Kabbalah

Ohr Ein Sof — The Infinite Light

Before there was a universe, there was, according to Lurianic cosmology, only a single undifferentiated infinite light filling all conceivable existence, leaving no room for anything else to exist.

Ohr Ein Sof, the light of the Infinite, describes the state Lurianic Kabbalah posits prior to creation: the light emanating from Ein Sof filled everything uniformly and without gap, since there was no outside of God for anything to occupy. This premise generates the entire Lurianic creation narrative's central problem: if divine light is truly everywhere without interruption, nothing distinct from that light could ever come into being, since any created thing would simply be absorbed back into the infinite. Luria's solution, tzimtzum, has God voluntarily contract this light to open a conceptual empty space in which a world other than God could subsequently be formed. The doctrine reframes creation as fundamentally an act of divine self-limitation rather than expansion; the ohr Ein Sof does not create by growing outward but by first pulling back.