This was a school assignment, to write about light as a kabbalistic notion and create an art. This is the first digital art I’ve ever made and it was enjoyable (though time intensive since I didn’t know what I was doing lol). Poem, art, then musings about the or haganuz, that thin thread of light that reminds us of the First Light.
The citations are repetitive because that was our main English first-source text for the class.
Have a safe goyish Chol haMoed!
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
there was Nothing
then
there was Everything
The All so densely thick,
Light congealed to matter and
– Up, down strange, charm, top, bottom –
[bound] in expansion.
And when the light finally unspools
As a golden thread beyond
Warp and weft looming,
The universe will let fly
What matter
-ed.
Yihi Or
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Every instance of new lights appearing is preceded by tzimtzum” Etz Chayim 8:2
Light holds great store in human reality and imagination. Judaism, certainly no less than other cultures, prizes and symbolizes the light and even gave the world one of the most famous statements of light – haShem’s resounding “yihi or.” In the Torah and Tanakh, light is both a reality and a potent symbol, but it is the branches of Jewish mysticism that give “light” its greatest multiplicity of meaning. Bereshit brings down a flash of light after dark and water and the spirit hovering, but Jewish mysticism brings down a light so great that it illuminates the entire universe; a light so intense it gets stowed away, stored for Olam haBa:
“Rabbi Isaac said, “The light created by God in the act of Creation flared from one end of the universe to the other and was hidden away, reserved for the righteous in the world that is coming, as it is written:
‘Light is sown for the righteous.’
(p 90 “The Hidden Light,” The Essential Kabbalah : Daniel C. Matt)(Zohar I:3Ib-32a; 2:I48b-I49a)
This light beyond light, so great and awesome and awe-full that it is unimaginable. How could humans ever hope to stand in the presence of such infinite obliterating brightness? Bending the light, haShem constricted it as She had just encompassed the tzimtzum universe inside. Building vessels and sluices He compressed, enclothing the light until it could be perceived.
“Though concealed, the light is actually revealed, for were it not concealed, it could not be revealed. This is like wishing to gaze at the dazzling sun. Its dazzle conceals it, for you cannot look at its overwhelming brilliance.”
(p 91 “Concealing and Revealing” The Essential Kabbalah : Daniel C Matt)(First passage: Moses Nahmanides (thirteenth century), Commentary on Sefer Yetsirah)
When the Infinite light is finally poured forth unfiltered, the lower kli can not contain it’s force and shatter, cracking the system apart. The shards of this shattering descend, settling with scrapes of scraps of light embedded, into the material world.
“When the shards descended to the bottom of the world of actualization, they were transformed into the four elements-fire, air, water, and earth-from which evolved the stages of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human.”
(p 97 “Traces” The Essential Kabbalah : Daniel C Matt) (Israel Sarug (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries), Limmudei Atsilut)
Much of kabbalah, especially kabbalah today that is heavily influenced by the Ari, focuses a great deal on these shards. They are the path toward human tikkun and rectification, the way forward into Olam haBa. Because of many Jews realization of the broken edges of the world, this idea of shatterings we can help heal has been a focal point in many current branches of Judaism. We’re all aware of the Tikkun Olam committee phenomenon. But what of the cause of the shattering?
That all-too-great light. What becomes of it?
Like the Leviathan salted away for the righteous of the world to come, the light is spirited away. Too powerful to leave unfiltered in the world, haShem diminishes it like our later moon. Perhaps we might mourn that this light has been locked away, that Olam haBa is so far away as to make this unattainable. But the Chasidic masters bring down that this ohr haganuz, this hidden light stowed away, is found in various moments and can be used to great spiritual attainment.
The Tikkun haChatzot ritual is a time a thin ray / kav of this light threads through the darkness to find those awake and at Torah. Hanukkah and its lighting within the dark, whether by Beit Shammai leading us into inner light or Beit Hillel increasing the visible vibrant spectrum, is another time of the glimmer of the First Light in that Darkness. The Rosh Chodesh, the silver sliver promise of the moon; the story of Purim – Esther and even g-d hidden; and the parasha around Purim Tetzaveh, where Moshe’s name is never spoken and yet the most intimate you from haShem is. Even the myth of the lamed-vavniks is the or haganuz become embodied through chasidut reimaginings of who merits the intimate divine light.
And in our everyday bring down the reshimut of that first light, through a thousand filters and all our complex animal humanity; still that the divine moment happens – face to face. That is the face of Shekinah.
And so we go forward knowing each face is another Face, The Face, a facet to see divinity through. The Shekinah is not up in the heavens or across oceans, but here. In our hearts and in our mouths. Selah.
“You think that you have grasped the light, when suddenly it escapes, radiating elsewhere. You pursue it, hoping to catch it-but you cannot. Yet you cannot bring yourself to leave. You keep pursuing it.”
(p 114 “Ripples,“ The Essential Kabbalah : Daniel C. Matt)(Moses de Le6n (thirteenth century), Commentary on the Sefirot, published by Gershom Scholem)
“Since it is boundless, there is nothing outside of it. Since it transcends and conceals itself, it is the essence of everything hidden and revealed. Since it is concealed, it is the root of faith and the root of rebellion.”
p 28 “Ein Sof: God as INfinity” (Azriel of Gerona (thirteenth century), “Commentary on the Ten Se-firot,” in Me’ir ibn Gabbai, Derekh Emunah)
eish zarah 