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If God Withdrew His Gaze the World Would Cease

A student in Przysucha called the world a finished pot. Rabbi Simcha Bunam walked him past wet plaster and beams still going up.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Wet Plaster in the Unvisited Corner
  2. Morning Is a Decision
  3. The Wheel That Turns Roles
  4. Bread on the Scale

A student in Przysucha tapped a finished pot on the table and smiled. Fired. Glazed. Done. He said the world was like that. God had made it, set it on a shelf, and could look elsewhere.

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Rabbi Simcha Bunam did not smile back. He stood, took the student's sleeve, and walked him out of the study house into a street where a house was going up.

Wet Plaster in the Unvisited Corner

Beams still rose. A man on a ladder called for a peg. In a back room nobody would sleep in yet, plaster shone wet and took a fingerprint when Bunam pressed it.

"Not a finished vessel," Bunam said. "Never. If the work of renewal stopped, even for a breath, everything would slide back toward tohu and vohu (תהו ובהו), the unordered waste before the first day learned how to answer."

The student wiped plaster on his coat. "It holds while we sleep."

"It holds while He looks," Bunam said. "Withdraw the glance for a moment and the world does not fade politely. It ceases. Tables. Mountains. The breath in a child's chest. The debt a man meant to pay tomorrow. Gone the way a dream is gone when the sleeper sits up and cannot find the room he was just standing in."

Attention is the beam that holds the roof, and the roof is everything that has a name. Yesterday's permission died at sundown. Morning is a new look.

Morning Is a Decision

They waited for dawn on the unfinished stoop. Bunam would not let the student call the sunrise a leftover.

"The Baal Shem Tov said the world is renewed daily," he said. "Morning is not a habit. Morning is a decision repeated by a will that does not tire the way human will tires. A man who wakes is not riding the residue of Genesis. He is held again, personally, in a gaze that could have chosen otherwise and did not."

Light came over the wet plaster. The fingerprint Bunam had left in the night was still there, a small dent in work that had not set.

Unfinished is not failure. Unfinished is the condition that lets a human being matter. A closed pot needs no partners. An open house does. Bunam pointed at the crack where the next hour's light would have to enter, or the wall would never hold.

The Wheel That Turns Roles

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav stopped at a mill. The wheel turned. Water slapped the paddles. A high bucket went down. A low bucket came up wet and shining.

"Creation is that," he said. Up becomes down. Left becomes right. Head becomes foot. Man becomes angel and angel becomes man. Status is not a throne bolted to the floor of heaven. It is a spoke passing through light and shadow, raising the low, lowering the high, refusing to let anyone mistake a season for an identity.

"Every valley shall be raised and every mountain made low," said the prophet (Isaiah 40:4). The mill did that work without poetry. Ecclesiastes counted seasons for every purpose under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Nachman heard the counting as rotation. A time to rise. A time to be brought low. A time to discover that the one who served is now served, and the one who commanded is learning how to ask.

The gaze that keeps the wheel turning does not freeze anyone at the top for comfort. Without the gaze, there is no wheel. Without the wheel, there is only the lie of permanent rank. Nachman left the mill still turning and did not look back to see who was high that hour.

Bread on the Scale

At dusk Bunam bought bread. The baker weighed it, took a coin, and turned back to the oven. The student asked what would be left if the look above them lifted.

Bunam did not comfort him. "No bargain to break. No thief to catch. No mouth left to name the fear. The floor can tremble and still be inside a look that has not left. If the look left, there would be no one left to feel abandoned."

They walked home past the unfinished house. The ladder was down. The plaster had begun to dull. A lamp burned in a finished window across the street, a poor image for a gaze that does not sleep, and still the poor image helped: the house of the world remains a house only while the Watcher watches.

The student set the finished pot back on the study-house table and did not tap it again. Clay that has already been fired is a comfort. It is also a lie. The cisterns of being stay full because Someone is still paying attention, and a man who wants the world to hold has to add a stitch where his hands can reach, under a look that has not clocked out.

CreationDivine GazeKabbalahHasidismRenewalOr Yakar
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Or YakarOr Yakar

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English translation · CC-BY

It suggests that the entire universe, everything we know, exists only because God is actively, constantly, paying attention. for a second.

A sixteenth-century Kabbalistic text, Or Yakar, puts it starkly: If God's gaze were withdrawn for even a moment, all of existence would simply… cease. Poof. Gone. Like a dream fading upon waking.

This idea of God’s "gaze" (if we can even use such a human term for the Divine) being the paramount requirement for the world to continue. It's more than just creation, it's sustenance.

What does it mean, this "gaze?" It’s not like God has literal eyes. Well, the concept hints at something deeper. It suggests that the existence of everything around us depends on God's continued interest in the world and all its creatures. It's not enough that God created the universe in the first place; God has to care about it, moment after moment.

This tradition suggests that God is no such artist. God is constantly engaged, pouring divine attention and energy into every single atom.

This idea is both comforting and, perhaps, a little daunting. Comforting because it means we are never truly alone, never truly forgotten. Daunting because it places a profound responsibility on us. If God's attention is what sustains the world, then how do we, as inhabitants of that world, contribute to or detract from that divine attention?

Are we living in ways that reflect and honor God's continued interest in us and in creation? Or are we behaving in ways that might, metaphorically speaking, cause God to avert the divine gaze?

Because if everything truly hinges on that constant, loving attention, then perhaps our own attention – to the world, to each other, and to the Divine – is more powerful than we ever imagined.

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Siah Sarfei Kodesh 2:17Chassidic Literature

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English translation · Public Domain

Maybe that's not a bug, but a feature of the entire universe. Is anything truly ever finished?

Rabbi Simcha Bunam of Parsischa, a Hasidic master from the late 18th and early 19th centuries (1765-1827), had a fascinating take on this. He suggested that the universe God created isn't like a pottery vessel, something you mold, fire, and then poof, it’s complete. Instead, it's perpetually under construction. It requires continuous work, unceasing renewal.

Why? Because according to Rabbi Simcha Bunam, the unfinished nature of Creation isn't a flaw. It's a necessity. It’s the very thing that keeps us going. In Siah Sarfei Kodesh (2:17), we find this idea echoed.

We find a similar idea in Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) Ribesh Tov (2:24), where the Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism himself, taught that the world is renewed daily. It’s not a one-time event, but an ongoing process.

Imagine if that renewal stopped. Imagine if the forces that sustain existence paused, even for a second. According to this teaching, the whole thing would unravel. The universe would revert to tohu vavohu – that primordial chaos described in Genesis.

Scary thought. But maybe it’s also empowering. If the world needs constant renewal, and we are reborn every morning, that means we have a role to play. We are active participants in this ongoing act of creation. We aren’t just passive observers, but partners with the Divine.

So, the next time you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to be done, remember that "unfinished" might be precisely where you're supposed to be. Maybe it's in that striving, that constant effort to improve and renew, that we truly find meaning. Maybe the point isn't to reach some mythical state of "done," but to embrace the beautiful, messy, and utterly vital process of becoming.

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Sihot ha-Ran 40Sichot HaRan (Rabbi Nachman)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria-hosted English translation · Public Domain

Maybe, just maybe, you're part of something much bigger: a cosmic wheel.

The idea of a "wheel of creation" isn't some new-age concept. It's a powerful image found in Jewish mystical thought, particularly in the teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. He paints a picture of all creation as a constantly rotating wheel, forever turning and transforming.

What does that actually mean? Think of it this way: everything is in a cycle. Up becomes down, left becomes right, and, incredibly, man becomes angel, and angel, man. Head becomes foot, and foot head. It’s all part of the same underlying reality, constantly interchanging, raising the low, lowering the high, all spinning on this great wheel. This comes to us from Sihot ha-Ran 40.

It’s a mind-bending idea. We tend to think of things as fixed, as having a defined role. But Rabbi Nachman's vision suggests something far more fluid. He sees a universe where boundaries blur, where transformation is the only constant.

What could have inspired such a radical image? Well, the Torah itself hints at this cyclical nature. Remember the verse from (Isaiah 40:4): "Let every valley be raised and every mountain made low"? It's a powerful image of leveling, of things being brought into balance through constant change. And then there's (Ecclesiastes 3:1): "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven." A time to rise, a time to fall. A time to be born, a time to die. The great wheel turns.

Rabbi Nachman takes these ideas and runs with them, creating a dynamic and almost dizzying vision of creation. It's a vision that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what our place is in the universe. Are we forever stuck in one role, one identity? Or are we capable of transformation, of becoming something completely different?

The wheel keeps turning. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the point. Maybe the beauty and the challenge of life lie in embracing that constant change, in accepting that everything is interconnected and in flux. What does the wheel of creation mean for you?

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