The Three Act Play

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)