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Tuesday 3 October 2017

GOD'S CONTRACTION

TZIMTZUM: A KABBALISTIC APPROACH TO CREATION
by Rachel Elior (Sh'ma 2010)

The kabbalistic tradition took shape within the Jewish world in the wake of a profound crisis. Beginning with the destruction wreaked by the Crusades at the end of the 13th century and continuing with the blood libels and expulsions of Jews throughout Europe during the 14th and 15th centuries, the crisis culminated with the expulsion from Spain and Portugal during the final decade of the 15th century. The harsh reality that confronted the Jews was one of religious hostility, persecution, destruction, hopelessness, and discontinuity in an ongoing exile whose end was nowhere in sight. The kabbalistic tradition offered an entirely new perception of history embedded in meta-history; it changed the interrelationship of God and man, as well as the relations among past, present, and future. Kabbalah saw the divinity as an ongoing, dynamic process with a meta-historical purpose and direction; its goal was the transition from exile to redemption, and it saw man as playing a decisive role in that transformative process. The Kabbalah proposed a new creation narrative, one that gave new meaning to God’s presence in the world and man’s role there, while formulating a new language that explained the ongoing relation between the infinite and the finite and between God and man. The new creation narrative encompassed the dialectical concepts of overflowing, infinite bounty (shefa) and finite contraction (tzimtzum); the infinite expansion and the limiting withdrawal; and the outcome of this tension: breakage (shevirah) or “breaking of the vessels” (shevirat ha-keilim) and restoration (tikkun). All these concepts (shefa; tzimtzum; shevirah, shevirat ha-keilim) were part of the divine process of creation that preceded the creation of our “broken” world, a world whose fundamental essence is in exile. Only the last concept, that of tikkun — restoration of the broken world — was entrusted to the hands and mind of human beings.

Within the kabbalistic tradition, one can identify two discrete — indeed, contradictory — positions on the question of God’s presence in the world. Both are tied to the concept of tzimtzum; they are known as “tzimtzum in its literal sense” (tzimtzum ki-feshuto) and “tzimtzum in its non-literal sense” (tzimtzum lo ki-feshuto). Tzimtzum is a kabbalistic term that developed in the Zoharic tradition and was elaborated in the Lurianic Kabbalah of Safed. It addressed God’s presence in the world in the context of the process of creation. The kabbalistic doctrine of tzimtzum argues that when God wanted to create the world, He contracted “Himself into Himself” in order to leave “an unoccupied space” within which the creative process could begin. The idea is expressly attributed to Rabbi Isaac Luria (“the Ari”) in Chapter 1 of R. Hayyim Vital’s book Etz Hayyim (Koretz, 1784):
Know, that before the emanations were emitted and the creatures were created, a supernal light was extended, filling the entire universe. There was no unoccupied place, that is, empty air or space; rather, all was filled by that extended light…. But then, the Infinite contracted Itself into a central point which is truly in the center of the light, and that light was contracted and withdrew to sides around the central point. Then an empty place remained with air and empty space. The Infinite then extended one straight line from the light, and in the empty space It emanated, created, formed, and made all of the worlds in their entireties (Etz Hayyim, Part 1, Chapter 1).
Many kabbalists from the 16th to the 18th centuries understood this argument literally and inferred from it the existence of an unbridgeable expanse between the Creator and His creatures. They reasoned that the infinite God had departed from the world, contracting Himself and retreating into the recesses of the infinite in order to leave an unoccupied space that would allow for the process of creation to begin. Were that not so, and were everything an eternal infinity that extended throughout space and time, how could there be any place for a created finite being, something opposed by its very finite nature to the infinite divine essence? This doctrine holds that the divinity withdrew from the world at the beginning of the creative process and therefore is transcendent to the world and situated beyond it. According to this view, held by those who take the doctrine of tzimtzum literally, the sole divine presence in this world — otherwise bereft of divinity — is to be found in the Torah. Accordingly, study of the Torah and immersion in halakhah are the only ways to achieve bonding with God. R. Elijah ben Solomon of Vilna (the Vilna Ga’on, 1720–1797) affirmed this doctrine of “tzimtzum in its literal sense.” He dealt extensively with Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbalah and sharply attacked the Hasidim, who, as we shall presently see, maintained that God had contracted himself into the world, in contrast to departing from it.

While the Vilna Ga’on used “tzimtzum in its literal sense” to develop a transcendental view that placed God beyond the world, R. Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (the Besht) took tzimtzum in a non-literal sense and adopted a diametrically opposed, immanent position in which God in all His aspects was within the world. According to this non-literal understanding of tzimtzum — adopted by the Besht as well as many other kabbalists — God did not contract Himself and withdraw from the world in order to make creation possible; on the contrary, He contracted His infinitude within the finite world, in the same sense in which “the divine presence was contracted [to fit] between the panels of the Ark [of the Covenant]” in a dialectical, back-and-forth process. To put it differently, He contracted Himself into the world when He created it so He could vivify it and maintain its existence as the soul does for the body, thus allowing for ongoing creation. From the ubiquity of the divine presence, on which all existence is dependent at every moment, the Besht inferred that every person can serve the God-Who-is-to-be-found-everywhere and can do so not only in the familiar manner of Torah study and observance of the commandments, but also at every time and in every place, in every manner and way, with every word and thought.

The Vilna Ga’on, in contrast, who adopted the doctrine of “tzimtzum in its literal sense” and a correspondingly transcendent view in which God was absent from the world and present only in the Torah, included the Besht’s doctrine of “tzimtzum in its non-literal sense” among his reasons for banning the Hasidim. The doctrine was one of divine immanence, which considered God’s presence to encompass everything in existence, and it served as a first principle, a starting point, for all of Hasidic worship. This form of divine worship, which rested on the cry that “all is God” and declared prominently that “the entire world is filled with God’s glory and no place is unoccupied by Him,” sought the divine presence at every time and every place, in every letter and every utterance. Those who affirmed that view saw divine sparks, divine spirit, and marks of holiness in the living, the inanimate, and the vegetative; in trees and in stones. They affirmed all ways of worship in which a person thinks about the God-Who-is-present-in-every-place-and-at-every-time and thus uncovers the divine substance of all existence.

Originally, the theory of tzimtzum was a way to explain the inner meaning of exile beyond its existential torments. The very process of withdrawal into the innermost parts of the divinity and the ensuing emanation into the created void, which had culminated in the catastrophic “breaking of the vessels” (shevirat ha-keilim), signified that nothing is in its right place in heaven or on earth, i.e., everything is in exile. The kabbalistic tradition concluded from the theory of contraction and withdrawal that a process of mending and restoration had to take place in heaven and on earth. The human role had changed profoundly, because the passage from exile to redemption is dependent entirely on the passage from “the broken” to “the restored,” or from the unjust world as it is known to us after the “breaking of the vessels,” to the world as it ought to be in its ideal, just order. The theory of tzimtzum thus delineated the gap between, on the one hand, exile/ enslavement/ persecution/ separation/ injustice / coercion/ silence/ “broken world” and, on the other hand, redemption/ freedom/ equality/ unification/ benevolence/ “world of speech”/ justice/ “restituted reality.” At the same time, it instructed the mystical way of thinking, focusing on the divine ideal order and emphasizing deveiqut (thinking of, adhering to, and bonding with the divine presence) and kavannot ve-yihudim (intentions and unifications, that is, a focus on the symbols of the divine ideals of the just world). These mechanisms for hastening the passage from exile to redemption were the contribution of the theory of tzimtzum to Jewish thought and to the history of freedom.

~ * ~

Rachel Elior is John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish philosophy and Jewish mystical thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has been a research fellow and visiting professor at University College London, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University, Tokyo University, and Princeton University, among other places. 
She is the author of numerous works on Jewish mysticism and Hasidism, including: The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism (1992); The Mystical Origins of Hasidism (2006), Jewish Mysticism: The Infinite Expression of Freedom (2007, and, just released in paperback); Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History, Mysticism and Folklore (2008). The recipient of many honors, she was awarded the 2006 Gershom Scholem Prize for research in Kabbalah by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Translated by Joel Linsider.



...and what does the Kabbalah say about Creation? Here's a brief account of one interpretation (there are many!)  

The Kabbalah of Creation
How did God create the world?

Tzimtzum - Creation "Out of Nothing"

In the beginning there was only God... and nothing else. God, or Ein Sof, was an all-encompassing Divine Presence/Light called Or Ein Sof (the Light of Infinity). Since nothing but God existed before creation, when God decided to create yesh (i.e., "something") from its Ein (i.e., "nothing"), God needed to "make a space" or to "provide room" for that which was not God (i.e., otherness). God therefore "emptied himself" by contracting his infinite light to create a conceptual space for the creation of the universe. In a great cosmic flash, God then "condensed" into a point of infinite density and infinite energy called tzimtzum (צִמְצוּם, "contraction") and "exploded out" in all directions (i.e., the cosmic "Big Bang"). In a sense, this self-imposed "contraction"of the Infinite Light is a picture of God "sacrificing" Himself for the sake of creation.
Here's how Isaac Luria (the Ari) describes the doctrine of tzimtzum:
Prior to Creation, there was only the infinite Or Ein Sof filling all existence. When it arose in G-d's Will to create worlds and emanate the emanated... He contracted (in Hebrew "tzimtzum") Himself in the point at the center, in the very center of His light. He restricted that light, distancing it to the sides surrounding the central point, so that there remained a void, a hollow empty space, away from the central point... After this tzimtzum... He drew down from the Or Ein Sof a single straight line [of light] from His light surrounding [the void] from above to below [into the void], and it chained down descending into that void.... In the space of that void He emanated, created, formed and made all the worlds. — Isaac Luria, Etz Hayyim
This mysterious decision to create space is associated with the first "emanation" (sefirah) from God is called Keter, or crown (see later). God then created "vessels" (kelim) in the empty space, but when the Divine Light began to radiate into them, they shattered. This is called the "shattering of the vessels" (Shevirat Ha-Kelim) in Lurianic Kabbalah. The shards of the shattered vessels eventually became souls and objects in the worlds. The re-ascent of the soul is called tikkun, the process of "raising the sparks of God's Light" and re-incorporating them into the One.

The doctrine of tzimtzum is considered paradoxical, since it suggests attributes of God that defy his unity by confounding God's transcendence and immanence. Moreover, it neither explains how finitude emerges from infinity nor how plurality emerges from absolute unity. Nonetheless, it is a commonly held metaphor for the initial moment when God decided to create the universe.

Kabbalistic Cosmology

In general terms, most versions of Kabbalah teach a monistic and pantheistic vision of a cosmos that is intended to become a "vessel" for divinity. This happens through a sequence of ten "emanations" (called sefirot), which, from a theological perspective reveal the mind and dynamic influence of God (process theology), but from a human perspective reveal a map of the inner life that is made in the divine image. Self-awareness, then, helps make the world a place where God's presence is revealed, not concealed. Human souls are ultimately considered aspects of a greater "world soul" that is meant to reflect back the conscious image of God back to God... Each of us is a part of a greater spiritual community that may be called the "body of God." These ideas are usually expressed by means of the metaphor of the Tree of Life (עץ החיים).

Early Kabbalah had a strictly dualistic view of things: God was transcendent and above, whereas creation was below. Between God and creation, however, there is an unbridgeable abyss, though the ten emanations revealed the concealed essence of God within the universe (and therefore God was considered immanent within creation). The Sefer Yetzirah (ספר יצירה), one of the earliest Kabbalistic books, seems to associate the revelation of Ein Sof in Pythagorean terms. The ten sefirot represent the ten primary numbers, and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are "divine protoplasm," or the smallest bits of meaning that are combined to create other things.
In later Kabbalah, the divine attributes became associated with the "inner structure" of reality, as opposed to its outer appearance. Reality is therefore said to be comprised of ten overlapping spheres or "dimensions" of influence, each of which coexist in dynamic interrelationship. Each of these dimensions is called a sefirah, and all ten of these collectively are called a "sefirotic tree," or the Tree of Life. Theologically, this Tree is said to reveal God's mind and influence in the world; anthropologically, the Tree is said to reveal "inner space" or the dynamics of personality. The cosmological (and anthropological) ideal, according to this metaphor, is to have all the spheres of existence – spiritual, emotional, physical – in perfect "balance" or a unified harmony. This is complete oneness, God "all in all."

Jacob's Ladder - Multiplicity of Worlds

Lurianic Kabbalah [i.e., the mystical philosophy of the medieval mystic Isaac Luria (1534–1572)] distinguished between four different "levels" or "worlds" of reality, each of which itself includes the same ten spheres or sefirot. These include:
  1. Atzilut (אֲצִילוּת), called the "world of Emanation." This is completely the realm of Ein Sof and is in perfect harmony and balance. It may also be the realm of Adam Kadmon, as well.
  2. Beriah (בְּרִיאָה), called the "world of Creation." This is the realm of archangels and the heavenly throne.
  3. Yetzirah (יְצִירָה), called the "world of Formation." This is the realm of paradise and the lower angels.
  4. Asiyah (עֲשִׂיָּה), called the "world of Action." This is the realm of the physical universe and its creatures. 
These worlds are interrelated and depicted as "Jacob's Ladder," an overlapping diagram of the "Tree of Life" metaphor. Note that this "layering" of worlds is similar to other forms of medieval emanation theology that understood reality as a "Great Chain of Being" descending from God down to the matter, often regarded as nonexistence, pure potentiality, etc.

The Goal of Creation

God's primary goal of creation was a Man who was to be made in God's image. According to Lurianic Kabbalah, this original man was not Adam, however, but rather Adam Kadmon, a sort of "world soul" or semi-divine "Demiurge" through whom the other worlds were fashioned.
From within this Divine Agency/Demiurge came 32 paths of creation: the ten sefirot (numbers) and the 22 otiyot (letters) of the Hebrew alphabet, which are considered the building blocks of the universe. 

Light and energy emanating from Adam Kadmon formed vessels (kelim) that were to contain the further emanations from the Infinite Source of Light (i.e., Shekhinah or the Or Ein Sof), but these vessels could not contain these emanations and were subsequently shattered (shevirat ha-kelim). This rupture in the fabric of the universe created chaos and division (tohu va-vohu) as the divine sparks became trapped in layers of darkness. The world of things became kellipot ("husks") encasing the sparks of divine light within the vessels. In the creation of otherness a cosmic tragedy had occurred: Instead of a world of perfection and beauty the world became Sitra Achra, or the "Other Side."

As a result of this cosmic tragedy of the "breaking of the vessels," Adam Kadmon himself was shattered into a multitude of individual souls, which are now trapped as kellipot. Human beings are therefore exiled and in confusion in the "Other Side." Each human soul is nonetheless a spark (nitzotz) that originated in this great Adam. The task for humanity is tikkun ("repair"), the "raising of the sparks" by "removing the kernel from the husk." This is the motivation for doing mitzvot that heal the world (tikkun ha-olam). Eventually each individual can be reconstituted in the Upper World and the lost sparks of God's Light will be restored to Adam Kadmon. Finally, God will be "all in all," and the world will be restored to heavenly perfection....

Next: SUSTAINING CREATION...Emanation Cosmology