“If there is no direct communication with God, no possible understanding of the Divine, what kind of connection do we have?
To which it may be answered that since our component parts are divine, we are a part of God.
And being a part of Him, we can devise some sort of communication with God.
It is just that this communication does not penetrate the realm of our minds in the sense that it can formulate things as whole entities.
What, then, do we live by?
We live by those shadows, or figments, that we can grasp, that we can make contact with, little as it is.
Because that which we grasp is a positive essence.
Clinging to it, we do not declare the world to be a lie, a delusion; we simply accept that though sometimes it is dark and evil, it is still Divine manifestation.
We are bound to both aspects of the world, that which is and that which is not, the manifest and the unmanifest, for they are intrinsically one.
Our specific existence simply depends on our being somewhere in between—we draw sustenance from it, we never entirely belong to either realm, we never arrive at our journey’s end.
On the other hand, that which we contain within our grasp is true—it is not a falsehood; it is only a product of our being where we are, and we cannot overleap it.
We are an expression of the Divine and yet it is not given to us to comprehend it.
We stand on the other side of an abyss, formed by the very act of Creation.
From The Sustaining Utterance by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz