Rambam: Yesodei HaTorah 1:7-8

by Rabbi David

Laws of Foundations of Torah... All plagiarized from the Rambam

Laws 7-8: Oneness Can't Be Defined - So We Shall Define It

Law 7: There is only One. As it says in the Torah, (Devarim 6:4) 'H" is our Gd, H" is One.' That is another commandment. Third one in this chapter. Three commandments for a belief that we cannot believe in more than once. That is a lot of expression of one belief, that there is One. One Gd.
How many gods do you need? Are there not enough Mitzvahs as there is?! We don't need more commandments. The Torah is good.
Anything more than One would mean physical and that means an end. That means a board is getting involved and there are committees, and religion dies. I hope that doesn't offend you.
H' is not offended. H' doesn’t have feelings, for that would mean change, and that is physical. Point is that this is very confusing.

H' has no body. Hence, anything dealing with bodies is not relevant to Gd. H' is not limited or defined. Gd is simply one. Therefore, we can't describe Gd. Now I am confused, and trying to figure out why we are defining something that can't be defined. This feels a bit like math.
As it teaches in the Shema, (Devarim 6:4) 'Hear oh Israel, H' is our Lord H' is One.' That's it. H' is one and there are a lot of Mitzvahs about it.

Law 8: H' has no body, as H' is the 'Lord in the heavens above and earth below' (Devarim 4:39). A physical being can't be in two places at once. How my parents knew when I misbehaved in school is still an anomaly.
And H' resembles nothing else. Physical beings resemble other things. That cannot happen when there is oneness. H' doesn't have a doppelganger.
Nobody has ever posted a Gd lookalike on Instagram. Only selfies. Anybody who thinks they're posting a Gd doppelganger is probably posting Charlton Heston. Charlton was Moses.
(Isaiah 40:25) 'To whom can you liken Me and that I will be equal.' Something with a body has equals. And H' doesn't have an ego. He's not showing off here. If Deion Sanders was saying that he has no equal, that would be egotistical.
I didn't learn the rest of Isaiah. Too many chapters.
Why do we not see H'? If we would've seen Gd at Har Sinai, we would've started making idols (Devarim 4:15-16). We would've got all high on ourselves and started making gods. Physical beings like Play-Doh too much.
Why do you need H' to be physical? Do you have a need to go drinking with Him?! I am confused. Who is my doppelganger?

Without these beliefs in Gd, it would appear that we would be following subjective laws, and there would not be a ‘Truth.' I have met many people, and I can say that I would not want them making up laws. We all see what happened in the Knesset over the past 75 some-odd years. How the Jerusalem municipality can put a stop on my bank account for not paying somebody else's Arnona... only a finite being can come up with a law like that. Want to talk about why there is no decent park in my neighborhood? Somebody in the city made that decision. Some fool who is probably printing Silly Putty on a newspaper right now.

Lesson: The real idea being expressed is that us finite beings are idiots. The foundation of all knowledge is to know that you are not that smart.
Because we are not that clever, the Torah commands us to believe in Gd, in three ways.