The first blessing before the shma begins with the words, “Blessed are Lord our G-d, King of the Universe, who creates light and fashions darkness, who makes peace and fashions everything.”

“Everything.” If you sit back for a moment and think, the notion that

G-d fashions literally everything is a stunning concept. Sure, we can accept that G-d created Jerusalem and the Grand Canyon, butterflies and barbeque potato chips. But toxic waste dumps? Root canal procedures? Cockroaches scurrying around when you turn the light on? War? Walter O’Malley? Wouldn’t we want to blame someone else beside G-d?

Well, yes, but we can’t. The prayer is unequivocal. G-d fashions “everything.”

And even weirder is the next paragraph, a poetic reflection on the word “every.” “Everyone lauds you, everyone praises you, everyone says, ‘There is none so holy as G-d.’ Everyone extols You, Creator of everything.”

Really? Everyone? It’s hard to imagine a more counterintuitive statement. Atheists certainly don’t seem to praise G-d. Nor do agnostics. Even those who believe in G-d aren’t necessarily getting A’s in the lauding department, and that applies to Jews and non-Jews alike.

And weirder still: The word “Everyone” above could just as easily be translated as “Everything,” in other words not just humans, but animals, plants, even inanimate objects.

All say, “There is none so holy as G-d.” ?

What could this possibly mean? Allow me to suggest that it is an invitation to us to redefine our perspective on G-d, the world, and ourselves. Our natural inclination is to divide things—what we like, what we don’t like. What we believe, what we don’t believe. What is in, what is out. Nothing wrong with it, but this is what finite creatures do: define. Separate this from that.

But how is it when seen from the divine perspective? It is “indefinite,” as G-d is infinite. It is whole, as G-d is whole. It—the universe—is one massive, glorious, overwhelming, majestic totality, a totality of which we are a part, that ultimately can be adequately described by only one word, a word that transcends all others: “holy.” Uniquely holy. And everything we have named, everything from Jerusalem to Walter O’Malley, is a part of it.

In Macbeth, Shakespeare wrote:

Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

But he was wrong. It signifies everything.

Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff