Limmud AZ 2019

The Lurianic Kabbalists, and the Hasidic masters after them, taught that God is in exile throughout the world in the form of sacred sparks, fragments of divinity hidden in creation. Our mission as human beings is to redeem God, to bring God home again, by gathering up those sparks. Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, one of the greatest of the early Hasidic masters, added that we bring God out of exile by going into exile ourselves – that is, by leaving our comfort zone, in search of sacred sparks that we cannot access in any other way. We must leave home to bring God home. We will discuss a teaching from his book, the Meor Einayim, on parshat B’reisheet, in which he develops that idea.