It gets to the very heart of power, control, and the very fabric of existence.
Think about it. When we declare that the universe has One God – one absolute Ruler, one supreme Controller – it's simply inconceivable that there could be another, equally absolute power lurking somewhere.
Why?
Well, imagine there were another independent will, another being with ultimate control. Suddenly, you don't have one Ruler anymore. You have multiple. And if there are multiple, can any of them truly be called "Ruler" in the ultimate sense? It's like having too many cooks in the kitchen.
And here's the kicker: If there's more than one ultimate power, how can we possibly relate everything back to a single, unified source? We need to be able to trace everything back to one root, one origin point. That's fundamental to our understanding.
We could maybe say, "Okay, at the beginning there was one root." But then what? Now, we'd be forced to admit that we can no longer connect everything to that single root. We'd be acknowledging the existence of something – some being, some force – that has the power to limit that initial Ruler. That's a pretty big problem.
Now, some might object, "But what if the initial Ruler willed it to be that way? Wouldn't that still mean the initial Ruler is in charge?"
That's a great question, and it's a question that the Kalach Pitchei Chokhmah (literally "Lamps of the Gates of Wisdom," a Kabbalistic text) promises to address in the next section, in Opening 2. We'll have to delve into that next time, but it raises an interesting point. Is self-limitation really an act of ultimate control, or does it inherently introduce a second power, even if that power is ultimately subservient?
It all boils down to this: the idea of One God isn't just about monotheism. It's about the singularity of power, the indivisibility of control, and the ultimate source from which everything springs. It is the very definition of echad (one). It's a concept that challenges us to think deeply about the nature of reality itself.