Q&A: The Secret of Tzimtzum
The Secret of Tzimtzum
Question
In the book “Two Wagons and a Hot-Air Balloon,” the Rabbi stated that to say God contracted Himself is a contradiction, since He cannot limit Himself and create a stone He cannot lift, etc., just as the terrible wizard cannot turn himself into a mouse. On the other hand, at the beginning of “No Man Has Power over the Wind,” the Rabbi explained quite simply that saying “tzimtzum not in its plain sense” is an oxymoron, and after all God cannot create logical contradictions like… quite right, He cannot create a stone He cannot lift. And like the wizard, etc.
So then, could the Rabbi help me: do I exist, not exist, or perhaps exist not in the plain sense?
Answer
I don’t remember what I wrote there. Today it’s clear to me that tzimtzum is literal. Maybe I was describing the other view.
By the way, the question of whether you exist and what you think is determined by you, not by me. So even if there is a contradiction in my words, that obviously says nothing about you.
Discussion on Answer
Why not? Is anything too wondrous for God?
The whole doctrine of tzimtzum is based on a mistaken conception of space-time.
In a Big Bang universe, contraction has no meaning. The universe is not expanding inside God.
Every night when you sleep, you stop existing (at times when you are not dreaming). Which means that we do not really exist. Things that exist are not created and do not disappear depending on time. What exists does not depend on time. And we do depend on time.
In his second question, Uriya Amit asked, “Still, why say that literal tzimtzum is not a contradiction? After all, God cannot limit Himself,” and you answered, “Why not? Is anything too wondrous for God?”
I got really, really confused, because elsewhere you wrote that God cannot limit Himself; for example, He cannot turn Himself into a human being, He cannot create a stone and then limit His ability so as not to lift it, and thus create a stone He cannot lift…
Not every attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, is essential to Him (in the sense that without it He would not be Himself). Being present everywhere does not seem essential, and the proof is that if it were, then we could not exist.
Still, why say that literal tzimtzum is not a contradiction? After all, God cannot limit Himself.