If Hashem is infinite, there is nowhere He is not. Then where did the world go? A finite universe, with finite people making real choices, seems to require a place that the Infinite does not already occupy. This is the oldest question in Kabbalah, and the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, 1534-1572) answered it with a single word: tzimtzum (contraction).
Before anything was
The Sages put the starting point plainly. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer (chapter 3) says: “Before the world was created, there was only the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Name alone.” Nothing else existed, and no space existed in which anything else could stand.
The Kabbalists call that Divine reality Ein Sof (literally “without end,” the Infinite). Rabbi Chaim Vital, the Arizal’s primary student, opens Etz Chaim (“Tree of Life”) with exactly this picture: Ein Sof filled all existence, and there was no empty place at all.
Then came the Will to create. In the Arizal’s language, Ein Sof withdrew Itself, so to speak, to the sides, and left a chalal (void, an empty space) in the center. Into that space the world would be placed (Etz Chaim, Sha’ar 1).
What was left behind
The void was not a pure absence. The Arizal teaches that a reshimu (impression, residue) remained, the way a vessel that held oil still carries the trace of oil after it is emptied. The reshimu is the Divine imprint that allows creation to exist at all.
Into the chalal, a single kav (line, ray) of light was then drawn from Ein Sof. Through that line the worlds came into being in stages, beginning with Adam Kadmon (the Primordial Man) and descending through the sefirot (Divine attributes) and the Four Worlds. The order matters. First withdrawal, then a measured, limited light. A world cannot receive infinite light, so the light had to be given in measure.
Is this literal?
Hashem does not occupy space, and He does not move. The Kabbalists knew this as well as anyone, and they said so. The classic explanation is that tzimtzum describes the world’s experience, not any change in Hashem. The Light is not diminished. What changes is whether a created being can perceive that the Light is everywhere. The later Kabbalists argued at length about how far this language should be taken, and a reader should know the question is open and old. What no one disputes is the function of the teaching: it explains why Divine presence can be hidden at all.
Why the hiddenness matters
If the Light were fully revealed, there would be no room for choice. A person standing in open view of the Infinite has no real decision to make about whether to serve Him. Tzimtzum creates the conditions for bechirah (free choice). The hiddenness is the arena.
This is why the world feels the way it does. Many moments seem to run on their own, as though no one were behind them. The Baal Shem Tov is reported to have taught that the entire world is Divine vitality clothed in many garments, and that the work of a person is to see through the garment. Tzimtzum is the reason the garments exist.
It also changes how we read distance. When the Divine seems absent in a person’s life, Kabbalah does not treat that as abandonment. The absence is built into the design, the empty space that makes a free relationship possible. And since the reshimu remains in every part of the void, nothing is ever fully cut off.
Where this leaves us
A practical question follows. Hashem withdrew to make room for us. What do we do with the room?
The sages of Kabbalah answer that a person fills it with mitzvot (commandments) and with awareness, and by doing so draws the light back into the vessel. The space was not left empty so that it would stay empty. It was left so that someone could place the first act of free service inside it.
The next time a moment feels hidden, it may help to remember that the hiddenness was made for you, and that something of Him is still in it.
Related reading: The Divine Purpose of Free Will, Chokhmah and the Primordial Beginning, The Mysterious Kabbalistic Concept of Partzufim.
