Part One
Act One: The guy is alone in the room. He feels great. After all his opinion is uncontested. that obviously he must be right. there is no one else in the room. no kidding nobody is disagreeing. There is only one person in the room.
Act Two: Then, it happens. Someone else enters the room and boom - there is disagreement. The two of them begin shouting at each other, they won’t stop, it’s annoying yet not surprising. After all there are two people in the room, each entitled to their own perspective.
Act Three: eventually
the third guy shows up and begins to listen to the arguments thrown back and
forth. after a while he cries: hey! the two of you are saying the same things
in different words! if you just listen for a moment you will discover that, in
fact, there is no disagreement.
Part Two
Act One: G-d is the
only existence there is nothing else aside from him. He is one. But only
because there is no one else to disagree.
Act Two: Sensing the
inherent problem with this form of unity G-d created the universe; as expected,
disagreement erupts. G-d feels that he is the definition of reality, after all
he is the creator of the universe. The people walking the earth, however,
disagree. Even those who concede the point and acknowledge that G-d is indeed
the creator, do not accept the “Unity of G-d Theory”. After all, the human
being is born feeling that he is the center of the universe, that the world
around him is the ultimate reality, and that spirituality, while an interesting
idea, is not the definition of reality. So the dispute goes on. Lasting
thousands of years.
Act Three: Along comes
Abraham. Listening carefully to the universe around him as well as to his soul
pulling him to toward G-d, he discovers that if one looks deep enough, the
dueling voices each shouting their own opinion are not in dispute. That the
universe is essentially declaring the greatness of it's creator. Thus the
father of Judaism discovers: that the true oneness I'd found in the third
perspective which perceives the unity of the first two, seemingly contradictory
perspectives.
Part Three
The opening statement
of the Ethics of our Fathers states: "look at three things and you will
not come to sin" and it goes on to enumerate the three things one should
"look" at. The Rebbe taught that this above mentioned statement is
not just an introduction rather it is telling us "look at the message of
the number three and you will not come to sin"; if wherever you look in the
universe you will see, not number two - the universe as it appears to dispute
G-d's oneness - rather you will see "number three" the universe as an
expression of the unity of God then you will never sin.
And if you still have
patience for one more "three" then look at the third teaching in the
third chapter of the Ethics where is states: "Three people who ate on one
table and spoke words of Torah it is as if they ate of G-d's table". If
Judaism has one message it’s this: G-d can be felt not only on Yom Kippur,
which the Torah refers to as “once a year” - perhaps because by refraining from
eating and drinking and other material pleasures we experience the unity of G-d
as it existed before creation. Judaism understands the power of Three (“three
people eating at one table”). it understands that the physical universe
represented here by food, is where one can experience the tru oneness of the
one G-d.
(Parshas Emor 5749.
Final paragraph is an Eigene Vort)
