The Sacred Name of God

I got into a debate the other day with someone who stated that all religions connect with God the same way….when Hindus pray to Shiva, Muslims pray to Allah, Christians pray to Jesus, they are accessing the same god as Hashem in the Torah. He went on to say, “It is all one because God is One so they are praying to God because everything is God”. 

While I agree with the statement that “God is One”, there is a difference between being an emanation of the Source and being the actual Source itself. Just like light comes from a lightbulb, without the lightbulb, there would be no light; that does not mean the light IS the lightbulb. It is simply an emanation of it. This is how the Ein Sof, is described in Kabbalah. Everything is an emanation of God, but it is not God. We all have a spark of the divine within us, but we are not God. It is dangerous to confuse this concept and can result in idolatry. 

Throughout the Torah, we see a theme of when God speaks, He says, “I am Hashem”. This is the English translation in the Chumash, but in the Hebrew, it is the Tetragrammation – the Divine Name which is not spelled out in English. The Hebrew word, “Hashem”, translates to “The Name” in English. His actual Name is too Holy to speak frivolously and under casual circumstances. He doesn’t simply say “I am God” or “I am The Creator” as a means of revealing Himself. He reveals Himself through His Divine Name. While there are many Hebrew Sacred names of God within Kabbalah, and all are connected to different aspects of His One-ness, He reveals Himself directly to Moses and to the Children of Israel when He speaks through His Divine Name. 

The Torah is the only written work in which God is quoted speaking in the first person directly to and revealing Himself publicly to an entire people. There is no other documented work in history that records this within any religion or spiritual methods. This is one of the many aspects that makes the Torah unique and stand out from all other religious and spiritual works.

Now I want to pose some questions: Why is it so important that God continually says “I am Hashem”? Why does He continually reveal Himself through His Divine Name? Why is the Divine Name so important? It is taught that every word in the Torah is important, and has purpose that goes into multiple layers and dimensions of meaning. Nothing in the Torah is written superficially and each word is vital and cannot be replaced with another.  That said, if we call God by a different name and within a different spiritual context, does it all mean the same thing? Is worshiping God by a different name, than by what He specifically revealed, the worship of another god? Let’s take a look at the 2nd commandment within the 10 commandments of “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. It seems that Hashem is speaking of humans worshiping other gods – gods by different names. If The Divine Name wasn’t important, why is it stated repeatedly in the Bible (over 6,800 times)? 

Idolatry does not exclusively mean the worship of a physical idol….it also means the worship of another god (physical or not) other than Who God revealed Himself as.

Now, I want to make it clear that Kabbalah doesn’t teach that other people within other religions are cut off from God. It is taught that God judges the heart and people by their deeds – regardless of whether they are Jew or Gentile. The Holy Sages teach that every nation has a heavenly power, an angel, that guides its destiny on Earth, and acts as its intermediary between the nation and God. Here we see that all nations have access to God, but it goes through intermediaries. However, it is also taught that Israel is the only nation that has direct access to God as Israel was chosen by God to be the priests of the world. As such, Israel is also the nation that holds the secrets of Kabbalah and the Sacred Names of God. Is this a coincidence?  

The Sacred Names of God are revealed within the Sefer Yetzirah – a mystical work that is believed to have been written by Abraham; some believe Adam wrote it, who then passed it to Noah and finally to Abraham. Regardless of its author, it contains an ancient Kabbalistic wisdom about the secrets of creation that began at the beginning of man-kind. The practice of Kabbalah is centered around the use of the Sacred Names of God. Kabbalah predates the Jewish people, which makes it NOT inherently Jewish. Rather, Kabbalah is the true mysticism that contains the secrets of God and His creation. Kabbalah has become “Jewish” due to God choosing the Jewish people to preserve and contain it. 

Along with that, I want to make the point that the Hebrew language is believed to be a “discovered language”. It was not a created language, and as such, it is divine in its origin. The Hebrew language within itself has layers contained by Gematria (Numerology) that make it alive and give it magical depths that extend into dimensions that are beyond our comprehension. Due to this, Hebrew is NOT a “Jewish” language. While the Jewish people were tasked with keeping it and preserving it due to their succession and covenant with God, Hebrew predates the Jewish people by thousands of years.

Ultimately, prophesy speaks of the imminent Messianic Era, when God reveals Himself to the world. This is the coming of what many call the New Age, the Nervana, the Mass Awakening, etc. – a time of higher consciousness. This will be a time of no religion – a time of only truth. How will God reveal Himself? Will it be Allah? Will it be Jesus? 

According to Kabbalah, He will reveal Himself to the world through His Divine Name just like He did to the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai, because there is no other.