Universe – you are here!

Our Ta•na"khꞋ begins with the story about how our world and universe, and you and I and everyone else in it, came to exist.

Before the universe existed, there was only the Singularity: י‑‑ה.

As mankind developed, they made up stories around their campfires that the universe was built and inhabited by a race of super beings they called ël•oh•imꞋ. They thought that great pharoahs and kings were gods and that when they died they became the stars in the night sky. To them, the stars were their gods and the sun was often their primary god.

But then, about B.C.E. 2100, an Iraqi man figured out that everything in the universe must have come from a single cause: a Singularity. Do you know the name of this Iraqi man?

He was Av•râ•hâmꞋ. He was the first man, the only one in his time, who believed in the Singularity. Everyone else, even his family in Iraq, were idolaters who believed in a super-race of gods. So Av•râ•hâmꞋ left all of his relatives in Iraq to start a more intelligent — logical and scientific — family tradition based on the recognition of the Singularity as the Creator of the universe and everything in it.

But this new concept of a Singularity replacing the gods was hard to explain to everyone else. No one had ever heard of a Creator-Singularity. So, for a long time, Ta•na"khꞋ speaks of the Singularity in the sense of "I" or "Me," but in the beginning mostly as "we" or "us" — ël•oh•imꞋ, so that the rest of the world might relate that what they perceived as "the gods" were, in reality, a Singularity — as our Shᵊm•aꞋ teaches:

Shᵊm•aꞋ Yi•sᵊr•â•eilꞋ:

י‑‑ה is our ël•oh•imꞋ;

י‑‑ה is the Singularity!

Because Av•râ•hâmꞋ figured out that the universe and everything in it had to come from a Singularity, he became the Patriarch of Yi•sᵊr•â•eilꞋ — the people who believe in the Creator-Singularity.

Therefore, we reject the religions of all of the other peoples who worship more than one god, which is idolatry, the worship of idols!

Beside ël•oh•imꞋ, there was nothing; nothing at all. But ël•oh•imꞋ decided He wanted friends. Only a person with free will, who can decide for himself or herself, can DECIDE to be a true friend. So ël•oh•imꞋ decided to create a universe and people with free will. That's why you have free will to decide who you will become, what you will do and not do, who you will love and who you will choose to be your friends.

When people make their own decision, some decide to do good. But there are also others who make evil decisions; caring only about themselves and what they believe, even when they refuse to educate themselves, many still believing in some form of more than one "gods."

Therefore, ël•oh•imꞋ shrewdly designed a closed, physical, universe so that those who do evil can never break out of their physical avatar-body and universe to contaminate His non-physical domain, which existed before our universe and still exists beyond our universe, and where there is no evil; only justice and caring love.

So, around 14 billion years ago, ël•oh•imꞋ applied a pulling-apart Force where there had been nothing.

ël•oh•imꞋ pulled, stretched and spread His Force until the Force Itself stretched apart. Where His Force had stretched apart, and there had been nothing, suddenly, in an instant, equal and opposite counter forces interacted to create a physical reaction. This resulted in a great generation of energy — resulting in countless bursts of light occurring simultaneously in vastly distant places, all streaking outward toward His Attractive Force.

Physicists call this the "Big Bang"; but the Bible calls it the "Stretch-Apart" — ël•oh•imꞋ nât•âhꞋ ("stretched-apart") the universe. All of this light energy would eventually cool into all kinds of particles, energy and mass — everything you see or touch in our universe.

ël•oh•imꞋ called this light of the Big Stretch-Apart a cosmic yom.

And He distinguished the light from the darkness, which He called a cosmic lâilꞋâh (night).

This was the first cosmic ërꞋëv (eve) followed by morning: defining the first cosmic yom of our universe – which is why, for Jews, each new day begins at sunset, the eve!