We think of the concrete and the material as though it were something absolute, because our grasp of being and nonbeing is that it is identical with reality and the absence of reality.
Whereas, being is actually that which has independence, whose existence does not depend on something else.
And nonbeing, or nothing, is that which is the very opposite.
The fact that one sees matter as the primary aspect of the real makes for a world that is actually at a distance from reality and that is inappropriately called Being.
Therefore, when we speak of the nullification of Being, it does not mean taking that which is and smashing it.
It signifies rather that the less the I assumes priority in the conscious mind, the more there is a nullification of Being.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Long Shorter Way, p.40, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz