Makkom means "place."

Because He is the place of the world; the world is not His place." (Bereishit Rabba 69:9)

From this it is clear that the Creator is above and beyond any physical definition of place. Jewish thought recognizes a balance between the conception of God as transcendental and His being conceived of as being imminent. Says the Kaballah: "Surrounds all the worlds" and "Fills all the worlds". On the one hand, he is all powerful, seated on an elevated and exalted throne, dwelling in the far reaches of infinity, surrounded by scores of angels. On the other hand, he is found everywhere, in the smallest and most insignificant of his creations and in every fiber of our existence; he is as near to us as our souls, and hears the quiet whisper of a prayer. He is "the place" of our lives, but also above the dimensions of place and time.

In the words of Kotzker Rebbi: "Where does God dwell? Wherever one brings him into his heart."

Another midrash, which relates directly to the construction of the Temple, deals with the question of God's self-limitation in relation to the dimensions of the physical universe.

"An alternative explication: "Shaddai - we cannot attain to him; He is great in power and justice" (Job 37:23). When The Holy One, Blessed Be He, said to Moshe: "Make for Me a dwelling," he was puzzled and said: "The glory of The Holy One, Blessed Be He fills the upper and the lower worlds, and He says, Make for Me a dwelling!?" Yet more: He looked and saw Shelomo building the Bet Hamikdash which is greater than the Mishkan, and he [Shelomo] said: "But will God really dwell on earth: (I Kings 8:27). Said Moshe: "If so spoke Shelomo regarding the Bet Hamikdash - which is greater than the Mishkan - how much more so regarding the Mishkan?!" (Shemot Rabba 34:1)

This midrash expresses a basic problem in the understanding of the religious act, of mortals' attempt to worship God, in the erection of temples and houses of worship in which God is to reside. There is something paradoxical - even sacrilegious - about the very thought of 'holy places'. The continuation of the above passage from Shelomo's prayer at the inauguration of the Temple clearly expresses this approach: "Even the heavens to their uttermost reaches cannot contain You, how much less this house that I have built?" (Ibid.) The Midrash provides an unanticipated answer:

"Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: "Not as you think do I think, but twenty cubits in the North and twenty in the South, and eight in the West, and yet more, I will descend and will diminish my holy presence so as to dwell within one square cubit."

The answer of the midrash is that God contracts himself so as to be accessible to man, as an act of hessed, of grace. There is no building on earth capable of really being a suitable dwelling for the Infinite; but because man builds it as a gift for God out of love, with longing that this will bring man and God closer, He accepts this with love, and He diminishes Himself so that His presence - infinite in its essence - can enter into a physically bounded area - finite in its essence; then He can enter even the most minute of places!

As in the concept "tsimtsum" (contraction) in the Lurian Kaballa, so here, too, The Holy One, Blessed Be He, "contracts himself" in order to make room for man: there, at Creation, He did so in order to make it possible to create man; here, he does so in order that He can be accessible to man, "a dwelling below", a meeting point of the finite with the infinite.

As far as the ten sefiroth are concerned, these are NO characteristics of The En Sof but attributes emanating from one point namely the first sefira Kether on the border of nothingness (ayin) and the created worlds, stretching from the divine to the spiritual and the material.

En Sof is limitless. That means that we cannot limit It/He/She by giving it/he/she characteristics like anger, meddlesomeness, resentment, and the like. In the Torah G-d (YHVH) possesses lots of human-like characteristics. This collides severely with image of the En Sof.

Humans are born in a world of duality (good/evil, life/death, man/woman, poor/rich) but the En Sof is the totality of all these characteristics. It/she/he is not good OR evil, but good AND evil: the whole of them.

The problem of understanding how there came something out of nothing (creation ex nihilo): is really no problem at all. The idea of Tsimtsum (contraction) is very elegant and credible. The En Sof was/is/will be ‘always’ and ‘everywhere’. He created the universe by making ‘room’ for it in Itself so that G-d remained ‘all-in-all’. The ‘room’ he made by tsimtsum was a dimensionless point and His divine Will: Fiat Lux, we call it the Big Bang.

The en sof contracts (tsimtsum) at the start of creation to allow "room" for cosmic expansion. This also allows "room" for evil, the qelippot (literally "shells", singular qelippa) in which sparks of the divine light become entrapped after a shattering of the divine receptacles during emanation. Thus freedom of choice is born of the godhead's self-inflicted suffering, and the redemption (tiqqun) of the broken world and the reunification of divinity becomes the overriding goal of humanity. The exile of all human beings is symbolized in the exile of Israel, and the tiqqun is paralleled in Israel's task to "gather what has been scattered", symbolizing the redemption of the world, crowned with the coming of the Messiah.

A major kabbalistic interest lies in the influence man exerts on the deity, a concept designated in scholarly literature as theurgy. Theurgic issues play a central role in Ketem Paz. Alongside the discussions about the power of prayer, the fulfillment of the commandments and the influence of man s good and evil deeds on God, Ibn Lavi is interested in man s magical power, which he sees as similar to his Theurgic powers.

The term tsimtsum originally meant `contraction' or `concen-tration,' & appeared in the Talmud where it was used to describe God's projection & concentration of his divine presence, his Shekhinah, at a single point. In Luria's use of the word tsimtsum means withdrawl or retreat from a single point. The original concept appears in a few Kabbalistic treatises prior to Luria's reformulation of it. It does not, however, appear in the Zohar.

This voluntary contraction on the part of God, the En-Sof in this case, is the act which causes creation to come into existence. Without this act there would have been no universe. Because the En-Sof was limitless, in all things & all places, a plenum of divinity, it was necessary that a primordial space, tehiru, be established. It was necessary therefore that the En-Sof's first creative act be a withdrawl or contraction into Himself. In so doing He permitted to come into being the primordial space which was necessary for the creation of the finite world. But the space created was not entirely empty. In much the same way that the fragrance of perfume lingers in an empty bottle, so too did a divine presence remain behind in primordial space. Once this space existing outside of & separate from the En-Sof was established, the second act of creation began to take place.

The first act of creation was an act of limitation: the second, that of emanation. At this time the En-Sof rayed out a single beam of light to form the first configuration ever fashioned, the body of Adam Kadmon (the primordial man), from which there then burst forth from his eyes, mouth, nose & ears the lights of the Sefiroth. The Sefiroth, themselves light concentrated from the original beam, were at this stage totally undifferentiated, without the qualities presently assigned to them. In this form they did not require special light-made bowls to contain them. The plan of creation that the En-Sof had in mind demanded that the Sefiroth become differentiated & contained so that they might receive the more heavily concentrated beams of light emanating from the eyes of Adam Kadmon. Since these bowls or vessels were constructed out of varying mixtures of light, the heavier lights streamed forth from the primordial man's eyes & were received without difficulty into the first three Sefiroth: Kether, Binah, & Hokmah. When it came time to fill the bowls of the lower Sefiroth the light suddenly burst forth with such intensity that it broke the vessels designed to contain it.