One of the very difficult concepts
in the history
of Jewish theology
is that of Tzimtzum.
And with me to explore it
and how it's influencing
her own research is
Professor Agata Bielik-Robson.
Agata,
it's one of those really
dreadful concepts
to try and describe.
But I'm going to ask you
>>Even pronounce.
Even pronounce. Okay
Tzimtzum... is the term
which seems obscure
because it belongs
to a philosophic tradition
Jewish thought most of
all Kabbalah
although it has
earlier antecedents
already in Midrash's.
But it's actually
incredibly important,
because it was the
seemingly obscure concept
that arose within the lore
of Palestinian Kabbalah in
the sort of Isaac
Luria in 16th century.
Subsequently to
influence practically
the whole of
modern thought... and
now at the point of
completion of
the anthology of
texts which are all
devoted to the aftermath or
afterlives of the concept
of Tzimtzum. 
in modernity.
And basically show that
this  seemingly
very obscure
and enigmatic
notion creates
is by Isaac Luria
can be found
everywhere, in Isaac Newton
in Leibnitz in
German idealism in
Schelling, in Hegel in
Christian Kabbalah, in
the pyre tests in German mistakes... 
>>okay okay
up to the usual suspects
of the Jewish thought
in the 20th century
obviously Derrida,
Hans Jonas, Adore
Bloch etc 
>>let's do is let's start with.
Let's let's try and just
get the influence in three.
Tzimtzum is actually
sometimes called
neureanic mysticsm...
>>Yes 
because that's
another bit of
jargon out there
and we'll just try
and tie it down.
Okay, how about
Newton, the Pietas
and say Hans Jonas.
Because we don't
think of we don't
think of Isaac Newton as...
we think of as a scientist
not a religious
thinker. We think of
the Pietas as
characteristically Christian.
And then Hans Jonas
as a modern Jewish thinker.
So Tzimtzum in
and it's influence on Newton.
Well first of all the
definition of Tzimtzum
it means in Hebrew
'God's contraction'
withdrawal, retreat.
It sometimes points
to a voluntary action
in which God 
retreats into
his second parents
in order to make
a room within himself
for something else.
The best way to approach
Tzimtzum is to quote Sholom who
basically paraphrases
the barra sheet,
the first lines of
the Hebrew Bible
by saying a Luria
In the beginning God
creates nothing.
So God does not create
the world directly
out of himself out
of the simple presence of
the substance
which is in him, he
first creates
nothingness in order to
make an empty room a
space that is marked by
a radical
separation between
it and the God
and only into
this emptiness
sends the raise of
emanation which then formed
the bad of the
future world.
But the story is actually
even more traumatic because
these rays of emanation
emanating strong
divine light
they meet the forms
that are prepared for them there.
The
so-called vessels
but because there is
already a separation
between God and
this emptiness they're tinged 
with nothingness.
So they cannot withstand
the force of the
slide so they break.
So we have this
moment of Shevat are
killing the breaking
of the vessels.
And the issuing world is
actually kind of a
chaos of mixture
of form and matter
of the spikes
and the sharks.
But in the end what
happens in the end of
this whole dramatic
philosophic story is that
the world emerges as
something radically
other to God
radically other. Sharing
only elements of
the dispersed light but
absolutely discontinuous
with the divine origin.
And this has this idea
sociologically new
innovative as strange that
actually proves to be
so attractive to
many modern thinkers
eager to break
with the traditional idea
of the relationship
between world and God -
that is God imagined as the
absolute maintaining
the world continuously in
existence via cratsea continua.
Modernity wanted to
break with this image of
the world as sustained
within God's existence
and hence Isaac Newton
OK, get back to Newton,
>>the first Deist.
Who basically says that
the world is the other is
the finished totality
which has been given 
everything it needs in order
to sustain itself
in existence.
All the laws all the
forces all the energies.
And the God who is
indeed a creator
of all this
has withdrew from an
active participation
In the world so
Diesm which talks about
God's withdraw is
actually a kind of
cooler less dramatic but
still a philosophical
version
of of Isaac's Luria's
vision of Tzimtzum.
So it's a little bit like
when Napoleon
meets Laplace
and Napoleon asks
the question
where is God in
this system 
>>and we don't
>>need this hypotheses. 
Exactly.
Well in a way we do.
And this is where
Hans Jonas comes
in the picture.
Where he says that
this is a hypotheses
of the Godhead.
He doesn't even
call it a God in
a personal sense of
the Godhead which in
times in Memorial... 
...past immemorial.
Past has given itself
over to hazard and risk.
The process of becoming for
Jonas we still need
this hypotheses.
But in a vestigial
form that only
refers to this
long gone origins
of the first withdrawl of
God that created
the space of
a new kind of being called
becoming, that for Jonas
we still need this
hypotheses because it
also orients us towards
the possible metaphysical
future of the world.
This is drawing on
Luria's mystical
or Messianic idea
that the world
is created as
radically other too God's
mode of being but it
also is charged with
an application to
put itself in order.
That is to recreate
that divine phase.
But then within
the imminence.
So it is somehow
a sacred obligation of
the wall the sacred moral
religious duty to pursue
the Messianic path of this
imminent as recreation of
God's face.
You've shown us this...
you've shows this
influence of Luria
on Isaac Newton and Jonas.
But in between
you mentioned
the Pietas and
why one would, can
expect it, to
a certain extent
in someone like
Isaac Newton and in
Jonas, it's seems..
>> Odd?
Odd, yes it's far less
what we would expect.
So how is it present in
the Pietas? 
Indirectly via
the so-called Christian
Kabbalah which
is a a wide phenomenon
spreading in
the 17th century
in Europe due to
the translations
although they
were never really
like translations.
But the translatory
modifications of
the parts of
Lurianic doctrine
in a Raslan
Kabbalah there are
... than in the
so-called Kabbalah....
Kabbalah Luranic
 especially
via the the Italian School
of Luria's followers
active in
in the time of
Renaissance there
become, became
a very influential
and important part of
the esoteric law of
early modern Europe.
And quite a lot of
mystical, mystically
minded or
philosophically minded
Christians were
already steeped in it.
And the so-called
Christian Kabbalah
modified the elements of
the Lurianic Kabbalah in
such a way so it fits
the the Christian
doctrine. We have
instead of three parts so
seemed the
personages of God.
We have simply
three hypostasis
as in the Trinity.
We have got the Father
we have logos as
the Son which is
responsible for
the emanation.
And finally instead
of Shaheen and
that is God's dwelling on
Earth we have Holy Spirit.
What is very
interesting about
this reception of the
Lurianic Kabbalah is
that it indeed paves
the way to the
German idealism.
We know that Hegel read
the German pieties
like Oettinger and
the phenomenology
of the spirit is
in a way a philosophical
sublation that
is a... translation of the
philosophic doctrine
which we can call
the Christianity
of the Spirit.
That is Christianity which
following Lord
Yannick Messianism
sees the main activity
of of the divine
already in the world
in the sort of scattered
dispersed forms of
individual spirits.
So the Christianity of
the Spirit which becomes
a very important part
of the German pious 
tradition is then picked
up by a German idealist and
hence geist
hence the Spirit
as the main actor
of human history.
Agata, thank
you very much.
