Chapter 38Culmination
Taanug and Divine Desire
Nothing was missing. That is the strangest part.
Nis’aveh — He desired. Creation does not solve a Divine problem, and a purpose that is not a solution is a different kind of purpose.
נִתְאַוָּה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לִהְיוֹת לוֹ יִתְבָּרֵךְ דִּירָה בַּתַּחְתּוֹנִיםThe Holy One, blessed be He, desired a dwelling in the lower realms.
Desired — not needed. The whole project belongs to the category of will rather than necessity.
The Holy One, blessed be He, desired a dwelling in the lower realms.
Desired — not needed. The whole project belongs to the category of will rather than necessity.
Everything in this site converges on one word in that sentence, and it is not dirah. It is nis’aveh — He desired.
The problem with purposes
Almost every purpose we understand is a solution. Things are made because something is lacking; actions are taken because a state is deficient. Purpose, in ordinary usage, presupposes a gap.
Apply that to creation and the theology collapses immediately. If Hashem created because something was needed, then something was lacking, and a lacking Absolute is a contradiction. Every serious Jewish thinker has seen this, and the tradition’s answer is not to soften the problem but to change the category.
Creation is not the solution to a problem. There was no problem.
Desire without deficiency
The word chosen is one of will and delight rather than of need. Taanug — pleasure, delight — sits at the innermost point of Keter in the Kabbalistic scheme, above intellect and above emotion, and it is characterised precisely by not being instrumental.
We have a faint analogue. Someone plays music not to achieve anything; the playing is not a means. It would be wrong to say they needed to play and equally wrong to say the playing was arbitrary. There is a category of act that is neither compelled nor pointless, and it is the closest available approach to what nis’aveh is naming.
What follows for us
Two things, and they are the reason this chapter is not merely abstract.
First: the world is wanted rather than needed, which is a considerably stronger statement about its status. A thing that fills a gap is valued for the gap. A thing that is wanted for itself is valued for itself.
Second: the desire is specifically for a dwelling in the lowest realm. Not for worship in general, not for perfection. The delight in question is located exactly where the concealment is thickest — which means the ordinary, obstructed, unremarkable world is not the obstacle to the purpose. It is the purpose.