Making Light of It: How Ancient Kabbalah and Modern Physics Dissolve Lived Doubt and Illuminate Daily Reality

ights. Camera. Action! Well, not exactly. The part about the camera was a much later addition. When God made the world, there were none around. Actually, when God made the world, nothing was around except for the light.

Light. It is such a simple word. It is such a common word. We use it all the time in one way or another but rarely think about what it really is in essence. After almost six thousand years, the world still doesn’t get it.

But why should it? Most people seem to function just fine with the definition of light they already know. When someone says, “Turn on the light,” we know what they mean. When someone says, “I see the light,” we know what they mean. And if they say, “You just ran a light!” we know what to be concerned about. How many more definitions of light does the world need to get by from day to day?

To live from day to day? Maybe no more. But to get from one end of life to the other in the most productive way possible and make sure you go to the World to Come, one more. In fact, this definition of light is really the mother of all definitions, the light that is the basis of all other lights.

In a way, this book is the follow-up book from my previous one, “House of God.” House of God started off talking about the Temple as a place where God dwelled. Then, it discussed how the house was literally a house of God, every stone being imbued with Divine light. It concluded by showing that every individual is meant to be a house of God.

This was not merely an intellectual progression, but rather a reality shift. A structure only appears like a structure because we lack the level of vision to see its true spiritual make-up. By removing a level of “klipah” and increasing their spiritual sensitivity, a person can see Divine light where once it was invisible to them.

But if you remove an additional klipah, you allow even more Divine light to make it to the “outside” world and be “seen.” Such a paradigm shift affects everything, including our self-perception. All of a sudden, when you look at yourself in the mirror, you can see past the reflection into your soul. And that’s when a person realizes that they too are a “house” of God.

Just like with physical light, where increasing it improves vision, likewise increasing spiritual light improves spiritual vision. The Gemara says that prior to his sin, Adam HaRishon “could see from one end of the world until the other” with the original light of Creation. But then He hid it, and now we can’t even see around a corner.

But there are different ways to hide something. You can either remove it altogether and make it totally inaccessible, or you can cover it with something else and hide it from view. It’s still “there,” just not visible.

The difference is huge. A flashlight removed from a dark room leaves little hope for illumination. But if the flashlight is only dark because a hand blocks its light, it leaves room for the hand to be removed and light to be instantly restored. You just have to figure out how to get the hand off the glass of the flashlight.

Or, the klipah off the Divine light, because that is what life is all about. True, it is the best-kept secret, but all we’re here to do is remove any and all obstructions of Divine light. We don’t have to build the Messianic Era; we just have to reveal it.

Because as the GR”A explains on Sifra D’Tzniusa, the Chesed of the Binah of Atik that won’t actually be revealed until the seventh millennium after the final tikun, it is already here in Creation. We can’t see it (or we would die), because it is “clothed,” called “hislavshus” in Kabbalah, inside the Yesod of Zehr Anpin. It’s where God “hid” the light on the first day of Creation until this very day.

Of course we’ll have to explain what this means, but the really good news is that, being there, it is still impacting our lives, albeit in a very subtle way. More importantly, it means that a person can increase their access to this beyond-imagination light even now if they work to remove the klipos between them and the light.

We’re like a person who struggles financially and cannot possibly see any way to change their financial situation. Then, one day, they are told that a wealthy relative left them a lot of money in their will if they fulfill certain conditions, one of which is to change a lifestyle they’re comfortable with.

It’s a difficult decision for them to make, mostly because they have never known financial security and why it is worth the change of life. But, fortunately for us, it is possible to glimpse a life with less klipos, and the spiritual elevation and freedom it brings.

That’s the reason for this book, b”H.