22. The Power of One

Unity is simplicity.

How easy it is to say, how elusive to grasp. Yet precisely this is the heritage of Abraham. His notion of a simple unity underlying everything can be better understood with a modern analogy – electricity. Electricity, too, is an invisible reality, hidden behind the walls, yet turning everything on, lightbulbs and lawn mowers, ovens and clocks, making the world tick.

But all this is just what it does. What is electricity, really, in and of itself, before we flick the switch? Descriptions abound. The first ten sources on dictionary.com have definitions ranging all over the map. But what we all can agree on is that there is a potential energy stored in those wires that can do any number of things once released. Moreover, the uses we put electricity to don’t change the electricity itself. Electricity remains quite independent of its various actions even when powering many functions in many places at once.

Perhaps we can say the same of G-d. The Abraham Principle leads us to a First Being upon which everything depends.* One of the implications of being First is being independent. Everything needs it but it doesn’t need anything. Because think about it. If the First Being was conditional on something else, then that something would be the First. So however you slice it, the First Being is an independent entity.

Independence is not something you share. It sets you apart, alone. So there’s no such thing as “tied for first place” in the race for an ultimate solution to the problem of existence. And the closer we look at the gold medallist, the less He looks like the silver or the bronze. Unlike His competitors, He has no legs, no body, not even a head. G-d is not organic, nor composite. His unity is simple. Perfectly simple. And that makes Him look like a loser. Looks like. For He is not only a winner. He’s the winner.

See that wall? The electrons are there, behind it, incredibly powerful, waiting to fulfill every potential. The full force of Niagara Falls plus a continent’s worth of thermonuclear grid is behind that wall, quiet, unseen.

The fool says, “Nah.” The wise man plugs in and flicks the switch. Or sometimes it’s the philosopher that says “Nah” and the simple person who plugs in and flicks the switch. You don’t have to be an electrical engineer to run a dishwasher, and you don’t need to be theologian to do a mitzvah. We are all plugged in to the source. We just have to flick the switch and the light goes on.

Better than solar, when you run on divine energy, you never run out. It's the ultimate renewable. No matter that it's undefined. Don't worry that it's invisible. You've got what it takes - the hardware, the operator's manual, and an extended lifetime warranty - rechargeable batteries included.

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* Even if, for argument’s sake, you wanted to say that there is no First Being but that cause-and- effect go on eternally, you could still look at that eternal cause-and-effect system and ask why it exists. A systems analytic approach will ultimately yield a simple unity on which the whole is predicated.

Alternatively one may argue that instead of a First Being, there are two (or more) first beings and they are co-dependent, not independent. If so, then again the Abraham Principle will query the order of the two- being system, and determine that there must be a third entity, external to and more powerful than these that integrates their functioning. The result? An independent First Being.
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This article was loosely based on Abarbanel, Rosh Amanah, Ch. 7, and
Tzemach Tzedek, Derech Mitzvotecha, p.45A.