Shal-Om - The Tzimtzum Myth and the Paradox of Exteriority

Writing is what takes place when God hides his face. - Derrida Caputo 232

Hayim Vital "On the World of Emanation", in Daniel Matt's The Essential Kabbalah, 94-95

At the beginning of Creation, when Ein Sof withdrew (tzimtzum) its presence all around in every direction, it left a vacuum in the middle, surrounded on all sides by the light of Ein Sof, empty precisely in the middle. The light withdrew like water, in a pond displaced by a stone. when a stone is dropped in a pond, the water at that spot does not disappear - it merges with the rest. So the withdrawn light converged beyond, and in the middle remained a vacuum... [which] transformed into an amorphous mass, surrounded in every direction by the light of Ein Sof. Out of this mass emanated the Four Worlds: emanation (Atzilut), creation (Briyah), formation (Yetzirah), and actualization (Assiyah).

To fashion pottery, the potter first takes an unformed mass of clay and then puts his hand inside the mass to shape it. So the Supernal Emanator puts its hand into the amorphous mass, that is, a ray of light returned from above. As this light began to enter the mass, vessels were formed. From the purest light, Keter; next, Chochmah; then, Binah; and so on throughout all 10 Sefirot. Since Keter was the purest and clearest of all the vessels, it could bear the light within it, but Chochmah and Binah, though more translucent than those below, were not like Keter. Not having its capacity, their backs broke, and they fell from their position. As the light descended further, 6 points appeared - 6 fragments of what had been one point of light. Thus the vessels shattered. Their spiritual essence - the light - ascended back to the mother's womb, while the shattered vessels fell to the world of creation.

...The light of Ein Sof appears only though a screen. As when you sit in the shade; though the sun does not shine on you directly, it illuminates the shaded area. In a smilier manner, the light of Ein Sof illuminates the world of creation through a screen, indirectly.

The Place Where You are Standing Is Holy: A Jewish Theology on Human Relationships. (Rabbi Gershon Winkler and Lakme Batya Elior)

In the creation myth of ancient Judaism mysticism, God creates the universe by a process dubbed tzimtzum, which in Hebrew means a sort of stepping back to allow for there to be an Other, an Else, as in something or someone else. The Judaic notion of a world of Free Will is deeply rooted in this concept, in the understanding that in creating life, the Eyn-Sof, or the Endless One, subdued the omnipotent, all-embracing Divine Presence for the sake of the realization of the Divine Will that there be other beings (Etz Chaim 1:1:2.) Our world, then is the sacred space that the Great Spirit gave as a gift to us, a space in which to be as human as divinely possible, and as divine as humanly possible. A space to err, to fall, to believe, to doubt, to cry, to laugh. Our space, created by the simple motion of stepping back, the humble act of honoring the separate reality of an Other.

-Nora Samaran from "The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture"

The wonderful reward of creating safe bonds is that in these places of trust, a warm glow of meaning and purpose emerges. An inner circle of trust and vulnerability allows movement and rest: it lets the bees come and go from the hive. It creates shelters of chosen family and beloved community from which action, challenges to racism, sexism, institutional violence, can arise, a safety net to catch each other’s bodies and souls, the foundation that allows risk.

R. Kalynomous Kalman Shapira, Derekh Hamelekh, Bereshit

When a Jew comes to pray, they need first to reveal the aspect of the Shechinah that dwells among us in exile. For She is to be found also inside of us--it is only that She is covered in garments. And one can bring Her forth and reveal Her through one's prayer in the sense of "from the depths I called out to You YHWH," like Joseph did when he called out from the well. Similarly, I call out to YHWH from my depths. And [then] the Godliness that is revealed inside of me, prays to YHWH. And then the [quality of] prayer that is prayed is how the Kedushas Levi understands "And h/He called, YHWH, YHWH..," that, [in other words] YHWH calls out to YHWH.

Emmanuel Levinas Totality and Infinity: an Essay on Exteriority pg. 51

To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity.... Finally, infinity, overflowing the idea of infinity, puts the spontaneous freedom within us into question. It commands and judges it and brings it to its truth. The analysis of the idea of Infinity, to which we gain access only starting from an I, will be terminated with the surpassing of the subjective.

Thin and Thick Boundaries: Personality, Dreams and Imagination by Ernest Hartmann, M.D.

Our minds are obviously complex entities. We may think of our minds as consisting of thoughts, feelings, moods, memories; of ego, id, superego, or conscious, preconscious, unconscious; or of distributed processing modules dealing with linguistics, semantics, memory storage, etc. No matter which of these views we adopt, our minds appear to be made up of parts, functions or processes which are in a sense separate from one another, and yet in communication with one another. We can consider them separated by a "boundary"; the degree of separateness is considered boundary thickness, the degree of communication boundary thinness. We also think of some kind of boundary around our whole selves, separating us from others and from the world; again this boundary may be relatively thick or thin.

As a first "clinical" approximation, we think of some individuals for whom everything is kept separate and in its place: order, organization; thoughts are one thing, feelings another; such a person may be seen as solid, perhaps somewhat rigid, well-defended or even "armored"; "thick skinned". This is a person with thick boundaries in many senses. At the other extreme are people in whose minds things are fluid; thoughts, images, feelings merge readily; they are unusually sensitive, open, vulnerable. These people can be thought of as having thin boundaries.