Some weeks ago I was talking with a devout Christian. “You and I share the same God,” he confided. “But Allah is not our God.” I have thought about his comment, aware that I have heard similar words from my own people. Sometimes, I realized, it is the very word, “God,” that inhibits our ability to appreciate the Universal that is One.

In our tradition, God is referred to by many names, yet God is essentially beyond name. God is called Ha-Makom, “The Place,” because God is the place of all that is. There is nowhere else to be.

The unpronounceable “name” of God, formed from the Hebrew letters Yod, Hay, Vav, Hay, and referred to in English with the letters YHVH, comes from the Hebrew verb meaning “to be,” and most likely is an attempt to express “Being Without Limit.”

There is no possible word for that which is without limit, so we utilize those four Hebrew letters to “point” to a reality that cannot be named. Because every name “defines” that which is named—draws a circle around it so it can be distinguished from that which is not that name—there is no way for language to adequately communicate a name without limitation.

The One Being In Whom All Else Is contains everything that can be. We are all part of Existence—and whenever we try to refer to that which is totally Inclusive, and therefore beyond language to capture, we might use capital letters to remind us that we are reaching toward Something Greater of which we are all a part. As the ancient Psalmist sang, all opposites, all polarities, both light and darkness, are held as One in this Greater Reality. (Psalm 139, for example.)

For me, the Hasidic teachers who taught that everything is God, yet God is more than everything, provide the foundation for my own understanding. As a cell or a molecule or an atom is complete in itself, so is each of us a whole being. Together we make up a greater whole. All Creation makes up the Greatest Whole. Thus is reality made up of “wholes” rather than of “parts.”

Now one might still wonder, “Why does this rabbi think that we need to hear that God is One?”

I believe that the most pressing challenges facing us as human beings cannot be solved without a spiritual awakening to the Oneness we share. From the level of our separate egos—individual, corporate, national—no real peace is ever possible.

The consequence of truly knowing that God is One is the expanded capacity to love, the natural desire to help alleviate suffering, the joyful urge to find ways of living in harmony and in support. We no longer strive to convince ourselves or others that we are “more right” than anyone else; we begin to seek a deeper appreciation of the wisdom contained in all people and all traditions.

How do you know that you are truly learning to have One God? When you can look into yourself and embrace previously disowned aspects of your being, and when you can look outside yourself and know that all beings are actually your brothers and your sisters, you begin to know One. When your heart opens to the laughter and the tears of all those around you, then you begin to know One. When you take the actions necessary in the world but refrain from hating those with whom you disagree, then you are beginning to know One.

When Hillel spoke his famous dictum, “Do not do to others that which is hateful to you,” he was speaking much more than an ethical imperative. He was speaking from the recognition that the Life that awakens in me and the Life that awakens in you is One Life. What we do to each other we essentially do to ourselves. How many wars need we engage in before we realize that killing will never lead to peace, that hating will never lead to love? Peace and Love awaken from the ground of Oneness met and celebrated.

I am so grateful to be part of a tradition whose motto is “The Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One.” I am so blessed to be part of a People who learned that love follows the realization of One.

I just wish we would remember the reality of our motto and the depth of our teaching. I wish we would remember that God is One.