God & The Big Bang – 2nd Edition

In the words of one Hasidic rabbi, “There is no path greater than raising the sparks. For wherever you go and whatever you do—even mundane activities—you serve God.”

“The metaphor does not fit …” Cited in the name of the Maggid of Mezherech by Abraham Hayyim of Zlotshov, Orah la–Hayyim, 1:13a. The Talmudic passage appears in Babylonian Talmud, Qiddushin 30b.

“The soul will cleave …” Isaac of Akko, Otsar Hayyim (in manuscript); see Matt, The Essential Kabbalah, 112, 201. “More than the calf wants to suck, the cow wants to suckle” is one of five things that the imprisoned Rabbi Akiva taught Rabbi Shim’on bar Yohai; see Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 112a.

The mystics read the verse … Elijah de Vidas, Reshit Hokhmah, Sha’ar ha-Qedushah, 7:185a, citing Nehemiah 9:6.

“You should believe that ‘the whole world is filled with God’s presence.’ ‘There is no place empty of It.’ All human thoughts have within them the reality of God. Every thought is a complete creature. If a strange or evil thought arises in your mind while you are engaged in prayer, it is coming to you to be repaired and elevated. If you do not believe this, you have diminished God’s existence.”

One of the kabbalistic names for the Infinite is Nishayon, “forgetting.” One knows God through unknowing, through shedding inadequate conceptions, just as a sculptor cuts away everything that obscures the clarity of the hidden form.

Hasidic interpretation of a passage from the Talmud: “The blessed Holy One said to Israel, ‘My children, I have created yetser ha-ra, and I have created Torah as its spice.’”

Adapting this protean symbol, we could say that patriarchal culture has exiled Shekhinah by denying the divinity of nature.

The mystics read the verse “You enliven everything” (Ve-attah mehayyeh et kullam), with a twist: “You constitute everything” (Ve-attah mehavveh et kullam).