One of the best-known concepts in Judaism is Maimonides’ 13 Principles of Faith, which originally appear in his commentary on the Mishnah. According to the Zohar, their origin is linked to the 13 Principles of Divine Mercy that were revealed to Moses by God to assist in bringing about God’s forgiveness. Less known are the 9 Principles of Divine Mercy found in parashat Shelach, from which stem 9 Principles of Faith of the Torah’s inner dimension.
In this third installment on this topic, we review the third principle: that not only is reality created from non-being, but it is continually recreated by God, at every single moment.
The contents of this series first appeared in Hebrew, in HaRav Ginsburgh’s book, Emunah VeMuda’ut (Faith and Consciousness). It is being translated here for the first time.
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According to the revealed dimension of the Torah, one must believe and know that God created the world from absolute nothingness and void, as the Torah begins, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,”[1] but there is no necessity to say that this creation is perpetual, re-occurring at every single moment. The Torah’s inner dimension, Kabbalah and Chasidut, explains that Creation was not a one-time event, but is a continuous act of the Creator. Reality cannot exist independently of the Creator and therefore sustaining it requires recreating it continuously.
“The World Was Built with Lovingkindness”
This principle of faith is connected to the sefirah of loving-kindness, of which it is said, “The world was built with loving-kindness”[2] (עוֹלַם חֶסֶד יִבָּנֶה). The conjugation of the verb “built” (יִבָּנֶה) in this verse, implies a constantly renewing act of building. Loving-kindness itself is associated with continuity at every moment as in the verse, “the loving-kindness of God is throughout the entire day”[3] as well as “in His goodness, He renews daily, perpetually, the act of Creation.”[4]
It is explained in Chasidut that the very renewal of existence flows from God’s attribute of loving-kindness. At the same time that Creation is continuously recreated, using His attribute of might (gevurah), God conceals Himself from the creatures He created, so that they will feel themselves to be independent, real, and autonomous beings. This concealment of the Creator from creation is known as “contraction” (צִמְצוּם). As a result, one who feels only God’s attribute of might—the attribute with which God conceals and hides Himself—is incapable of feeling the renewal of creation at every moment. Experiencing Creation (as well as one’s own) continual renewal is the feeling of Divine loving-kindness that brings the world into being.
Judgment and Loving-kindness
God creates the world at every moment out of His wondrous love for every creature He created for His honor (כָּבוֹד).[5] The Torah includes more than one account of Creation, each from a different perspective and using different Names of God.
The first account is ordered by days and lasts 7 days. We have already seen that it begins with the famous words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”[6] The second account begins with the verse, “These are the chronicles of the heavens and the earth when they were created on the day Havayah Elokim made the earth and the heavens.”[7] The Sages remark that the Hebrew word that means “when they were created” (בְּהִבָּרְאָם) can be permuted to spell “with Abraham” (בְּאַבְרָהָם), meaning, that in some way, Creation was created with Abraham. How can we understand this?
Abraham is described as the man of love and loving-kindness and the idea that the world was created with him means that it was through his soul root—the archetypal soul root of God’s attribute of supernal loving-kindness—that God created the world. The Torah’s first account of Creation only mentions God’s Name Elokim, the Name associated with His attribute of judgment. This leads to the realization that the more one experiences God’s judgment in Creation, the more one experiences Creation as a one-time act that occurred in the past. By corollary, the more one feels God’s loving-kindness—Abraham’s archetypal attribute—the more one experiences that Creation is a continuously ongoing act that is occurring even at this very moment.
Indeed, Abraham’s soul root can be found not just in the second account of Creation, but in the first one as well. Before his name was changed by God to Abraham, our first patriarch’s name was Avram; more particularly, he was known in the ancient Land of Canaan as Avram the Hebrew (אַבְרָם הָעִבְרִי), where “the Hebrew” is cognate with “the past” (עָבָר). In the Torah’s first verse, “God created” (בָּרָא אֱ-לֹהִים) is an anagram of “the God of Avram” (אֱ-לֹהֵי אַבְרָם). One might say that when Abraham was still called Avram, he possessed faith in God as Creator and Guide of the world, but he did not yet have a complete revelation[8] of the continuous coming-into-being of all of Creation, from absolute nothingness. But at the time of his circumcision, when he merited to be called Abraham, he merited the complete revelation of faith in continuous coming-into-being. It was then that he acquired the capacity to proclaim that God was not just the Creator, but God-world, that God and Creation are one in the sense that God brings Creation into-being at every moment anew: “He [Abraham] proclaimed there of Havayah, God-world.”[9] This is why "behibar'am" is written with a small heh, hinting that at the beginning of creation this heh was in "potential," to be revealed when Abraham our forefather was 99 years old at his circumcision.) Furthermore, in the Torah’s first account of Creation, the verb used for creation (בָּרָא) is in the past perfect form, stressing that it is something that occurred in the past. But in the second account of Creation, the word “when they were created” (בְּהִבָּרְאָם) is in the infinitive construct and therefore does not carry a tense—it is not past, present, or future; one might say that it is timeless, exactly the manner in which we should understand continuous Creation.
Speech and Gaze
God perpetually creates the world through the Ten Sayings of Creation. This is alluded to by the verse, “Forever, O’ God, Your word stands in the heavens”[10] which describes God’s saying, “Let there be a firmament,”[11] which stands, as it were, at every moment in the heavens and firms them into the firmament. If for a single moment that creative utterance were to cease, the heavens—and in fact all of Creation—would cease to exist.
Clearly, God does not “speak” in the literal sense, for that would make God corporeal and anthropomorphize the act of Creation, which we know are against Maimonides’ third principle of faith: that God is not corporeal. Chasidic philosophy explains that the Torah describes the act of Creation with speech, “God said, ‘Let there be a firmament’” to imply that even continuous Creation is merely the external dimension of God’s relationship to His world, just as speech is relatively external to thought. In fact, speech is the external expression of thought, revealing that interior to the continuous act of Creation, there is an inner dimension relating God with Creation. This inner relationship is Divine Providence, and it is sometimes described as the loving and caring gaze God has over every one of His creatures. Gaze is another way to express attention. God does not merely bring Creation into existence, He constantly gazes, cares, and pays attention to for all the small and specific events occurring within Creation.
God’s gaze, as it were, His individual Providence, also expresses His wondrous love for the world He created for His glory. Once again, one who experiences only the attribute of judgment in Creation cannot feel individual Divine Providence, only general Providence.[12] Faith in individual Divine Providence corresponds to Maimonides’ first principle of faith, that the Creator knows all the deeds of humans and all their thoughts, except that according to the Torah’s inner dimension, God’s knowledge and individual Providence over all He created (with love) unite with His speech that brings it all into existence, at every moment constantly. God’s attention, care, and love are thus the inner vitality of all that exists.
Continual Creation and Loving-kindness
We have already seen the intimate connection between Creation as an act of love and awareness of continual Creation and Abraham’s faith. What is left for us to explore is one additional connection between this principle of faith of the Torah’s inner dimension and the sefirah of loving-kindness. Loving-kindness lies on the right axis of the sefirot, above it is wisdom (khochmah), and underneath it is eternity, or victory (netzach). One of the ways in which the difference between the right and left axes can be understood is that the right axis is relatively masculine and the left axis relatively feminine. Whereas the masculine is characterized by a descent from above to below, an extension (הִתְפַּשְּׁטוּת) into reality, the feminine is characterized by an ascent from below to above and a withdrawal (הִסְתַּלְּקוּת).[13]
Indeed, God’s extension into reality, which occurs through the act of Creation is most naturally associated with the right axis, which represents God’s effluence and love for reality. Above loving-kindness is wisdom, which we have seen corresponds to the principle of faith in the renewal of Torah in the future.[14] These two sefirot—representing the renewal of Torah and continuous recreation of the world—are joined by the Sages’ statement that, “God gazed into the Torah and created the world.”[15] The gaze is associated with wisdom (the seat of the eyes), while the actual act of Creation is associated with loving-kindness, as we have seen.
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[1]. Genesis 1:1.
[2]. Psalms 89:3.
[3]. Ibid. 52:3.
[4]. Liturgy, blessing of Yotzer Or.
[5]. God’s honor also refers to His attribute of love. One illustration of this is in the commandment to honor one’s parents: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12). The opposite of love is fear or awe, and indeed we are also commanded to fear our parents—“every man shall fear his mother and his father” (Leviticus 19:3).
[6]. Genesis 1:1.
[7]. Ibid. 2:4.
[8]. Abraham’s initial revelation is referred to as, “the mind beyond all conception” (שֵׂכֶל הַנֶּעֱלָם מִכָּל רַעֲיוֹן), corresponding to the faculty of super-conscious wisdom. He did not yet have a revelation that that would also engage his faculties of understanding and knowledge.
[9]. Genesis 21:33.
[10]. Psalms 119:89.
[11]. Genesis 1:6.
[12]. See Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed 3:17.
[13]. See also our article, “When Will the Mashiach Come?” in Wonders issue 195 (Shavu’ot 5786).
[14]. See the first installment of this series in Wonders issue 198.
[15]. Zohar 1:134a.
