We’re All in This Together
Concerning our universal life.
In Hebrew, we need only one word to say “our God”: Elohenu ( אלהינו ). Elohenu comes from Elohim ( אלהים ), a word for God, The Most High, modified with the ending enu, meaning “our.”
I see the word Elohenu as a declaration that we can’t have God without each other: We exist because God exists, and God exists because we exist.
In The Hebraic Tongue Restored, scholar Fabre d’Olivet has another way of looking at Elohenu. The El ( אל ) usually means “God,” but when looked at as a directive preposition, instead of as a noun, it means “concerning”; and the hey ( ה) signifies “universal life” (Part I, p. 108 and 154). When we add the enu — meaning “our” — then we’re all included:
Elohenu = concerning + our + universal life
Elohenu, understood this way, has nothing to do with religion — and its many misunderstandings and divisions — but everything to do with our responsibility as a species to care for each other, and to sustain our habitat.
Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister better known for his children’s TV show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, tells us (recounted in The World According to Mister Rogers, p. 163): “The more I think about it, the more I wonder if God and neighbor are somehow One. ‘Loving God, Loving neighbor’ — the…
