I
The
doctrines of Lurianic Kabbalah have important implications for the Jewish
Pastoral Carer and these are implications untapped in published work in the
field. So many of the texts that seek to guide the work of pastoral carers speak
a Christian discourse and while Jewish pastors are starting to use Jewish
responses, the canon needs stretching.
II
All this,
of course, begs the question - why do we, as Jewish pastoral carers, need to
ground our work in theological framings that bear the mark of ‘authentically
Jewish’? It is not a question I feel can ever be answered absolutely – outside
the context of particular subjective encounters. Sometimes, clearly, there is
no need for a specifically Jewish response, moreover sometimes ‘too Jewish’ a
response may be the wrong response; it may block the counselee or blinker the
counsellor. But there are also moments, often moments away from the intensity
of the counsellor-counselee interaction when I have felt a need for a Jewish theological
framing. On the one hand, this entire paper is an argument for the uses of an
authentic theological framework, but to give the reader a sense of what might
be the value of wading through the texts and analysis that follows, a case
study might prove useful.
I was
called to the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital where I had only
recently begun to work as a Chaplain. A mother of a two-day-old baby boy had
been told her son had some horrendous intestinal fungal infection; the child’s
intestine was rotting away and he was to die shortly. There was nothing,
medically, that could be done. It was one of the worst moments I have ever had
to face and then the mother turned to me and said, ‘God is testing me, and I’m going
to stand strong. I know it is going to be OK, after all, God would never test me
with something that I could not handle. That’s right isn’t it?’
I took a
deep breath.
Personally,
I reject the notion that God never tests beyond breaking point, but perhaps
this made me theologically weak, not worthy to stand in the same room as this
mother whose faith seemed so flawless in comparison to my own. I needed an
authentic Jewish response. For me, the response was grounded in the Lurianic
notion of shvirat hakelim – the breaking of the primordial vessels. The
Lurainic myth teaches that, just after the birth of creation, God shattered the
vessels which had been prepared to serve as the containers for life. God did
not test these vessels; God simply ripped them apart. Life began again after
that primordial moment of destruction, but we are scarred, all of us, by that
original trauma.
In that
moment I re-applied Luria’s cosmic narrative to the moment of the destruction
of this tiny child, and I had a response. This baby’s death did not need to be
viewed as a test. For me, this baby’s death was a catastrophic collapse of a
universe of potential at the very moment of its coming into being.
Of course, it was not my job, as Chaplain, to foist my theology onto the mother, but nor
did I have to accept the theological narrative the mother had foisted onto me.
My reference to my canon gave me an alternative narrative which, if it felt
appropriate, I could offer to my counselee. I could be with her in her
narrative, and maybe offer a different way for her to view her pain, but even
if she clung to her theology of a testing God, I didn’t need to surrender to
her ‘piety.’ I could continue to be myself distinct from her suffering.
Eventually, I would be able to go home, sleep, get up and return to work the
following morning.
In the
weeks after that horrendous day I realised I turned to my canon in the same way
I turned to my supervisor and my peers – I vented my anger, confusion and pain
at it and at them and as I felt that I was being received and acknowledged -
for both my canon and my peers and supervisors had been to these places too - I
found the strength and the renewal to go on.
But I am
getting a little ahead of myself.
III
In this
paper I wish to sketch out the Lurianic cosmogony and focus on one of its
central components. In my concentrated look at one part of this cosmogony - tzimtzum
- I will translate and analyse some central texts and offer a commentary
that attempts a meaningful and applicable theological response to both
counsellor and counselee.
Isaac
Ashkenazi Luria, also known as the HaAri – The Lion, burst onto the
mystic stage that was Safed in around 1570. In the two years before his death
at the age of 38, he laid out a mystical system that became what Scholem
called, ‘the true theologia mystica of Judasim,’ a
system that has, to this day, served as the underpinning of every aspect of
Jewish Mystical writing and living. Crucially, and this will be a note I will
return to, there is almost nothing written by Luria himself. Rather we are all
but totally reliant on his students, particularly Chaim Vital, for a record of
his teachings.
The
Lurianic myth makes
use of three key technical terms in describing the creation of the world.
- Tzimtzum – literally ‘contraction’ – the
creation of an empty space - void of God’s presence – into which God could
pour God’s creativity.
- Shvira – literally ‘breaking’ – as
described above – is the cosmic disaster that occurs when God pours too
much energy into the fragile vessels that were prepared to mediate the
flow of energy from the infinite Godhead into the empty space prepared by
the act of tzimtzum. This rush of power breaks the vessels, and we
are left to live in a broken world.
- Tikkun – literally ‘fixing’ – This is
what happens next. For much of Vital’s major work Etz Hayim, tikkun is
a task reserved for God, who will at the end of time ‘raise up the
birthwaters;’
healing the fractures caused by the shvira., But in the margins of
this major work, and more extensively in other works of Vital and his
contemporaries,
tikkun is framed as a human task. We become God’s partners in the
journey towards redemption.
I have
already shown an element of the pastoral possibilities in the acceptance and
use of shvira and the potential uses of tikkun are at least
vaguely familiar in contemporary Jewish society. In
this reflection, I want to focus on tzimtzum, partly since any
understanding of shvira and tikkun must be based on an
understanding of this prior event and partly because this has been the most challenging
element in my own pastoral growth.
IV
I want to
take a fairly extensive excursus into the world of text, both because these
texts are not widely studied (and ironically tend to be studied least of all by
those who wish to use them for non-theosophistic purposes).
But also since Luria uses the term tzimtzum in a manner radically
different to his Rabbinic predecessors, and Luria can only be fully understood
in relation to these earlier texts. Two examples will give the sense of the
Rabbinic understanding of tzimtzum.
Vayikra
Rabbah 29:4
What
did the Holy Blessed One do [when the Rabbis performed complex calendrical
calculations]? God left God’s throne and from the Heavens descended and constricted
God’s divine presence amongst them below.
We learn
that God did this in order to show compassion to the Rabbis, because of their
actions they merited the grace and mercy of the Divine.
Shmot
Rabba 34:1
In a discussion as to how God could possibly fit inside a Tabernacle of
very finite and earthly proportions, God speaks up;
Said the Holy Blessed One, ‘I do not think the way you
think, rather twenty spans to the north, twenty to the south and eight to the
west [creates a large enough space for me], and even more than that, I can
descend and constrict my Divine presence into a space measuring one
cubit square.’
In both these Midrashim tzimtzum
is used to explain how, despite God’s infinitude, God does manifest Godself
in our lives. Rabbinic tzimtzum offers a message of comfort, it allows
us to hope for mercy. The message seems to be, ‘no matter how small your world,
you can draw God into your life, God can dwell with you, despite your flaws.’
For the pastoral carer this is a comforting and beautiful notion,
but it has nothing in common with the Lurianic notion of tzimtzum.
Tzimtzum, for Luria, is not the mechanism
by means of which we humans may access Divine comfort, it is the explanation of
God’s distance from us. The following is a translation
from Vital’s Etz Haim,
Know
that before the emanation of the emanations and the creation of the creations
the Upper Light poured forth and filled the entirety of existence and there was
no place free of this light, no empty space or void, rather everything was
filled with the light of the Infinite [ain sof]. And it did not have
anything like a beginning or anything like an end rather everything was one
uniform light. And this was called the light of the Infinite.
And
when it arose in God’s will to create the worlds and to emanate the emanations,
to bring to the light the perfection [shleimut] of God’s actions and
names and appellations (for this was the reason for the creation of the worlds)
… Behold then God constricted the essence of the Infinite One from one
central point which
was at right at the centre of the light. And by this constriction, this
light was drawn away to the sides that were surrounding this central point, and
there was left a space vacant of light and a hollow void, it was just like
this.
And
behold this constriction was equally uniform from all the surroundings
of the central point. The void was completely circular on all sides … for the
Infinite had contracted itself like a circle, from all sides…
[And]
within that empty space God emanated, created, formed and made all the worlds –
every one of them
This
notion of creation beginning with a constriction is in keeping with the opening
of the Zohar which suggests that in the beginning God ‘carved out a
hollow in the supernal purity,’ also
suggesting a creation by means of a removal of supernal matter. And Scholem has found an anonymous
manuscript (which he claims pre-dates Luria), which also articulates a similar
notion;
How
did God emanate and create God’s world? Like a person who gathers in their
spirits and constricts themselves in order to increase and strengthen their
might, so too God constricted God’s light into a drop and left the world dark.
And in this darkness sparked the flint and chiselled the rocks in order to
bring forth from them that which is called ‘the wondrous paths of wisdom.’
But
finding precedents to Luria should not dull our amazement at the boldness of
this cosmology. Contrary to whatever notions we might have had of creation
being a positive moment, we are now asked to consider the necessity of a
negative creative act, a creation through removal of life-force, and indeed
this voiding becomes the driving force of all creativity that is to follow.
V
Now we can return to apply our learning to life.
There are three implications of the doctrine of tzimtzum
that are, I suggest, useful for the Jewish Pastoral carer.
·
Firstly, our world is built not on a rock-solid
dependable foundation but on a void; a dark empty space. In the language of the
Zohar, we live our lives in the hollow carved out from God’s presence.
·
Secondly, God’s first act in this world was an act of
fixing a boundary. Previous to the moment of tzimtzum there was no
border, everything was full of God’s light an attribute intimately connected to
the notion of chesed – loving kindness. With tzimtzum we enter a
world of boundary strict judgement. Rules (in both the classic sense of a
measuring stick and the legal sense) come into existence; and this is, for the
Kabbalist, a manifestation of gevorah or din –strictness. God’s
cardinal manifestation in creation is stern and harsh.
·
Thirdly, this constriction is the beginning of a story
of creation. We learn that possibility, potential and life itself are only
possible on the other side of this first gathering in of the spirit.
The three implications fall into two categories. The
first two combine to provide an alternative narrative to other theological
explanations of the origin of chaos and suffering in this world. The third
offers makes a specific call on the pastoral carer who seeks to be creative in
their work.
VI
The creation myth canonized by the Bible, with its
repetition of the phrase ‘and it was good’ seems to suggest a kindly Universe,
suffused with God’s presence. I will refer to this as our default position -
God is in charge and everything will be just fine. Through the stories of our ancestors, we learn how to influence our fate, how to draw God into our lives, how to
relieve our suffering and calm our fears. Moses’ successful petition that God
should not destroy the Children of Israel after the Golden Calf debacle and
Hannah’s successful petition for a child model ways to bring God into our lives
– these stories model the kind of tzimtzum the Rabbis had in mind in the
two Rabbinic Midrashim cited in the opening of this paper. When these
models work in our lives it is wonderful. But sometimes the most
heart-wrenching petition is not successful in the way the Bible suggests.
In my work as a Chaplain I met Y, an orthodox Jewish
woman who filled our one conversation with Hebrewisms; ‘baruch hashem’,
‘im yirtze hashem,’ ‘refuah shelima.’ Her 38 year old husband had
fallen off his bicycle while riding with their two young children and had
cracked his skull. He was comatose and the medical staff held no hope for a
medical recovery. The wife was having none of it, her husband, she informed me,
would make a full recovery. ‘Everyone is praying for him, the Tzanzer Rov,
you know of the Tzanzer? The Tzanzer Rov is praying for him!
And the …’ and she reeled off a list of names of the greatest Rabbis of her generation
(none of whom I had heard of) as if each name served further to vouchsafe the
recovery of her husband, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.
While the language was extreme the underlying theological
narrative is surely not. It is part of our default theological narrative - when
we suffer we call out to God to protect us from the pain, and we expect to be
granted our request.
But the question on my mind, during Y’s monologue, was,
what if physical recovery did not come, where would this kind but scared woman
turn then? What must it be to feel abandoned not only by one’s husband but
also by one’s God in the same moment? How could someone cope with such a
‘double whammy’? (I never found out, the husband died that night and Y was gone
by the next morning).
Judaism
does offer other alternative theological narratives that seek to ameliorate the
pain of one who prays and does not feel answered. But nowhere is the alternative
narrative so embedded in the very fabric of the Universe as in Luria. Scholem’s
articulation captures the ontological implication of tzitzum perfectly;
[In
Luria] the root of evil, [and surely also the feeling of being deserted by
God’s beneficence - JG] ultimately [lie] in the very nature of Creation
…because of its nature as Creation – i.e., as other than Godhead – an element
of imbalance, defectiveness and darkness must enter into every restricted
existence… [Lurianic Kabbalah] requires evil as a factor necessarily inherent in
Creation per se, without which Creation would instantly lose its separate
existence and return to being absorbed in the Infinite.
Luria
gives us no tool that would resist the notion that we are abandoned by our God,
but he does save us from feeling that this is a sudden move. God pulled back
long, long ago. Framed this way the loss of a loved one becomes the only loss
that a person needs to face at their darkest moment. The personal loss need not
be compounded by an existential loss. The double whammy Y, perhaps, experienced
can be ameliorated, if only slightly, by acknowledging that her Universe is the
same Universe as it was before her disastrous human loss. If Y were able to
accept this other theological narrative she would, perhaps, be able to experience
the loss of her husband more directly, she could have become more present in
the reality of her human loss, less confused by the ‘double whammy.’ I am not
suggesting that pastors start citing passages from Vital in their encounters –
and indeed I was unable to find a way to offer any kind of intervention to Y –
but it felt important to me to know that an alternative theological narrative
was available, and I believe this knowledge can be useful for others.
There is a
second powerful, and, to my mind potentially confusing, default theological narrative
that is re-framed by the notion of tzimtzum. Throughout
the texts of our tradition
we are time and again directed to the doctrine of reward and punishment as a
central mechanism for explaining the existence of suffering in the world - do
good and you will be rewarded, sin and be punished.
It is tempting to read this default doctrine both
forwards and backwards.
· Forwards in that the doctrine encourages people to do
good and avoid evil – surely an acceptable read.
· And backwards in that people are led to view their
pain and distress as signs that they have failed or sinned in some way – a
perspective that might not always be appropriate.
I am particularly reminded of the case of X. X’s 30-year-old daughter had suffered from a massive brain haemorrhage and was comatose
with little prospect of regaining consciousness. The mother felt guilty, she
repeatedly expressed to me her belief that the brain bleed had occurred since
the daughter was wearing, at the time of her haemorrhage, a brand new dressing
gown bought by the mother, a gown that the mother now felt was too thin for
such a cold day (it was mid-June!).
Through supervision I came to realise that my first
attempts at intervention on this issue (rejecting X’s protestations of her own
guilt) were mistaken – she was genuinely expressing what she was feeling, but
she was using the guise of the tale of the dressing gown as a mask to hide her
real struggles. Maybe X’s awareness had been blurred by the backwards reading
of the doctrine of reward and punishment. So, without rejecting her
articulation of guilt, I offered an alternative
narrative –
‘Do
you think that there is always a reason for people’s suffering?’
‘No’
‘So
what is it, do you think, that is making you feel so guilty?’
X opened
up. She told me she had given up her career for what her husband insisted were
her ‘family responsibilities,’ only for the husband to walk out of her life.
She admitted transferring her unfulfilled ambitions and bitterness onto her
only daughter. She had been critical of her daughter’s suitors and critical of some
of the professional decisions the daughter had made. And now the mother felt
guilty she had not let her daughter live her own life. With the acceptance of
the alternative theological narrative X was able to leave the notion that she
had caused the haemorrhage and was able to address what seemed to be a more honest
issue of guilt.
Lurianic Tzimtzum,
serves as a powerful counterbalance to the backwards reading of the doctrine of
reward and punishment (the notion that if I am suffering I must have done
something wrong). In Etz Haim we read that the light of the Infinite is
pulled back uniformly from every side of the Infinite to the same extent at the
same time. In fact Vital goes to great lengths, repeating this fact several
times. For
the Lurianic cosmogony, the first and archetypal action of din – strictness
or harshness – involves not a pointed response of the Universe to a specific stimulus,
but rather a uniform restraining of Divine love and grace. To translate this
notion into the hospital room, the person who suffers is not condemned to
suffer for any particular omission or commission on their part, but rather he
or she is caught up in the pulling back of the Light of the Infinite from the
entire cosmos. Bad things happen to particular people for no particular fault
of their own.
VII
In looking
at this mythology for its usefulness in the pastoral encounter we might be put
off by the cosmological framing of the notion of tzimtzum in the texts
we have been using. Tzimtzum might be a useful notion when thinking of
such lofty and abstract subjects as the origins of the galaxy, but perhaps is
it stretching an idea beyond its plain meaning to translate, as I did in the
previous paragraph from cosmogony to hospital room with so little attention to
the original context of the notion. I believe this ‘translation’ is entirely
within the range of acceptable uses of this notion. The Lurianic System, as the
vast corpus of work produced by his students makes clear, is just that – a
system. Notions of tzimtzum, shvira and tikkun are applied by the
students of Luria to every aspect of life. We even have a text that seems to advocate
the necessity of internalising tzimtzum in our interactions with our
fellow human beings. I mentioned earlier that Luria himself wrote virtually
nothing. In this extraordinary text, published only after his death, he
explains why.
Shivchei
Luria
Were all
seawater ink, and all the vast firmament paper and all the stalks quills, it
would still not be enough for me to write down my wisdom. When I start to
reveal to you a single secret, I feel a downpour of divine influence like the
gushing rapids of a waterfall. At first I am at a loss how to pass on even the
smallest amount of this wisdom to you. Then I devise a way to channel it in
such a manner than I can divulge to you a minute part of that secret. It would be dangerous were you to receive too
much at one time – like a nursing infant who could strangle to death were his
mother’s milk to flow too quickly into his mouth.
Luria is speaking of the need for something like personal
tzimtzum. He is aware that his own energy can be overpowering, he feels
he would ‘break the vessels’ of those he counsels were he to pour forth his own
‘milk’ with all the capability he has within him. For Luria, a personal tzimtzum
is necessary for his counsel to be constructive and not destructive. And the
same applies, I argue, for all of us. The relationship between God’s creation
through tzimtzum and our own attempts to be creative in the world is
also explicit in the manuscript Scholem suggests may have inspired Luria,
How
did God emanate and create God’s world? Like a person who gathers in their
spirits and constricts themselves in order to increase and strengthen their
might.
The message to the counsellor is clear. Before you
begin to ‘exhale,’ before one can provide constructive advice to one’s counselee,
one must constrict, one must perform tzimtzum on one’s own creative
instincts. To be creative in counselling, Luria suggests, one must first pull
away from oneself (or maybe pull into themselves), creating an empty space in
oneself, to really hear the other. The Gemorah teaches that when we visit the
sick we are living our lives in the image of God,
but if we take the notion of Lurianic tzimtzum seriously, the notion of
being Godlike not only requires us to visit but also to perform tzimtzum when
we get there.
I find tzimtzum difficult, both as a pastor and
(and of course, these notions are connected) in life. I didn’t write this paper
because of my pastoral expertise in practising personal tzimtzum, but
rather because I struggle to do so. I am aware of the irony that, in this long
paper, it is only now that I finally feel able to express what I really wanted
to say in this entire exercise – that the greatest gift of Luria’s version of tzimtzum
to this pastoral counsellor is that counselling is first and foremost about
pulling back from saying anything, pulling back from my ego to make space for a
creativity. I, on the other hand, began this paper by breathing out, and now, on
page ten, I am aware I am tired of writing, and maybe you, kind reader, are
tired of reading and the real ‘point’ of this paper may be lost – for lack of tzimtzum.
What is even scarier, I am aware that my love of these texts about tzimtzum
may actually stunt my ability to practice tzimtzum – and that
is a scary notion for a Rabbinical Student who has spent six years fighting to feel
at home in our vast textual canon.
And now the bind tightens yet further. On the one hand, I am drawn to continue to unpack the notion of tzimtzum, to try and
articulate how one gauges when it is time to exhale. On the other hand, the more
I write about tzimtzum, the less I fear I say.
The more I write, the less space there is for the other, for you – my reader –
to find yourself in this mythology. At this point, maybe the only way to end
this paper is by
Texts:
ויקרא רבה (וילנא) פרשה כט
ד ר' יהושע פתח (תהלים פט)
אשרי העם יודעי תרועה ה' באור פניך יהלכון ר' אבהו פתר קרא בחמשה זקנים
שהם נכנסים לעבר את השנה מה הקב"ה
עושה מניח סנקליטיא שלו מלמעלן ויורד ומצמצם שכינתו ביניהם מלמטן מה"ש אומרים הא תקיף הא תקיף הא אלהא הא אלהא מי
שכתוב בו (שם /תהלים פ"ט/) אל נערץ בסוד קדושים רבה מניח סנקליטין שלו ומצמצם שכינתו ביניהם למטה
כל כך למה שאם טעו בדבר הלכה הקב"ה מאיר פניהם הה"ד באור פניך יהלכון א"ר יאשיה כתיב אשרי העם יודעי
תרועה וכי אין אומות העולם יודעים להריע כמה קרנות יש להן כמה בוקינוס יש להם כמה סלפירגסי יש להם ואמרת אשרי
העם יודעי תרועה אלא שהן מכירין לפתות את בוראן בתרועה והוא עומד מכסא הדין לכסא רחמים ומתמלא עליהם
רחמים והופך להם מדת הדין למדת רחמים אימתי בחדש
השביעי.
שמות רבה (וילנא) פרשה לד
א …, ד"א שדי לא מצאנוהו שגיא
כח, בשעה שאמר הקב"ה למשה עשה לי משכן
התחיל מתמיה ואומר כבודו של הקב"ה מלא עליונים ותחתונים והוא אומר עשה
לי משכן, ועוד היה מסתכל וראה ששלמה עומד
ובונה בית המקדש שהוא גדול מן המשכן ואמר לפני הקב"ה (מלכים א ח)
כי האמנם ישב אלהים על הארץ אמר
משה, ומה בהמ"ק שהוא יותר ויותר מן המשכן שלמה אומר כן, משכן עאכ"ו, לכך
אמר משה (תהלים צא) יושב
בסתר עליון, א"ר יהודה בר ר' סימון יושב בסתר הוא עליון על כל
בריותיו, מהו בצל שדי, בצל אל, בצל רחום בצל
חנון אין כתיב כאן אלא בצל שדי, בצל שעשה בצלאל לכך נאמר בצל שדי יתלונן,
אמר הקב"ה לא כשם שאתה סבור כך אני סבור
אלא כ' קרש בצפון וכ' בדרום וח' במערב ולא עוד אלא שארד ואצמצם שכינתי בתוך
אמה על אמה.
זוהר כרך א (בראשית) פרשת בראשית דף טו עמוד א
בריש (נ"א בראשית בחכמתא דמלכא גליף וכו') הורמנותא דמלכא גליף גלופי
(נ"א גליפו) בטהירו עלאה
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