Tikkun
in Lurianic Kabbalah
In
contemporary parlance, "tikkun olam"
refers to repairing the earthly world in which we live—but in Luria's
teachings, complete "tikkun"
would undo the world we know.
By
Prof. Lawrence Fine
Reprinted with
the author's permission from "Tikkun:
A Lurianic Motif in Contemporary Jewish Thought," in From Ancient
Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding--Essays in Honor
of Marvin Fox, Vol. 4, ed. Jacob Neusner
et al. (Scholars Press).
[Pre-eminent 16th-century kabbalist] Isaac Luria taught what amounts to
a 16th-century version of a gnostic myth [gnostics view the world, and even
divinity, as profoundly and dualistically divided between the forces of good
and evil], organized around three main themes: tzimtzum ["contraction"], shevirat ha-kelim ["the shattering of the vessels"], and tikkun ["repair" or "fixing"].
God Contracts the
Divine Essence
In contrast to the mythological conceptions of early Kabbalah, which
conceived of the initial theogonic activity [that is, self-creative activity]
as an outward act of emanation, Luria describes the first action of divinity as
an inward one. Tzimtzum refers to the
process by which the Godhead contracts its essence, so to speak, by retreating
"from Himself into Himself," abandoning a space in order to create an
"empty" region.
[The explanation of this] step inward sought to solve the question of
how the existence of the world is possible if divinity, which is Infinite,
fills all space. The answer which Lurianic Kabbalah provides is that by an act
of withdrawal, a space--infinitesimally small in comparison to God's
infinity--is created in which all dimensions of existence can unfold.
Prior to this event, the different powers of divinity were harmoniously
balanced without any apparent individuation or differentiation. In particular,
the opposing forces of Mercy (Hesed)
and Stern Judgment (Din) existed in a
state of complete unity. But in the course of tzimtzum, Ein Sof [God's
essence referred to by the name "There-Is-No-Limit"] gathered in one
place all the "roots" of Stern Judgment, leaving them behind in the
region now abandoned.
In addition, a positive residue of divine light, known as reshimu ("traces" [or
impression]), remained in the empty space. This resulted in a separation
between Din and Hesed and the establishment of a measure of independence for the
forces of Din. Thus, from one point
of view, the tzimtzum can be regarded
as an act of purification in which the "dross" within God was purged
from His innermost being.
"Primordial
Man"
Following this, a third element, a ray from God's hidden essence (Ein Sof) entered the empty space and
acted upon the existing mixture of reshimu
and Din. This illuminating ray serves
as a permanent link between Ein Sof
and the empty space. The form of the divine produced by this first ray of light
is termed the "Primordial Man" (Adam
Qadmon). The latter is described with vivid anthropomorphic detail.
The lights shining from Adam
Qadmon's "ears," "nose," and "mouth"
constituted a collective or perfectly unified structure. But the light issuing
from the "eyes" emanated in a different manner. They were atomized or
separated into different sefirot so
as to require their containment in special vessels or qelim.
The Breaking of the
Vessels: Broken Shards and Holy Sparks
These vessels, composed of a "thicker" light, were to serve as
"shells" for the purer light. In the process of emanation, however,
some of these vessels were unable to contain the fight within them, and
consequently shattered under the pressure, scattering themselves into the empty
space. This event is known in the Lurianic texts as "shevirat ha-qelim," or the "breaking of the
vessels."
In the wake of this event, most of the light that had been contained in
the vessels returned to their divine source, while the remainder fell below
into the empty space and attached themselves to the now broken shards of
vessels. From these shards of broken vessels the powers of the qelipot, that is, "husks" or
"shells" were produced. These are the evil forces of the "other
side," the sitra ahra.
In addition to constituting the source of evil, the broken shards are
also the basis for the material world. The sparks of light that failed to
return to their source above remained trapped, as it were, among the qelipot. The qelipot, in turn, are constantly nourished and strengthened by the
holy sparks attached to them. Indeed, were it not for these sparks, the qelipot would lose their life and power
altogether.
Adam Could Have Fixed
It All
The challenge which Lurianic teaching now faced was to determine how to
mend the injury suffered by the Godhead. Tikkun
refers to the processes by which restoration and repair were to be
accomplished. They constitute the greatest part of Lurianic theory and are
complex in the extreme.
According to Lurianic teaching, the soul of the first man, Adam, was
composed of all the various "worlds" or levels of divine reality, and
was intended to extricate and reintegrate the divine sparks that remained
within the qelipot. When Adam was
created, the cosmic process of tikkun
had virtually been completed.
It was his project to finalize the restorative process through
contemplative exercises. He was capable of doing, so as he was a perfect
microcosm of Adam Qadmon. Through his
mystical activities, Adam could have separated the sparks from their demonic
shells, thus reestablishing the primordial unity of all things.
Having purged the realm of holiness of the final vestiges of dross, the qelipot would have sunk beneath the
lowest spiritual worlds and lost all their power. The cosmos would have achieved
the original state of perpetual communion with the divine light, and the
historical process as we know it would have ended.
None of this came about, however, due to Adam's sin. His transgression
interrupted his own communion with the upper spheres and brought about his
attachment to the lower worlds. Moreover, the processes of tikkun which had already taken place were reversed, the
"worlds" which had begun to rise and to return to their proper
position once again fell below. Good and evil were again thoroughly mixed in
with each other. Humanity and all reality in the lower world of Asiyah became materialized. And the sin
of Adam caused the sparks of all human souls that had been contained within his
own to fall and become imprisoned as well within the qelipot.
Tikkun: Gathering
Light and Souls
Tikkun, therefore,
entails two separate but related processes. First, it means the gathering of
the divine lights that had fallen into the realm of the qelipot as a result of the "breaking of the vessels."
Second, it means the gathering of all the holy souls likewise imprisoned in the
qelipot.
Tikkun is to be
achieved by human beings through their contemplative action. Every religious
act requires contemplative concentration on the various dimensions of divinity
and the various combinations of the divine name in order to "raise up the
fallen sparks." The focus of concentration is the inner dynamics of
reorganization and restructuring that takes place in the course of acts of
devotional piety.
The kinds of activities by which the kabbalist seeks to accomplish these
goals include a) liturgical prayer; b) the performance of all other mitzvot;
and c) the practice of certain special exercises, such as those known as yihudim ["unifications", that
is, of the Godhead]. The same general contemplative idea characterizes each of
these types of activity, and [16th- and 17th-century author of the kabbalistic
work The Tree of Life] Hayyim Vital's
versions of Luria's teachings spell out the proper mystical intentions (kavvanot) in great detail.
Some General
Conclusions
On the basis of the above account, several general observations
pertinent to the present study may be made.
1) The condition of disarray in which the cosmos finds itself, according
to Lurianic Kabbalah, is a result of two different catastrophic
"falls," one of an intra-divine nature, prior to and independent of
human behavior, the other a consequence of human sin.
2) The material world as we know it, as was the case with the gnostic
myths of late antiquity, is deemed repugnant, evil, inhospitable, opposed in
every way to that which is immaterial, divine light and the soul.
3) The project of human life is to separate the holy from the material
world, and thus divest that world of all existence. All existence will return
to its original spiritual condition, a state synonymous with the messianic age.
Lurianism is thus, again, like the gnostic myths of an earlier time, a complete
rejection of the world as we know it, and of the historical process. The vision
of redemption is a fundamentally spiritual one in which all things return to olam ha-tikkun [literally "the
world of repair," that is, a world restored to its perfect status before intra-divine catastrophe and before human sin]. Thus, the tikkun of which Lurianic Kabbalah speaks
is not that of this world, but of "worlds" beyond it.
4) The responsibility for bringing all this about is a human one, not a
divine one. Divinity is, in effect, a passive beneficiary of the actions of
human beings.
Lawrence Fine,
Ph.D., teaches Jewish studies at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Safed Spirituality (Paulist Press) and Physician
of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship
(Stanford University Press).
