Unscrolled: Presence and Absence

Let me tell you two stories about the beginning of the world.

The first, you’ve likely heard before.

In the beginning, there was nothing.

In the original Hebrew, this is expressed with the words “tohu” and “bohu,” which the Stone Chumash translates as “astonishingly empty.” According to King James, it means “without form and void.” In the Septuagint’s parlance, “unsightly and unfurnished.” For Tyndale, “voyde and emptie.” For Robert Alter, “welter and waste.”

And then, God made something. And God saw that it was good. And so, God kept making more things. Light and dark. Land and sea. People and animals. God created and created until the nothingness—the empty, unsightly, weltering void—was all filled up.

The second story is perhaps less familiar.

In the beginning, there was everything, and God, thrumming with potential and pulsing with unfathomable love, desired to create a world so that this potential could be actualized, and this love could be expressed. There was just one problem: there was no space in which to create, only fullness. Everywhere you looked, there was more God, more infinity.

And so, God withdrew Godself to the sides of this primordial fullness, clearing an open space in which creation would be possible.

One of these stories is related by the Book of Genesis in its first portion; the other is related by the Kabbalists and echoed by the Hasidic masters. In one of these stores, creation is an act of filling; in the other, creation is an act of emptying out. One story tells us that creation is a positive act—the fashioning of objects; the other tells us that creation deals first and foremost with negative space.

We can relate these two stories to two modes of perception, discussed by the philosopher Alan Watts. “If I draw a circle, most people, when asked what I have drawn, will say I have drawn a circle or a disc, or a ball. Very few people will say I’ve drawn a hole in the wall, because most people think of the inside first, rather than thinking of the outside.”

Looking at the night sky, we see stars but ignore the space between them. Looking at the forest, we see plants but ignore the soil that connects them. Looking out at a landscape, we see hills, but forget the continent that holds them. Looking at creation, we see an accumulation of stuff but ignore the cleared space from which it emanates.

Looking at creation, we see an accumulation of stuff but ignore the cleared space from which it emanates.

Both of these stories are, in their own ways, true. Rebbe Nachman, in his retelling of our second creation story, refers to this as the paradox of Yesh v’Ein, presence and absence, yes and no, what is and what isn’t. We can see this paradox in many Jewish texts, always appearing in a new form.

According to Isaiah, for instance, the angels in heaven cry out: “Holy, holy, holy! The LORD of Hosts! His presence fills all the earth!” (6:3). This is a vision of a world shot through with divine presence from top to bottom.

According to Ezekiel, however, the angels cry “Blessed is the Presence of the LORD from His place.” (3:12). Here, a vision of a world that God blesses from afar.

Which is it then?

Is God here or not?

Is creation a fullness or a hollow?

Do we live in a realm of yesh or ein?

The answer is yes.

In God’s act of contraction, teaches Rebbe Nachman, the cleared space for creation was cleared also of divinity. It had to be. A sentence later, however, he states: “But of course, there is still divinity here, because nothing can be without God’s lifeforce” (Likutai Mohoran 64:1).

If it seems confusing, that’s because it is. Humans aren’t always great at holding two truths, one in each hand. Not to worry, though. This is to be expected.

“You won’t fully grasp it,” Rebbe Nachman concludes, “until the future to come.”

And so, with Parashat Bereishit, we embark on a new year of reading Torah. As we go, we pray that God will grant us new insights into the familiar stories, allowing us to see the negative space—the white between the black of the letters, the hidden meanings that are left unsaid—which will bring us ever closer to Rebbe Nachman’s “future to come,” when we will at last see that both creation stories are one.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.