Q&A: Tzimtzum Not Literally
Tzimtzum Not Literally
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently I discovered the site with all your lectures and articles — and more power to you for everything!
I saw in several places, including in the first lectures of your series “God and the World,” that you are very dismissive of the view that tzimtzum is not to be taken literally..
Without getting into the issue itself, which I don’t understand, there is one point that comes up in your remarks as well (of course based on earlier sources) regarding the big question: if tzimtzum is not literal, then God is also present in the bathroom..
As I understand it, in Chabad teaching the question does not even get off the ground —
because built into the question/wonder is the assumption that the Holy One, blessed be He, is somehow “holy,” and therefore it is unfitting for Him to be in the bathroom.. But for anyone who has read a bit of Chabad teachings, and in general, it is clear that the whole definition of holiness and the like as applied to God exists only from the ten sefirot and downward..
The Holy One, blessed be He, on the level of the “encompassing,” and certainly above that — has no connection at all to holiness or its opposite, so what is the problem with His being in the bathroom just as in the Holy of Holies?? All the categories of impurity and purity, holy and impure, black and white, are only within the “immanent filling.”
Answer
All of that is just words. If you are not saying this about the Holy One, blessed be He, then I have no problem at all. But my problem is not that the Holy One, blessed be He, is in the bathroom. My problem with saying that tzimtzum is not literal is that this is a self-contradictory statement that says nothing. And that is regardless of what it is talking about (the Holy One, blessed be He, or anything else). Because it means that you and I and the cat in my yard are divinity (or sefirot / configurations, and so on). In other words, I do not exist.
Discussion on Answer
Correction:
Not “is found in filthy alleyways” but rather “there is no faith-based/intellectual problem with His being found in filthy alleyways.”
That is — I am not asking whether yes or no, but what the great anxiety is among the opponents of Hasidism regarding this approach.
That is worth asking them. I explained that the problem I see here is different. It is a logical problem, not a theological one.
Of course tzimtzum is not literal.
And of course you do not exist.
There is no contradiction here, just a bit of emotional difficulty and a perceptual limitation in recognizing that you do not exist.
Without getting into the question itself of what exactly is meant by tzimtzum not being literal (and by the way, in Hasidic thought there are several proofs that the world is in fact real, one of them from the verse “In the beginning God created”..) —
I want to understand what is so complicated about saying/understanding that the Holy One, blessed be He, has several aspects, and one of them is prior to His having defined the rules of the game at all, and the sefirot בכלל, and from the perspective of this “level,” above and below are equal and darkness is like light, and certainly there are no categories of impurity and purity — and therefore plain common sense would understand that from the standpoint of this “level” He is in filthy alleyways exactly as He is in the Holy of Holies!? So what is the great outcry of the opponents of Hasidic teaching about this? Unless one limits the Holy One, blessed be He, so much and assumes that by His very nature He is “holy,” and therefore cannot be found in such places..