Let My People Know

"The enormous contraction of light and energy in order to come into contact with us"

 
Let us suppose that I am talking to a young child. 

I understand what I am saying just as he presumably understands what I am saying.

We understand one another on the level of certain words that are uttered. 

Beyond that he cannot go. 

But within the range of what is spoken between us, there is something of my being, a part of me, that he grasps. 

But only a part. 

One may even say that the child is, in most respects, cut off from the essence of me, the speaker; and, thus, much of me is left to his imagination. 

If the speaker happens to be an exceptional person, a wise man, the difference is all the greater. 

In that case, the speaker has had to descend even further, going to considerable lengths to make himself understood. 

So too, God may be said to have made the immeasurable descent, the enormous contraction of light and energy in order to come into contact with us. 

If we do perceive something, no matter how little, it becomes the great achievement of our being. 

Because we recognize the incalculable and unbridgeable distance between the Divine speaker and the human listener.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Long Shorter Way by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz