The divine unity contains an aspect of joy besides that of rejoicing in God’s nearness—and that is God’s joy, as it were, when one attains such an awareness.
The purpose of this world that hides, darkens, and conceals—and the purpose of man with his body and animal soul—is to illuminate the dark, to reveal the divine Being that exists beyond the concealment of the world, to transform the public domain into a private domain by believing in God’s Oneness—that “there is no other than He” and that “I am the Lord; I have not changed.”
—Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz