A closer look
Isaac Luria looked at a deeply broken world and audaciously concluded that God was the one who broke it. In his 16th-century cosmology, Luria taught that to create the universe, God had to shrink Himself (Tzimtzum) to make space. But the divine light was too intense for the cosmic vessels holding it, resulting in the 'Shevirat HaKelim'—the shattering of the vessels. Millions of divine sparks fell into the dark, material realm. Therefore, human existence isn't a test; it's a massive, urgent clean-up operation (Tikkun) to manually extract these trapped sparks through righteous deeds.
