en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
1 correction found
Because the tzimtzum results in the space in which the spiritual and physical worlds and, ultimately, free will, can exist, God is often referred to as "Ha-Makom" (המקום lit. "the Place", "the Omnipresent") in rabbinic literature.
This is anachronistic. The divine name "Ha-Makom" is already explained in rabbinic midrash centuries before Isaac Luria’s 16th-century doctrine of tzimtzum.
Full reasoning
The sentence gives the impression that the rabbinic name Ha-Makom arises because of the doctrine of tzimtzum. That chronology does not work.
Rabbinic literature already uses and explains Ha-Makom long before Lurianic Kabbalah. In Bereshit Rabbah 68:9, the rabbis explicitly ask why God is called hamakom and answer: “He is the place of the world, and His world is not His place.” That is an early rabbinic explanation of the name in its own right.
By contrast, the specific cosmological doctrine of tzimtzum is associated with Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in Safed. So while later kabbalists may connect Ha-Makom and tzimtzum conceptually, it is incorrect to say that God is referred to as Ha-Makom in rabbinic literature because of tzimtzum. The rabbinic epithet predates Luria by roughly a millennium.
2 sources
- Bereshit Rabbah 68:9
“Why do they change the name of the Holy One blessed be He and call Him the Omnipresent [hamakom]? It is because He is the place [mekomo] of the world, and His world is not His place.”
- Luria, Isaac | Encyclopedia.com
“LURIA, ISAAC (1534 - 1572)… In an attempt to explicate how the world could come into being if God originally filled all space, Luria taught that God had withdrawn into himself… This divine act of self-withdrawal, known in Hebrew as tsimtsum…”