Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “The purpose of man.”

Beyond the joy a person feels in God’s closeness to him, there is God’s joy, as it were, in the fact that the person has attained this awareness.

The purpose of the world, which hides, obscures, and conceals Godliness, and the purpose of man’s being
within a coarse body and an animal soul, is to enable him to illuminate the darkness, to reveal the Divine that the world conceals.

The purpose of man is to transform the public domain into the private domain by means of faith in God’s unity, namely, that “there is nothing besides Him,” and that “I the Lord do not change” (Mai. 3:6).

With this awareness, a person fulfills the
purpose of his existence and the existence of all the worlds.

One’s recognition of God’s unity, despite the apparent disunity of the
world, constitutes a response, so to speak,
to the call of God from beyond the veil of
creation, which itself was brought forth by
His word.

Man’s response to God completes the act of creation. This partnership results in God’s great joy, a feeling reciprocated by man himself.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz