Christopher Schulte’s Zimzum: God and the Origin of the World is a study of the fundamental and elusive kabbalistic concept of the title. In his review, Eli Rubin turns to the interpretation offered by the late-17th-century English Christian philosopher Anne Conway:

For Conway, the most crucial kabbalistic idea was that creation depends on the diminishment of God. As “the chiefest Good,” she explained, God desired to “make Creatures to whom he might Communicate himself: But these could in no wise bear the exceeding greatness of his Light. . . . He diminished therefore . . . the highest Degree of his most intense Light, that there might be room for his Creatures.” Although the original Hebrew term is not transliterated here, Conway’s book was the first to introduce the doctrine of zimzum (also spelled tzimtzum, tsimtsum, or imum) to the English reading public.

Of course, “diminishment” is just one of many options available to translators and interpreters of zimzum. The choices listed by Christoph Schulte in the opening sentence of his recent book . . . are “contraction,” “retraction,” “demarcation,” “restraint,” and “concentration.” The futility of reducing the meaning of zimzum to any one of these words attests to the conceptual ambiguity that envelops this doctrine in a veil of tantalizing mystery, much as zimzum itself simultaneously conceals and reveals the divine.

The underlying concept seems to have originated with the Jerusalem-born mystic and sage Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in his interpretations of earlier kabbalistic doctrines—but even that supposition is the subject of controversy. Schulte traces its evolution since then through hasidic thought, Christian kabbalists, and such unlikely figures as the literary critic Harold Bloom.

Strangely enough, Schulte doesn’t seem interested in why these writers find this kabbalistic relic such an irresistible symbol of modernity. Even when cultural processes of disenchantment, materialism, and secularization empty zimzum of theological meaning, it somehow maintains its compelling power as a literary motif whose very emptiness gestures ironically, or perhaps mournfully, at the lost poetry of religion.

In 2003, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, spooked by the American display of might in Iraq, decided to destroy or surrender his entire nuclear program. Informed observers have suggested that the deal he made with the U.S. should serve as a model for any agreement with Iran. Robert Joseph provides some useful background:

Gaddafi had convinced himself that Libya would be next on the U.S. target list after Iraq. There was no reason or need to threaten Libya with bombing as Gaddafi was quick to tell almost every visitor that he did not want to be Saddam Hussein. The images of Saddam being pulled from his spider hole . . . played on his mind.

President Bush’s goal was to have Libya serve as an alternative model to Iraq. Instead of war, proliferators would give up their nuclear programs in exchange for relief from economic and political sanctions.

Any outcome that permits Iran to enrich uranium at any level will fail the one standard that President Trump has established: Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Limiting enrichment even to low levels will allow Iran to break out of the agreement at any time, no matter what the agreement says.

Iran is not a normal government that observes the rules of international behavior or fair “dealmaking.” This is a regime that relies on regional terror and brutal repression of its citizens to stay in power. It has a long history of using negotiations to expand its nuclear program. Its negotiating tactics are clear: extend the negotiations as long as possible and meet any concession with more demands.