One of the basic explanations for the Jewish preoccupation with material things comes from the idea that the spiritual is not more important and nearer to the divine than the material.
To the Ain Sof (the Infinite One), a galaxy is not greater than, say, a virus.
If the Lord cares for the galaxy, he cares also for what the virus will do in the next moment.
We often describe Him as a chairman of the board who says he has no time to deal with the small people.
But this kind of greatness is also a limit.
But when we speak of the real limitless greatness, it contains the details, the smallness.
It contains the image, as it were, as well as it contains the thing that has no image.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Strife of the Spirit, p. 228, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz