From Chaos to Repair: The Deeper Meaning of Tohu and Tikkun

“In the beginning, Hashem created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was chaos and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of Hashem hovered over the face of the waters. And Hashem said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And Hashem saw the light, that it was good, and Hashem separated the light from the darkness.”

With these famous words, the Book of Bereishit opens its account of the foundational metaphysical moment of the world’s creation. Beyond their profound meaning and countless interpretations, these verses can also help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

The Kabbalistic concepts embedded in the opening verses of Bereishit offer a framework for understanding processes in many areas of life, including psychology, society, education, ideological movements, politics, and, in a certain sense, even attention and concentration difficulties.

A familiar joke tells of a man who came to a job interview. When asked to name one of his positive traits, he answered, “Perfectionist.” When asked about his negative trait, he smiled and gave the same answer: “Perfectionist.”

Such a person, assuming his self description is accurate, may fit the Kabbalistic concept, with all its advantages and drawbacks, of the “souls of tohu.”

In an essay published publicly at the beginning of the twentieth century, initially anonymously and later included in the book Orot, Rabbi Kook explains the idea of “the souls of the world of tohu.” He offers a Kabbalistic diagnosis of people with souls of this kind and, more broadly, of the free spirited idealists of his generation.

Some see the essay as a direct appeal to rebellious figures such as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the thinker Micha Yosef Berdyczewski, and the writer Yosef Haim Brenner, who lived near Rabbi Kook’s home in Jaffa.

To understand Rabbi Kook’s words, we must first return to the opening verses of Bereishit and explore their Kabbalistic meaning.

The Kabbalistic Worlds of Tohu and Tikkun

“And the earth was chaos and void.”

In the Kabbalistic and Hasidic worldview, two types of souls can be identified: souls of tikkun, or repair, and souls of tohu, or chaos. These souls are named for the “worlds” from which they derive.

The world of tohu, which ontologically precedes the world of tikkun, is a world without boundaries or limits. There is no contraction or balance within it: “Light and darkness mingle together there.” There is no synchronization between the “lights” and the “vessels.”

The Kabbalistic concepts of lights and vessels express, respectively, lofty and infinite ideals and the way those ideals are realized within the material, finite reality of our world.

In the world of tohu, every force and every ideal demands sovereignty and the complete, immediate realization of its potential. Similarly, every vessel seeks to realize in practical reality and contain all the lights, even those beyond its capacity.

But this condition cannot endure for long. It cannot be contained. Ultimately, it leads to collision and collapse, or, in Kabbalistic terms, “the shattering of the vessels.”

As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said: “Because of the abundance of light, the vessels shattered.”

Even after this shattering, certain lights, or more precisely, “sparks,” remain preserved within the broken vessels.

The nature of souls can be understood in a similar way. Souls of tikkun, as their name suggests, are souls at an advanced stage in the process of repair following the shattering. They know how to make a thoughtful adaptation, contracting and applying lofty ideals to the vessels of everyday reality.

They lead a repaired, balanced, and practical way of life, which Rabbi Kook calls “integrity and uprightness.” This approach can be expressed in many areas, including behavior, spirituality, and society.

By contrast, people with souls of tohu resemble what takes place in the world of tohu: they lack contraction.

Psychologically, they tend toward wholeness, perfectionism, and eternal concerns. They demand absolute rather than partial ideals. At times, they are universalists who seek world peace. They search for the light in everything.

In this sense, Rabbi Kook says, “Souls of tohu are higher than souls of tikkun.”

At the same time, these people recoil from order and boundaries, from imposed morality, and sometimes from authority and discipline. They are driven by an inner combustion engine and a constant sense of urgency. They are restless, and some are talented in many different fields.

In Rabbi Kook’s words, they exist within “a blazing flame of emotional excitement.”

They have almost no ability to contract themselves in response to life’s circumstances, time, or limitations. This trait can be interpreted as childish, but it can also be understood as visionary, reflecting a demand for achievements larger than life.

For them, justice, for example, must be absolute. It cannot be balanced against other values. They want everything here and now. It is all or nothing.

But their vessels are not sufficient for the lights to which they aspire. They strive for more than they, and reality itself, can contain.

In this frustrating state, and despite their good intentions, they can reach self destruction, depression, sadness, hatred of reality, and contempt for values and laws. In Rabbi Kook’s words:

“The souls of the world of tohu [...] aspire and fall [...] and they fall into grief, despair, sadness, rage, and, out of fury, into wickedness, malice, baseness, ugliness, abomination, destruction, every evil.”

The Strength and Danger of Souls of Tohu

The distinction between these types of souls is schematic. In real life, their expression is far more complex and less sharply divided.

The idea of souls of tohu can be expressed in nonbelievers, such as Zimri ben Salu or the wicked Haman, but no less so in righteous people such as Pinchas ben Elazar, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.

At times, people with traits associated with souls of tohu are described in the Bible and rabbinic literature as zealots, including Nadav and Avihu, Pinchas, and Ben Azzai.

In addition, an individual person, who is a microcosm of reality, can contain elements of both tikkun and tohu.

As Rabbi Kook writes:

“Existence is full of lights and darknesses, orders and confusions, repair and chaos. The human being is a complete essence in whom all existence is reflected. When a person turns his gaze and the inclination of his mind toward the light, order, and repair within existence, he himself becomes illuminated, ordered, and repaired [...] When he turns to the other side, to darkness, confusion, and chaos, he himself becomes filled with darkness, chaos, and confusion.”

Another term Rabbi Kook connects to those with souls of tohu is chutzpah. This concept is borrowed from the Talmudic phrase, “In the footsteps of the Messiah, chutzpah will increase and prices will rise.”

It describes the end of exile and the era of the end of days and usually carries a negative connotation, pointing to spiritual failure. Yet Rabbi Kook, through his distinctive and deeply optimistic perspective, manages to identify a spark of light even within chutzpah and chaos.

“Our generation is a wondrous generation, a generation entirely bewildering... it is lowly and degraded, yet also lofty and exalted. It is entirely guilty and entirely innocent. We must understand its character so that we can come to its aid.”

These are Rabbi Kook’s famous words from “The Essay of the Generation.”

With penetrating psychological insight, Rabbi Kook explains that we must not look only at destructive outcomes, such as division, abandonment of tradition, and hatred among brothers, which can sometimes express an eruption of the world of tohu.

We should also try to look behind the scenes of consciousness and the soul and identify, within the chaos and without denying it, the hidden desires striving for repair and utopian wholeness. In this way, we can discover that beneath the burning surface are also desires seeking improvement and progress toward a better place.

Finding the Sparks Hidden Within Chaos

“Hashem knows that I do not draw close every sinner, but only those in whom I sense a great inherent power lies within, and there are many ways of knowing this.”

Contrary to a common misunderstanding of Rabbi Kook’s teachings and concepts such as the world of tohu, he did not validate every act that appears to emerge from chaos or displays one of its signs, whether perfectionism and idealism or, on the other hand, rejection of every value.

In his words, there are idealists who are “worse! Those whom the loftiest idealistic tendency has touched only superficially,” and therefore “they are merely vandals and destroyers.”

In other words, sometimes there is wickedness that cannot be sublimated or repaired, and action must be taken against it.

At the same time, Rabbi Kook also speaks of “destructive holiness [...] because it destroys in order to build something loftier than what is already built [...] from destructive holiness emerge the great fighters.”

Following this understanding, we can learn to identify the positive values that states of chaos may have been meant to represent.

“We have received a tradition that a spiritual rebellion will arise in the Land of Israel and among the people of Israel, at the time when the beginning of the nation’s revival awakens to arrive [...] and these are the birth pangs of the Messiah.”

Argumentativeness, division, challenges to foundational values, or, in a different category, limited attention and concentration, are complex phenomena that usually do not sit well, certainly not with those who have souls of tikkun. Yet they are not necessarily negative in their entirety.

When we encounter social unrest or a passionate battle of ideas on the national level, or, on the personal level, a hyperactive child with significant concentration difficulties, at risk youth, or a person who is naturally unfocused but filled with passions and dreams that seem almost imaginary, the framework of the “souls of tohu” can help us view the issue from another angle and give it an empowering meaning.

In this way, we can try to gather precisely those positive sparks and bring them into a state of repair. More than that, we can use the criticism and voices of the souls of tohu to improve accepted values that themselves require refinement.

The Kabbalistic concepts embedded at the beginning of Parashat Bereishit therefore allow us to view situations that may initially seem like “chaos and void” with hope and as opportunities for improvement.

When society examines its different components, when an educator considers a student, when one person considers another, and even when a person considers himself, this perspective can promote compassion and a desire to do good.

“For this reason,” Rabbi Kook writes, “the inclination toward merit and kindness is very great in our generation.”

“And nevertheless, everything will return to repair.”

Dr. Roi Cohen holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Hebrew University and is an attorney and mediator, producer, director, and content creator.