The Talmud contains a sentence so bold that it is easy to read past it. Megillah 29a says: “Come and see how beloved Israel is before the Holy One, blessed be He. Wherever they were exiled, the Shechinah went with them. They were exiled to Egypt, and the Shechinah was with them. They were exiled to Babylonia, and the Shechinah was with them. They were exiled to Edom, and the Shechinah was with them. And when they return, the Shechinah returns with them.” The Sages draw this from the wording of a verse in Devarim 30:3, which can be read as “and He will return with your captivity.”
What the Shechinah is
Shechinah comes from the root shachan, to dwell. It names the Divine Presence as it dwells in the world, close to us and within our reach. In the language of Kabbalah, the Zohar identifies the Shechinah with Malkhut (Kingship), the tenth of the sefirot (Divine attributes), the one that receives from all the others and brings the Divine into the world. The Zohar also calls her Knesset Yisrael (the Assembly of Israel), because she is the point where the people and the Divine meet.
Exile as a condition
If the Shechinah is in exile, then the exile belongs to Heaven as well as to the Jewish people. The Talmud supports this: Berachot 3a describes the Holy One, blessed be He, mourning the destruction of the Temple and crying out, “Woe to the children, because of whose sins I destroyed My house and burned My Temple.” The same thought stands behind the practice of Tikkun Chatzot (the midnight lament), in which a person joins in this mourning.
The Kabbalists took the idea further. When the sefirot are not in harmony, when the Divine is hidden and Malkhut is separated from the higher attributes, the world is in a state of exile. The Arizal describes the work of Torah and mitzvot as the repair of that separation, so that the Shechinah is joined once more to the Source above her.
The words before a mitzvah
This is the reason for a formula that many Jews recite before performing a commandment: L’shem yichud kudsha berich hu u’shechintei, “For the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah.” The words reflect the Kabbalistic view that a mitzvah is more than an obligation. It is an act that moves something in the Divine structure toward wholeness.
What follows for a person
The idea has a practical consequence that is easy to feel. A person who is in a low place is not alone in it. The tradition teaches that the Presence is with him there, and not above it, waiting for him to be good enough. The Baal Shem Tov is reported to have taught that a person who understands this finds comfort in every state.
If the Shechinah goes with us, what we do in exile matters to her as well. The midnight lament described in Tikkun Chatzot is one practice built on this idea, and Lecha Dodi is another. The formula said before a mitzvah is explained in The Supremely Important Leshem Yichud, and the Shechinah’s place among the sefirot is in the article on Malkhut.
