Article
The Unity Theme and its Implications for Moderns (1961)
The oneness of God is universally acknowledged as the foundation stone of Judaism and its main contribution to the world. The theme of the Shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One,” underlies every single aspect of Jewish life and thought, and permeates every page of its vast literature. So powerful is this vision of God’s unity that inevitably it must express the corollary that the divine unity is the source of a unity that encompasses all existence.[1] Nowhere is the idea of yichud ha-shem, the Unity of God, given more poignant and intense express on than in the Kabbalah. In Jewish mysticism the Unity of God is not only one of the mightiest themes, but it becomes a living reality, per-haps the only reality. God’s unity is taken not alone as an arithmetic proposition, but as the unification of all existence, in all its awesome diversity, through God. It is symbolized, in the Kabbalah, by the unity within God Himself. It is this unity — elaborated, explained, enhanced, and expounded by kabbalists from the Zohar through the late Rav Kook — of which our modern world stands in such desperate need. If it was eve' necessary to reaffirm that theme, with its conscious rejection of all conflict, multiplicity, and fragmentation, it is today, when mankind stands poised, ready to blow itself to bits both physically and conceptually.In this paper we shall examine the treatment of the Unity of God in one expression of the Jewish spirit, the Kabbalah — particularly in the Zohar and in the works of its most recent exponent, the late Rav Kook, Chief Rabbi of the Holy Land; in one sacred institution of Judaism, the Sabbath; and in one famous hymn of the Prayerbook, the Lekhah Dodi, a kabbalistic poem which celebrates the Sabbath. Our purpose is not a his-torical presentation of the Unity Theme, but rather to see what it can yield for us in the way of instruction: its implication for moderns.The reader who is unacquainted with the atmosphere and terminology of the…
