When Moshe stands before Israel and declares in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god beside Me,” Moshe is revealing something profound about the nature of reality itself.
The verse begins with an unusual doubling: “I, I am He” — ani ani hu in Hebrew. Why the repetition? Our tradition teaches that this isn’t stuttering; it’s emphasis on an overwhelming truth. God’s oneness is so complete that even language struggles to contain it.
Think about yourself, and your many names. I am sure you remember how you were called in your childhood, by your parents, by your friends. I know that you, most probably, had a name you were called by someone who loves or loved you romantically. I am sure at a certain point you were called by a title, whatever it is. In that case, dad, mom, gramps, pops and so on are titles too. And even though people relate to you differently, and these titles reflect a different you, you are you. You are able to say “I am I”. And still we feel those separations, and we walk in this world using those separations: our relationships are dependent on those names. We alone try to have a holistic view about ourselves – those of us who are aware. The same happens to God in the sense of the oneness – we relate to God in different ways, we give God different names, but God, as One, is a oneness so complete we cannot fathom.
When we recite the Shema — “Hear O Israel, Ad-nai our God, Ad-nai is One” — we’re not just proclaiming monotheism. We’re declaring that the Divine unity is absolute and indivisible. But here’s where it gets beautiful: if God is truly One, if there is nothing beside God, then where is God?
Our sages teach us that HaMakom — “The Place” — is one of God’s names. Why? Because, they explain, God is the place of the universe, but the universe is not God’s place. Think about that. The universe doesn’t contain God; God contains the universe. Every table, chairs, human, atom, star, even every breath you take exists within the Divine presence.
This is what Moses is telling us in Deuteronomy 32:39: “there is no god beside Me.” Not just that other gods don’t exist, but that there is no “beside” at all. There is no outside, no beyond, no separate realm. Everything exists within the One.
When we understand this — and when we truly feel it — our entire relationship with the world transforms. You as an individual can understand that you’re not separate from the sacred. You’re not trying to reach toward some distant deity. You’re already embraced, already held, already home. Every place you stand is holy ground because every place IS God’s place.
The Shema becomes not just a declaration but an invitation: Open your eyes. Listen deeply. The One you seek is not out there, over there. The One is here, now, in this breath, in this moment. You are not in the universe; you are marinating in God’s presence. We all are.
And in that recognition comes the deepest comfort Moses offers in that same verse: “I make die and I give life; I wounded and I will heal.” The same One who encompasses all also tends to each particular soul with infinite care. The Infinite is intimate. The Transcendent is present at every time.
This is why the Talmud, when discussing blessings, affirms that we are to bless God for both good news and bad. From the pages of the tractate Brachot come the words “baruch dayan haemet”, blessed be the true judge. And from those same pages, from that same discussion, come the words “baruch hatov vehametiv” blessed the one who does good and makes even more good. Because the rabbis challenge us – if God is one, all comes from God. Isaiah on chapter 45 says “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am Ad-nai, the doer of all these things.”
This is not an easy concept, and yet – this is a concept present in our tradition since the days of Isaiah – and by the way, the consensus is that he lived sometime between 740 and 700 BCE, or 2,765 years ago more or less. In part because we have the impulse of equating God with good in our terms, we fall short from that vision. People often ask “why me?” when things are not good, when one wins the lottery they typically do not ask ‘why me?’
This is our inheritance, our truth: We live, move, and have our being within the One. May we have eyes to see it, hearts to feel it, and souls courageous enough to live from that awareness.