That’s what we’re talking about when we talk about God.

Think about that famous verse from Exodus (3:14), where God tells Moses, "I shall be what I shall be." It’s so much more than just a name. It's a statement of eternal existence. A promise that God is, always has been, and always will be.

And it gets even more interesting when we consider the world around us. According to tradition, everything God created, He created as a pair. Heaven and earth, sun and moon, this world and the Olam Ha-Ba – the World to Come. Duality is woven into the very fabric of creation. As we find in Genesis Rabbah (4:4), everything has its counterpart.

But then there's God. The Shema, that central prayer of Judaism – "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one" (Deut. 6:4) – proclaims God's unique singularity. God is not part of a pair. God stands alone. One. As Deuteronomy Rabbah (2:41) puts it, God was there in Egypt, at the splitting of the Sea, in the desert, in this world, and in the World to Come.

The Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Shirata (4:27-31) and Exodus Rabbah (3:5) emphasize this point: God’s presence is constant throughout all of history and all of existence.

It’s like, God created the heavenly beings with His right hand and the earthly beings with His left, as we see in Exodus Rabbah 3. Think about that for a moment. What does that imagery convey about the scope and nature of divine creation?

And there’s this almost paradoxical element, too. There are times, the midrash suggests, when the entire world, with all its vastness, cannot contain God's glory. Yet, at other times, God speaks to humankind from inside the Ark of the Tabernacle, a relatively small space. (B. Menahot 36b). How can something be so immense and yet so intimately present?

This tension between the duality of creation and the singularity of God is fascinating, isn't it? The world is filled with pairs, contrasts, balances. But God transcends that. God is the ultimate unity, the ultimate source. The contrast only highlights the uniqueness of God’s being.

The Sifre on Deuteronomy 35, along with other sources, reaffirms both God’s existence and God's role as creator. So, what does it all mean? Perhaps it's a reminder that while we can observe the world in its complexities and dualities, we must also recognize the singular source from which it all originates. A source that exists beyond our comprehension, beyond our categories, beyond even time itself.

Maybe the real question isn’t whether God exists – but how we choose to relate to that existence. How do we find the One in a world of twos? How do we connect with the infinite in our finite lives?