Tanya: Chapter 2 - Part 2

https://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/1057120/jewish/Tanya-Chapter-2-Part-2.htm


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G-d is completely incomprehensible and we can glimpse his Holiness, numinous nature when He contracts his essence to accommodates his understanding by the operation of his tzimtzum  or contractions .
Case in point 10 miracles of the temple suspending the laws of nature to bring  His essence and repose to this lowest and paradoxically the holiest of worlds due to the tension of our 2 souls, the godly Jewish soul interacting and paradoxically  transcending the earthly soul -there is no such g-dly  tension in heaven no exercising of the godly soul within us.
G-d is not limited by any action He/She feels all and there is naught else but G-d  pervading all. The Holy of Holies in the temple was an emanation of G-d enacted through His power of Tzimtzum .He is not even limited by His infinite  power and transcendence and can  perform His contractions to give us a foretaste of Holiness  as evidenced by tzimtzum's  contractions .  Discussed is the enigma of the Jew and that evil and good are intermixed causing confusion in this world  and that overcoming of the animal soul is the cause that the lowest of all worlds, especially ours  is the holiest of all worlds. Examples given of tzimtzumim  are the ten miracles found in the temple   and the holy of holies.

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.

— Etz Chaim, Arizal, Heichal A"K, anaf 2^[2]

^ Rabbi Moshe Miller, The Great Constriction, kabbalaonline.org.

Application in clinical psychology[edit]

An Israeli professor, Mordechai Rotenberg, believes the Kabbalistic-Hasidic tzimtzum paradigm has significant implications for clinical therapy. According to this paradigm, God's "self-contraction" to vacate space for the world serves as a model for human behavior and interaction. The tzimtzum model promotes a unique community-centric approach which contrasts starkly with the language of Western psychology.^[12]

Chabad view[edit]

In Chabad Hassidism the concept of tzimtzum is understood as not meant to be interpreted literally, but rather to refer to the manner in which God impresses his presence upon the consciousness of finite reality:^[5] thus tzimtzum is not only seen as being a real process but is also seen as a doctrine that every person is able, and indeed required, to understand and meditate upon.

In the Chabad view, the function of the tzimtzum was "to conceal from created beings the activating force within them, enabling them to exist as tangible entities, instead of being utterly nullified within their source".^[6] The tzimtzum produced the required "vacated space" (chalal panui חלל פנוי, chalal חלל), devoid of direct awareness of God's presence.

Vilna Gaon's view[edit]

The Vilna Gaon held that tzimtzum was not literal, however, the "upper unity", the fact that the universe is only illusory, and that tzimtzum was only figurative, was not perceptible, or even really understandable, to those not fully initiated in the mysteries of Kabbalah.^[7][8]

Shlomo Elyashiv articulates this view clearly (and claims that not only is it the opinion of the Vilna Gaon, but also is the straightforward and simple reading of Luria and is the only true understanding).

He writes:

I have also seen some very strange things in the words of some contemporary kabbalists who explain things deeply. They say that all of existence is only an illusion and appearance, and does not truly exist. This is to say that the ein sof didn't change at all in itself and its necessary true existence and it is now still exactly the same as it was before creation, and there is no space empty of Him, as is known (see Nefesh Ha-Chaim Shaar 3). Therefore they said that in truth there is no reality to existence at all, and all the worlds are only an illusion and appearance, just as it says in the verse "in the hands of the prophets I will appear" (Hoshea 12: 11). They said that the world and humanity have no real existence, and their entire reality is only an appearance. We perceive ourselves as if we are in a world, and we perceive ourselves with our senses, and we perceive the world with our senses. It turns out [according to this opinion] that all of existence of humanity and the world is only a perception and not in true reality, for it is impossible for anything to exist in true reality, since He fills all the worlds. ...

How strange and bitter is it to say such a thing. Woe to us from such an opinion. They don’t think and they don't see that with such opinions they are destroying the truth of the entire Torah.^[9]

However, the Gaon and Elyashiv held that tzimtzum only took place in God's will (Ratzon), but that it is impossible to say anything at all about God himself (Atzmus). Thus, they did not actually believe in a literal tzimtzum in God's essence.^{[citation needed]} Luria's Etz Chaim itself, however, in the First Shaar, is ambivalent: in one place it speaks of a literal tzimtzum in God's essence and self, then it changes a few lines later to a tzimtzum in the Divine Light (an emanated, hence created and not part of God's self, energy).^{[citation needed]} 

Inherent paradox[edit]

A commonly held ^[10] understanding in Kabbalah is that the concept of tzimtzum contains a built-in paradox, requiring that God be simultaneously transcendent and immanent.

• On the one hand, if the "Infinite" did not restrict itself, then nothing could exist—everything would be overwhelmed by God's totality. Thus existence requires God's transcendence, as above.
• On the other hand, God continuously maintains the existence of, and is thus not absent from, the created universe. "The Divine life-force which brings all creatures into existence must constantly be present within them ... were this life-force to forsake any created being for even one brief moment, it would revert to a state of utter nothingness, as before the creation".^[11] This understanding is supported by various biblical teachings: "You have made the heaven ... the earth and all that is on it ... and You give life to them all" (Nehemiah 9:6); "All the earth is filled with God's Glory" (Numbers 14:21); "God's Glory fills the world" (Isaiah 6:3). Creation therefore requires God's immanence.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslav discusses this inherent paradox as follows:

Only in the future will it be possible to understand the Tzimtzum that brought the "Empty Space" into being, for we have to say of it two contradictory things ... [1] the Empty Space came about through the Tzimtzum, where, as it were, He 'limited' His Godliness and contracted it from there, and it is as though in that place there is no Godliness ... [2] the absolute truth is that Godliness must nevertheless be present there, for certainly nothing can exist without His giving it life.

— Likkutei Moharan I, 64:1

This paradox is strengthened by reference to the closely related doctrine of divine simplicity, which holds that God is absolutely simple, containing no element of form or structure whatsoever. This gives rise to two difficulties. Firstly, according to this doctrine, it is impossible for God to shrink or expand (physically or metaphorically)—an obvious contradiction to the above. Secondly, according to this doctrine, if God's creative will is present, then he must be present in total—whereas the tzimtzum, on the other hand, results in, and requires, a partial presence as above.

The paradox has an additional aspect, in that the tzimtzum results in a perception of the world being imperfect