingathering of exiles, as per the Midrash, and then the rebuilding of the Temple. However, the initial ingathering will not be complete. The process will be finalized only after the building of the Temple, according to the view of the Zohar.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains a lesson in Divine service that this teaches us. “The beginning of our Divine service is to collect the sparks of holiness of one’s soul that have been dispersed in foreign, distant places. Only then can we complete the task of building the Holy Temple in the external world. However, so long as we have not perfected ourselves, we cannot achieve complete perfection in the external world.
“However, although the general rule is that we first perfect ourselves and then attempt to ‘fix’ others,[3] there are at times special cases, when the service of building the Temple takes precedence over self-perfection (ingathering of exiles). When, by Divine Providence, one is given the opportunity to perfect something outside of himself, this is an indication that it is his task to perfect it, even though he himself is not yet perfect.”[4]
Now, lets examine the ingathering of the exiles from a more mystical perspective.
In an introduction to Sefer HaChinuch, the author singles out six mitzvot[5] that one is obligated to fulfill on a constant basis. These mitzvot, he writes, should not be absent from a person’s consciousness for even one second of his life. The six constant mitzvot are:
– Faith in Hashem
– The prohibition against idolatry
– HaShem’s Oneness
– Loving HaShem
– Fearing HaShem
– Do not stray after your eyes and your heart
Before we recite the Shema, we gather together the four fringes of the tallit, the fragmented character of our own lives and the condition of our world and our people. We hold them together and we remind ourselves of the oneness of HaShem. We understand our sacred task of yichud – unification. As HaShem is one, be thou one. As HaShem is one, may I become one.
What exactly does the echad - אחד of the Shema mean? It is very clear that it is more than that there is only one HaShem. There are many unique things in this world, and we do not consider them echad in the way we do HaShem. The correct translation would seem to be that HaShem is a unity. There exists nothing outside him, and all that exists not only comes from him, but is ultimately part of a complete unity, which is Him. This is what the Ramchal describes as the Sod HaYichud, the secret of the unity.[6] As the Ramchal defines this, When HaShem created the world there was the appearance of separation. The goal of the world is to return all the seemingly disparate parts of the world back to HaShem, so it is clear that all the creations and all of the events in the world are actually from HaShem’s unity.
If the idea of HaShem’s oneness must be with us constantly, then we understand that it is extremely important. One classic example of reminding ourselves about the oneness of HaShem is found in the shema.[7] The shema forms a central part of our prayers. The opening pasuk says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One (echad - אֶחָד)”. One might also paraphrase the next pasuk as, “You will pursue oneness,[8] with all your heart, with all your life and with all your strength”.[9] “The proclamation of oneness that we declare each day in saying, shema Israel, 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 HaShem.
The number thirteen is among the holiest of the numbers because it is closely associated with HaShem. To help us understand the relationship between HaShem and His oneness, HaShem gave us the Hebrew language. Part of this language is the fact that each letter not only has intrinsic meaning, but each letter also has a numeric value, as we learned in our study of the Hebrew letters. We have learned that the numerical value of the Hebrew letters that form echad (אחד) and love (אהבה), whose meaning is one, has the gematria of thirteen.
The faculty employed by the shema for making oneness is hearing. To help us understand the making of many into one, HaShem gave us the sense of hearing. If we understand what it means to hear, we can understand what it means to declare HaShem’s oneness.
Hearing is a sense which requires us to assemble the sounds from another person, into a cohesive picture. Thus, we would say that hearing is the forming of disparate parts into a single idea or picture. Literally we make many (sounds) into one (idea). Ears hear things inside of oneself. The way we hear is one sound at a time. By the time we hear the second sound, the first sound is just a memory. And so it goes with each subsequent sound. We then combine the sounds to make syllables inside our head. Our brain then assembles the syllables into words and the words into sentences. The sentences are assembled into paragraphs and the paragraphs are assembled into the final picture. By the time we have assembled the whole picture, there is no more sound. All of the sounds are just a memory. Since sounds must be assembled by the hearer, hearing is very much a subjective art. Hearing depends on the person and his background. No two persons build the same picture from the words of a speaker. We hear in the darkness. Sound characterizes this world, the world of movement. In this world we struggle to develop the art of hearing. Those who wrestle with the Gemara are trying to reconstruct the fractured pieces of this world. For this reason, the Babylonian Talmud often says, “Come and hear”. The Talmud wants us to take the broken pieces and reconstruct them in the same way that we reconstruct another person’s speech.
We see this in the Al Chet prayers we do on Yom Kippurim where we list all the sins that any Jew may have done during the year, and we pray as though they are our personal sins. And they are our personal sins because we stand before HaShem as a community, not as an individual. On the days of judgment of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippurim we sit among our people,[10] we do not stand alone. We gather for judgment to be judged as a community. Yom Kippur represents the oneness of time, space and consciousness. As such, it is a day when our essence has real potential to be revealed. It is a day when we have the ability, more than ever, to transcend material limitations and connect with the essence of who we are.
Pesach with all of its requirements, is the quintessential demonstration of oneness. We are required to work with a single lamb that is one year old. Now lambs, by nature are a herding animal which wants to stay in its flock. This lamb is to be roasted, not boiled, so that all of the pieces stay together. None of its bones may be broken. It must be eaten with matza and maror which are all made into a single sandwich. Those who eat it must be enrolled before the slaughter of the animal. They must eat the lamb together in one house at one meal. We conclude the seder with the question, “Who knows One”?
Everywhere you look in Judaism, this message is conveyed in the language of ritual, in the language of ethics, and in the rhythms of life. Echad, one, is the oneness of harmony: not a oneness which negates plurality (and which plurality therefore obscures), but a oneness that employs plurality as the implement of unity. To help visualize this idea, think of music. When an orchestra makes music, they all sound a single note which they join to other notes. Though each note is just noise, the end result soothes and moves the soul. It is no longer just noise, it is music! As we look at other examples of oneness, keep this idea of plurality in mind, as the Ramchal teaches, “without the perspective of parts, their can be no oneness”.[11] The definition of oneness depends on parts.
G-d purposely created the world in six days with ten sayings in order to teach us that this world is composed of parts, yet they are all part of HaShem’s oneness. He expects us to look behind the disparate parts and see how they form a world which is in Him.
This is one of the significant parts of the ingathering of the exiles. He expects us to note that until we are gathered many of the mitzvot cannot be performed. Until we are gathered, we do not show His oneness. What is the end result of the ingathering? At a superficial level, we have a lot of Jews living in Israel. A deeper look would also suggest that we are looking at a picture of oneness.
The ingathering of the exiles makes klal Israel a single people physically. We also want to see them ‘stand as one man’[12] like they did at Mt. Sinai in the days of Moshe. It is for this reason that the ten commandments are formulated in the singular, as if speaking to one person. In effect, HaShem was speaking to a single individual, the collective of klal Israel. The people had encamped at the mountain united in purpose. Having become like a single person, with all the different organs and parts working well together, they were ready to receive the Torah, elevated through their connection to Moshe.
When the entire Jewish people accepted the Torah, they had the ability to reconnect the entire world back to HaShem. The world actually existed in that state of unity for thirty-nine days, till the sin of the golden calf. After the sin, the world fell back into disarray parallel to that of Adam after the sin.
From the opening words of the shema we understand that there is nothing besides the Oneness of HaShem. That idea means that all of creation must be working towards oneness. Think about that for a moment. Now look around and notice how many things seem to want to join in order to be one.
Bereshit (Genesis) 2:23-24 And the man said: 'This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.' 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.
Oneness is most obvious in marriage where we seek to become ‘one flesh’.[13] This “one flesh” is made up of two opposites. Not only is it male and female, but usually even the temperments are opposite each other. One in an introvert and the other is an extrovert. One requires order and one is content with disorder. Marriage is a making of one from two disparate people. This is the essence of making oneness. It is no great feat to have a marriage of two individuals who are the same. Trying to have homosexual marriage is, therefore, an abomination. We need opposites to come together.
But this same concept extends to a family which wants to be one family. The members of the family are very different from each other. Some young and foolish, some old and wise. Some male and some female. Some with experience and some without experience. One likes comic books and another wants to read about quantum physics. It is the joining of opposites, of disparate people that constitutes a family. The members of a family are all bound to each other by love. And the more they learn to love each other, the more shalom they create. From this we understand that shalom is only needed in situations where friction is inevitable.
In a lesser way we want to be joined to a chavurah,[14] a community, a city, a state, and a country. "Better death", teaches the Talmud, "than a life without others".[15] In fact, klal Israel is often likened to a single body, composed of people who function like the different organs of an individual person. As it says in Tehillim:
Tehillim (Psalms) 133:1-3 A Song of Ascents; of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! 2 It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard; even Aaron's beard, that cometh down upon the collar of his garments; 3 Like the dew of Hermon, that cometh down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life forever.
When we eat food, we become one with what we eat. This is why we must be very careful to eat only kosher food. If you analyze the effects of eating, we see that part of the food nourishes the body, part nourishes the soul, and part is excreted. We learn from this that the making of oneness involves not only creating unity, but in rejecting and eliminating evil. (Recall that the Hebrew word for evil is ra - רע. Now ra comes from a root which means “break”. Evil is something that breaks the oneness of the world. Ra is temporary and will disappear at the end of days.) When we eat we unify the beneficial aspect with our body and soul, and we eliminate the evil component. The evil component is buried in the earth and disappears.
From this, we understand that eating demonstrates that man is a part of the earth and he seeks to unify himself with the earth.
The leaders of each generation are called roshim, heads, because they function in the same elevated role of importance as the head does to the rest of the body. There are others who look ahead at the best interests of the people, and determine policy. They are called the “eyes of the congregation”. Similarly, some function as the heart, and indeed like other parts of the body. When bound together, all Jews function synergistically, like the organ systems of a person working together in concert.
Yaaqob is the only one of the Avot, whose descendants are all Jewish and only Jewish. That is why Yaaqob can say I kept all six hundred and thirteen mitzvot.[16] It is not possible for one person to do that, only an entire nation can perform all the Mitzvoth. Yaaqob is the only person who is the entire nation, therefore he can say it.
Yeshua told his disciples that he and the Father were "one".[17] He didn't define their oneness here. Later when he prayed to his Father on behalf of his disciples, he asked that they "may all be one, just as we are one".[18]
Beyond a family, we see that gravity wants everything to be a part of the earth. And all the planets want to be part of a sun. All the suns want to be part of a galaxy. And so gravity works with all matter to bring it to oneness.
Looking beyond the earth, we see that all of the stars and planets are drawn together by gravity. Scientists are aware of this oneness to a certain extent. For example, they are searching for a ‘Grand Unifying Theory’.[19] Their studies of physics have shown that there must be a mathematical way to unify the three forces that they have discovered, into a single force. To further complete this perspective, physicists are searching for a theory of everything (TOE or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, or master theory is a hypothetical single, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. Finding a TOE is one of the major unsolved problems in physics.
Other manifestations of oneness as it is found in our world include hearing, energy, and probably everything in our world (if I could only understand).
Water clearly demonstrates that all of creation is seeking to become unified. Water may start out as rain, but that rain soon becomes streams and rivers. These streams and rivers may temporarily pause in a lake, but all living water will eventually end up in the ocean. It is as if the rain drops are all rushing to the ocean so that they can merge and disappear in the vastness of the ocean, as the pasuk says:
Bereshit (Genesis) 1:9 Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place [maqom echad].
We see that man is made from the dust of the earth and we will one day return to dust. Jews further this concept with a minyan which is the joining of ten men into a congregation fit for prayer. This joining is expanded in the Esnoga where we might find multiple minyanim. Each Esnoga joins with other Esnogas for charitable works. In all of the examples above, the goal is that man not be alone. Everything in creation is tob, is beneficial. The only thing in creation condemned as lo tob, not good, is human loneliness.[20]
We are one with the poor, the oppressed, the pariah, the sick, the homeless, the helpless, the hungry. His suffering is my suffering. His plight is my plight. His destiny is my destiny; therefore, I am commanded to meet his needs with an open hand. My extra money is his money given to me in trust.
Our world is composed of parts, but we are supposed to begin seeing that the parts are really all part of a larger Oneness. This idea is brought vividly home by our experience with our bodies. When we view others, we see arms and legs and body and head – we see parts. When we ‘see’ ourselves, we see only one, we see ‘ourselves’ as a single entity. Even though we have different faculties within our brains, such as: imagination, rational thought, thoughtfulness, etc., never the less we do not view our brains as made up as parts. Our concept of ourselves is oneness.
The Jewish people is itself described as echad, "One nation in the world".[21] This implies not only that we are unique in the world, but that we are the nation which communicates to all humanity the concept of the oneness of HaShem. Further, by keeping HaShem's commands in our daily lives, we draw the Divine Oneness into the world, into every detail of our physical existence. And as the Talmud says, HaShem rewards us by granting us long and fulfilling days and years.[22]
If echad is the singular Hebrew word of the Torah, then one Hebrew letter appears more often in the Torah than any other letter, and begins every column in the Torah except for the first column which begins with beth. That letter is vav, "and”, the great conjunction that holds together words, sentences, paragraphs and lives. Pay attention to the vav in your life, because if it is ignored, the world is filled with discordant notes, strident sounds, cacophonous voices that divide, fractionalize, split, and separate. "Vav" refers to that which seeks to overcome the jagged disjunctions of our lives.
Our pasuk says:
Tehillim (Psalms) 147:2 HaShem doth build up Jerusalem, He gathereth together the dispersed of Israel;
It is my prayer that you have a glimpse into the world of oneness which will be brought about through the ingathering of the exiles.
* * *
This study was written by
Rabbi Dr. Hillel ben David (Greg Killian).
Comments may be submitted to:
Rabbi Dr. Greg Killian
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[1] Pesachim 88a
[2] Ibid
[3] Baba Metzia 107b
[4] Zohar Chayei Sarah 134a. Brachot 49a, see Rashi. Midrash Tanchuma, 58, 11. Yalkut Shimoni, Tehillim, remez 888. Hilchot Melachim, 11:3. Torat Menachem 5747, vol. 1, p. 530. Ibid, 5743, vol. 1, p. 508. Ibid, 5748, vol. 1, p. 487
[5] Commandments
[6] Daat Tevunot, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (Ramchal)
[7] Debarim (Deuteronomy 6:4ff
[8] The gematria of echad (one) - אחד is thirteen. The gematria of ahavah (love) - אהבה is thirteen. Therefore, if we are commanded to ‘love’ HaShem, them we are also to have in mind His echad – oneness. If we are to love Him, then we are to make Him One.
[9] Bereshit (Genesis) 6:5 And thou shalt love HaShem thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
[10] II Melachim (Kings) 4:13ff Elisha asks the woman from Shunam if he can offer to mention her to “the King” in exchange for her kindness and hospitality toward him. It was Rosh Hashana, and the woman answered: “I sit among my people.” She didn’t want to be mentioned or judged separately. As long as she was included with her community, she was judged with them, and therefore merited a favorable verdict with them as well.
[11] Daat Tevunot, siman 42
[12] Shemot (Exodus) 19:2 And Israel encamped there: [using the singular form, denoting that they encamped there] as one man with one heart. (Rashi)
[13] Bereshit (Genesis) 2:24
[14] A chavurah or chavurah (חבורה Hebrew: "fellowship", plural chavurot) is a small group of like-minded Jews who assemble for the purposes of facilitating Shabbat and holiday prayer services, sharing communal experiences such as lifecycle events, or Jewish learning.
[15] Taanit 23a Raba said: Hence the saying, Either companionship or death.
[16] Rashi to Bereshit 32:5 - 5 I have sojourned Heb. גַּרְתִּי . I did not become an officer or a dignitary, but a stranger (גֵּר) . It is not worthwhile for you to hate me on account of your father’s blessing, [with] which he blessed me (27:29): “You shall be a master over your brothers,” for it was not fulfilled in me (Tanchuma Buber Vayishlach 5). Another explanation: גַּרְתִּי has the numerical value of 613. That is to say: I lived with the wicked Laban, but I kept the 613 commandments, and I did not learn from his evil deeds.
[17] Yochanan (John) 10:30
[18] Yochanan (John) 17:21-22
[19] A Grand Unified Theory (GUT) is a model in particle physics in which, at high energy, the three gauge interactions of the Standard Model which define the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, or forces, are merged into one single force.
[20] Bereshit (Genesis) 2:18
[21] Amidah for the mincha prayer on Shabbat.
[22] See Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn's discourse in Sefer Hamaamarim KuntreisimVol. 1, p. 203 ff.