Genesis 1:3 to 1:5

I:16b, Chapter 5, pp. 122-127, I:17a

In the opening lines of this passage (pp. 122-125 in Pritzker), working through Genesis 1:3, the text describes the progression of the emanation of God that constitutes the act of creation, as always working with the schematic of sefirot. For our purposes, Rabbi Shim’on offers two particularly interesting metaphors we might apply to our understanding of the evev. The first is the pattern of “general-particular-general.” R. Shim’on seems to be saying that the whole content of creation exists as an inchoate whole in the ‘mind’ of God, Keter, and in its “primordial point” that penetrates, Hokhmah. But once birthed through Binah (the “womb” of God), it becomes particularized, as if fragmented, by speech. The Thought becomes Word. This implicitly recognizes the intrinsically unitizing nature of the linguistic act. Words divide up the whole into bits. The phenomenal world suddenly takes form in all its abundant intricacy.

But then, according to the Zohar’s account of creation, this point of light then returned to the “general.” At first it expanded, but then it “endured, emerged, ascended, was treasured away, and a single point remained…. As it ascends, all ascend, merging in it.” So, “ascend” here means returning to the upper sefirot, to the mind of God, to the “general.” This arc of return fits snugly, as it happens, with an Infinitistic interpretation. If we equate the “general” with the whole implying, and the “particular” with the explicit occurring (the occurrings which comprise myriad particulars), then we can understand the “ascending” back to the “general” as the changed implying into which the next ‘particulars’ will occur, and so on. This is the eternally recurrent cycle of creation, here read through the Gendlinian metaphor of the evev.

We find a parallel metaphor in these pages in the distinction made between the “aura,” which is the concealed light of the upper sefirot and the “light” that bursts upon the world (or really makes, or at least reveals, the world). R. Shim’on says, “And there was light–light that already was.” This also readily suggests the Infinitistic distinction between the implicit and explicit. What occurs simply makes visible what was always already implicit. If we imagine this not as a single event that occurred once at the moment of creation but as a continuous process of renewal that has never ceased we can begin to imagine a strobic effect, as if the light of the explicit flashes and then returns to the darkness of the implicit, and then lights up again in the next instant.

This image fits neatly with the observations of the physicist Carlo Rovelli. In his book Reality Is Not What It Seems (2017), he argues that, for “any object” in quantum mechanics, “Its position and velocity, its angular momentum and its electrical potential only acquire reality when it collides—interacts—with another object. It is not just its position that is undefined, as Heisenberg had recognized: no variable of the object is defined between one interaction and the next” (p. 122). These observations intriguingly suggest that physical reality really does flash strobically in the moments of interaction, then going dark in the absence of direct interaction. How fascinating to consider that physicists can pinpoint the moment of occurring (the “light” in the Zohar’s metaphor) and also the abyss, or nothingness, of the in-between–moments pregnant with the implicit alone (the “aura,” or "concealed radiance”).

When it comes to Genesis 1:4 (“God saw that the light was good”), I think the most fascinating issue revolves around what the word “good” could possibly mean here. But the Zohar passes over this with alarming speed. All it says about ט֑וֹב (tov, good) is that it “illumines” or “kindles” in every direction (p. 125). The long discourse about the following clause (“And God separated the light from the darkness”) suggests a very nuanced analysis of the nature of this light (and by extension what it might mean to consider it “good”). It seems that the light that emanates the phenomenal world, that ultimately issues from Shekhinah, is a blend of light and darkness as each in its pure form yearns for the other (which suggests a rationale for day always moving toward night and vice-versa). As we have come to expect, however, the Zohar also insinuates notions of good and evil into these concepts (as well as problematic ideas around gender). As a result, Shekhinah is described (in footnote 146, p. 127) as “lack[ing] the full power of [darkness], now softened by [the light]. Emanating from darkness, She also lacks light.” The governing metaphor here, perhaps, is Shekhinah (the presence of God in the world perceived by us) as moon–illumined by light but somehow never escaping the enveloping darkness. If we follow the Zohar’s assignment of light with goodness and darkness with evil, we glimpse a very nuanced idea of God as it appears to the human eye. This God, it would seem, transcends any simple dualism of good versus bad that we humans might wish to construct to contain it.

But, alas, this subtle understanding seems in tension with the statement that “God separated the light from the darkness, dissipating discord, so that all would be perfect.” The succeeding paragraphs all describe not a separation of light and darkness but a blending of them as they participate in the ongoing emanation of God. What seems to be “perfected” in this process is a harmonization of good and evil (i.e., light and darkness) rather than a strict segregation. And as beautiful as this idea may seem, it raises many questions in view not only of the great troubles that await God after the invention of humankind, the subject of the rest of the Torah, but also the troubles that still plague us today, indeed which threaten our very survival. This admixture of good and evil seems to have been far from perfect–rather, volatile, explosive, and perhaps even annihilatory. Time will tell.

A whole literature exists within rabbinic Judaism that debates the question of whether it would have been better if God had not created the world, or at least those particular creatures (us) made in God’s own image with free will. To be sure, this question begs other questions, too, such as “better for whom?” And “how do we define ‘better’?” And so on. All of this brings the Infinitist back around to the conclusion that anthropomorphizing the divine–endowing God with intentions, goals, and judgments–inevitably entangles one in impossible logical contradictions. As useful and compelling as an anthropomorphized God may sometimes be, perhaps it is much less trouble to define God not as omniscient (because what kind of thing is knowledge with respect to a principle as opposed to a person?) and certainly not as altogether good, or pure goodness, but leave it at: God is is-ness, full stop. God is just this. This casts an entirely different angle on the light that God let into the world: it is the medium through which the universe in all its infinite and intricately coordinated order comes into view–becomes conscious. Consciousness is the light that came into the world! And ‘God saw that it was good’ is really exactly backwards: for it is we who see God thereby–the whole expanse of a coherent, abundant, and diverse cosmos–and we who declare it good.

And this ‘goodness’ is a messy affair that also includes the ‘darkness’ of doubt and confusion, error and, if you must, ‘evil.’ But all told, this universe is “tinged with nectar” as the old Japanese Zen teacher, Dogen, once said. This is alluded to, subtly, by the Zohar when it speaks of the “sweetness” of the light that merges into the darkness (see footnote 145, p. 127)–we might say the universe is ‘lit with a sweet light’–a radiance “increased from above, from all sides an all-encompassing joy.” And the sweetest thing about it is, for all its pain, we have the astonishing and awesome privilege of experiencing it directly.