God created this world because “the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to have an abode in the lower worlds.”
This purpose has two implications for us.
From one perspective, this world is the lowest world, with the greatest amount of concealment of the divine light.
From another perspective, this world has the capability of serving as God’s “abode in the lower worlds,” with the potential for a wondrously complete, unparalleled revelation of the divine essence.
This process will not reach its completion until the messianic era and in particular the time of resurrection of the dead.
This process is not beyond us, neither in this period nor at any other time.
On the contrary, it is specifically in our world and our time, within the most opaque materiality, in darkness and exile, that we are to engage in attaining this goal, in order to manifest it at every moment and to reveal it at the end of days.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz