In this article we will focus on the intrinsic connection between Creation and the Ten Commandments in general, and specifically, on how the Kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum, or contraction of God’s light, i.e., His revelation, plays a crucial role in both.
We begin with a profound Rashi that links Creation with the Ten Commandments. At the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, the Torah writes, “And it was evening and it was morning the sixth day.”[1] At the conclusion of the account of what happened on each of the other days of Creation, the Torah also declares that “it was evening and it was morning” and mentions that it was the “second,” “third,” “fourth,” or “fifth” day, respectively. But on none of the other days is the definite article “the” used. Rashi explains the unique use of the definite article only on the sixth day of Creation by citing the sages’ explanation that “the sixth day” is a reference to the well-known sixth day, i.e., the sixth day of the month of Sivan, the day on which God gave the Torah on Mt. Sinai. More importantly, this was also the day the Israelites agreed to receive the Torah by committing to follow its commandments. The sages use this explanation to reveal that when God created reality, He made its continued existence contingent on the Jewish People’s acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai on that sixth day of Sivan. On that day, Creation was validated and given justification, for the Torah and man fulfilling its commandments, reflecting God’s will, are the true purpose of Creation.
But the connection between Creation and the Ten Commandments is multidimensional. It is also reflected in the structure of the Torah verses introducing each. The Torah’s first verse, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth”[2] (בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱ־לֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ), is regarded as an introductory verse. Rashi writes that we should read it as if says, “In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the earth.” The Ten Commandments, as they are in parashat Yitro have a clear introductory verse, “God spoke all these things, saying”[3] (וַיְדַבֵּר אֱ־לֹהִים אֵת כׇּל הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר). Structurally, both verses have 28 letters and 7 words.
Contraction and Revelation
What the two verses also have in common is the Name of God, Elokim, which appears in them, and which is the Name used exclusively throughout the initial account of Creation. It is surprising that the Torah would use the Name so strongly associated with Creation to introduce the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments begin, “I am Havayah your God” (אָנֹכִי י-הוה אֱ-לֹהֶיךָ), referring to God with His essential four-letter Name, Havayah.
Furthermore, one of the most well-known gematriot is that the value of Elokim (אֱ־לֹהִים) is equivalent to “nature” (הַטֶּבַע) indicating that God as the Creator, as Master of the Universe, is concealed within (the laws of) nature. The Giving of the Torah represents a graduation from knowing God through nature alone—understanding God as the force behind nature—to knowing God’s will, to seeing beyond nature. Why then would the Ten Commandments be introduced by a verse that refers to God as Elokim, the Name associated with nature?
Chasidic thought answers this deep question with the insight that the name Elokim acts to conceal God within nature through the mystical act of Divine contraction (tzimtzum). When the thought of Creation arose in God’s mind, a foundational problem needed to be addressed. No reality can exist beyond (or outside) the all-encompassing infinite limitlessness of God, so where could a finite, independent world possibly exist? To make (conceptual) space, as it were, for reality, God contracted His revelation, concealing it so that a womb-like space, seemingly void of His Presence would be revealed. A finite world could then be created in this space. Although Creation is an expression of Divine revelation and Divine beneficence, it simultaneously depends on God contracting His infinite revelation to make space for a finite reality to exist.
The revelation of the Ten Commandments requires a similar paradoxical contraction. To give the Torah, beginning with the Ten Commandments, to the Jewish people and ultimately to the entire world, God had to contract, in the sense of condense, His infinite will into the finite letters of the Ten Commandments so that they could serve as vessels for it. Whereas the contraction of Creation concealed God within nature, the Giving of the Torah condensed God, as it were, into the letters of the Ten Commandments. The contraction associated with Creation conceals God and the other, associated with the Ten Commandments, condenses Him. But ultimately, they function similarly, allowing God’s limitlessness to become part of a finite reality. In giving the Ten Commandments, God transformed the creative energy of Creation into a specific moral code for humanity by contracting and condensing His will into concrete and finite letters and commands.
Constant Renewal
In the Morning Service each day, we declare that God “renews in His goodness every day perpetually, the Act of Creation.” Kabbalah and Chasidut teach that creation is renewed not just every day but at every moment. Likewise, new insights into Torah are constantly being revealed as well. One of the sources for the Torah’s constant renewal is found in the description of the Israelites arriving at Sinai. The Torah states that, “On the [first day of the] third month from when the Children of Israel left Egypt, on this day they came to the desert of Sinai.”[4] Noting that it would have been more appropriate grammatically for the verse to read “on that day,” Rashi comments that “on this day” teaches us that the Torah’s words should always be experienced anew as if they were just given today.
When contemplating the above sources, a potent underlying theme emerges. By connecting to God, Torah, and mitzvot, we essentially plug ourselves into the very act of constant re-creation. This realization alone (along with its integration) should suffuse our lives with an abiding newness. However, even more profoundly, this connection to God, Torah, and mitzvot promotes renewal and rejuvenation because it provides human beings with something they often lack: purpose. The overall lack of purpose in life is one of the greatest contributors to boredom and destructive behavior. When human beings have purpose and direction in life, every moment is a unique opportunity to fulfill those aspirations. This then is the Jewish people’s mission in the world—to receive, act upon, and ultimately reveal this message contained in the Torah to the world so that the world continues to be worthy of existing.
As mentioned above, both the Ten Commandments and Creation were predicated on God contracting His infinite being in order to first create a finite reality (the act of Creation) and to then reveal His will to mankind (the Giving of the Torah).[5] A deeper understanding of the parallels between the two is arrived at by comparing the ways in which various commentaries explain how this process of contraction manifests itself.
Tzimtzum in Creation
According to a tradition cited by Rashi, all that would ever be created was created in potential on the first day.[6] Each succeeding day of creation revealed that which had already been created in potential on the first day. The notion of all creation being contained in, and emanating from, an initial starting point has been reflected in modern physics in the Standard Model of the Universe, which begins with the Big Bang. According to this model, the entire universe composed of tens of billions of galaxies, was contained in an almost infinitely small and condensed speck of quasi-matter that “exploded” and to this day is still expanding—a scientific equivalent of the rabbinic tradition that all that would ever be created existed in potential on the first day of Creation, described as “one day” in the Torah because it was a singular and self-perpetuating day, which included all the other days as well. This tradition thus applies contraction-as-condensing to Creation.
The Torah’s first verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” contains all that was created on the first day in archetypal form. The heavens are an archetype for everything spiritual that would ever come into existence, and the earth is an archetype for all things material that would ever emerge.
The opening verse of the Torah contains the letter alef six times, which according to the sages alludes to the six thousand years of our current state of reality[7] before the coming of the Messianic era because the name of the letter alef can also be read as elef, which means “a thousand.”
Another example of contraction-as-condensing is evident in the Torah’s first word, בְּרֵאשִׁית (pronounced Bereishit), which can also be read as the phrase, “He created six”[8] (בָּרָא שִׁית), referring to the six days of creation that in potential already exist in the first day.
One final insight regarding contraction-as-condensing relates to the unusually large letter beit found in a Torah scroll as the Torah’s very first letter, the first letter of Bereishit (בְּרֵאשִׁית). The gematria of the letter beit is 2, which symbolizes the transition from the absolute oneness of God pre-creation to the apparent world of duality and opposites that is found everywhere in our finite reality. Our task is to reveal the oneness of God that still permeates all apparent duality.[9]
Tzimtzum in the Ten Commandments
Having seen examples of contraction (as a condensed state) in Creation, we turn our attention to contraction as it appears in the Ten Commandments.
First, there are 620 letters in the Ten Commandments. These 620 letters correspond to the 613 commandments mandated by the Written Torah (the Pentateuch) and the 7 rabbinic commandments mandated by the rabbis).[10] In fact, the Komarna Rebbe wrote an entire book[11] dedicated to explicitly explaining the correspondence between each of the letters of the Ten Commandments and its corresponding mitzvah. Thus, the entire Torah, as it were, is contracted into the Ten Commandments. For this reason, we refer to the day the Ten Commandments were given as the day on which the Torah was given.
Since the Ten Commandments, like the rest of the Torah, are comprised of both positive commandments and negative prohibitions, all the mitzvot in the Torah are condensed into the first two of the Ten Commandments.[12] All the positive commandments are encapsulated in the first commandment, to believe in God,[13] and all the prohibitions in the Torah are rooted in the second commandment: “You shall not have any other gods before Me.”[14] This tradition is supported by the sages’ statement that stresses the uniqueness of the first two commandments; it was only these two commandments that the people heard directly from God.[15] The Midrash teaches that the people, petrified by God's awesome revelation, asked that the other eight be transmitted to them by Moses.[16]
Next, the second commandment, prohibiting the worship of any other gods, is obviously predicated on the first commandment commanding belief in one God. Therefore, not only are all positive commandments encapsulated in the first of the Ten Commandments, in a certain sense, so are all the negative prohibitions. Since the prohibitions in the Torah serve as stepping-stones to building a positive relationship with God, other human beings, and the world, from a certain perspective, they can be classified as positive commandments. Thus, all the prohibitions relating to the second commandment are in essence included in the first commandment.
Further, Kabbalah teaches that the Ten Commandments and even God Himself, as it were, are condensed into the opening word Anochi (אָנֹכִי), which the sages explain is an acronym for the phrase (אֲנָא נַפְשִׁי כְּתַבִית יְהַבִית), “I have written Myself down and given Myself to you.”[17] This is not merely another instance of contraction in the Ten Commandments, it parallels the epic event discussed above wherein God contracted and condensed His infinite Being to allow creation to come into being. At the Giving of the Torah, God in a manner of speaking, contracts His infinite Being and will into the finite Hebrew letters that are subsequently learned and transmitted from generation to generation. This is why whenever we learn Torah, we find that every word contains infinite depths, because every word reflects (in a miraculous way) the infinite nature of the Giver of the Torah. Just as God is limitless, so every word of His Torah is limitless.[18]
Finally, just as the beit, the first letter of the Torah, contains all of creation in embryonic form, so too the alef, the first letter of the first word in the Ten Commandments, Anochi (אָנֹכִי), in essence contains the entire Torah. Furthermore, the Torah’s first letter, beit, whose numerical value is two, symbolizes the revealed duality that structures nature, whereas the first letter of the Ten Commandments, alef, whose numerical value is one, represents the essential oneness of all reality that is revealed through the Torah.[19]
Having described the Divine process of contraction as manifest in both Creation and in the Giving of the Torah, we can now ask: How can we apply this understanding into our own lives? One possible answer is that we too should view ourselves as an example of God’s contraction, through God’s choice to create us in His image. Hence, understanding the dynamics of Creation and the expression of God’s will through the Ten Commandments provides us with tools to actualize our own potential as well as function on a higher spiritual plane when interacting with the world around us.
[1]. Genesis 1:31.
[2]. Genesis 1:1.
[3]. Exodus 20:1; see 913: The Secret Wisdom of Genesis pp. 3-8 for an in-depth analysis of the correspondence between these two verses with an identical structure.
[4]. Exodus 19:1.
[5]. The Talmud speaks of two essential parts to the Torah’s concealed tradition, “the Action of Creation” (מַעֲשֵׂה בְּרֵאשִׁית) and “the Action of the Chariot” (מַעֲשֵׂה מֶרְכָּבָה). The source of the first is the Torah’s account of the act of Creation, while the source of the second is the Torah’s account of the Giving of the Torah.
[6]. Rashi on Genesis 1:14 based on the opinion of Rabbi Nechemiah in Bereishit Rabbah 12:4.
[7]. Sanhedrin 97a; Avodah Zarah 9a; Rosh Hashanah 31a.
[8]. Tikkunei Zohar 11. The Hebrew Letters, p.103.
[9]. See the letter beit in The Hebrew Letters for an in-depth understanding.
[10]. Yain Yitzchak, Yitro, p. 342.
[11]. Otzar HaChaim, printed with Heichal HaBerachah, following the order of the mitzvot in the Torah.
[12]. Shnei Luchot HaBerit, Torah SheBiChtav, Yitro, Torah Or. Tanya, ch. 20.
[13]. Exodus 20:2.
[14]. Ibid. v. 3. See Tanya, loc. cit. for more on the concentrated nature of these first two commandments.
[15]. Makot 24b.
[16]. Mechilta.
[17]. Shabbat 105a.
[18]. The Ba’al Shem Tov was fond of connecting this idea to the verse, “The Torah of Havayah is whole” (Psalms 19:8), explaining that it means that regardless of how much one has delved into the Torah, the Torah remains whole, i.e., wholly untouched, because it is limitless.
[19]. For an in-depth study of the process of tzimtzum regarding the Ten Commandments discussed in this article, see Sha’ashuim Yom Yom on Yitro.
