The Purpose of a Fall

Until now we have discussed two types of worlds:

A world whose vessels shattered, with its fragments scattered, and worlds that are arranged in the form of a chain, each extending from the previous one in order and gradation.

Here the question naturally arises: Why?

Why was there any need to create a world destined to shatter? Why was the orderly chain of development not enough on its own?

The answer is: it could not suffice.

It was G-d’s will to bring into being forces of concealment—known as klipot, the forces of impurity—that obscure the Divine reality. And it was His will that these forces come into existence specifically through the process called “the breaking of the vessels.”

For the world G-d created follows a well-ordered progression (seder). Within that orderly structure, there is no path by which klipah can emerge. Holiness and klipah are separated by an infinite gulf. The distance between them is so absolute that no gradual narrowing of Divine vitality—no process of hishtalshelut (development)—could ever transform holiness into klipah.

Therefore, in order for klipot to come into being, G-d initiated a radically different kind of descent—a sharp “leap,” entirely outside the normal order.

A plunge of Divine vitality not through steady progression, but through a collapse—a “fall.”

And it was precisely this fall, brought about by the breaking of the vessels, that allowed the klipot to emerge.