"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." — Genesis 1:2
"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." — Genesis 1:3
"God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars." — Genesis 1:16
Scripture tells us that before the world took shape, it was tohu va-vohu — formless and void — and darkness covered the deep. This is a picture of primordial chaos; a world lacking structure and order.
It also tells us that God created light and yet He didn't create the sun and stars until the fourth day. So the Rabbis postulated that what He created first was a supernal light. Midrash Rabbah tells us that with this light one was able to see from one end of the world to the other. However, after the sin of Adam and Eve, He hid it to be revealed at the end of time with the coming of the Messiah.
I want to frame my understanding of truth through these two images: darkness and chaos on the one hand, and supernal light on the other. Darkness and chaos illustrate how faith can become distorted—closed, harsh, or confused—while the supernal light represents the divine radiance that reveals God’s true way of love, compassion, and clarity.
Some people insist that their faith is the only true way and that all others are, at best, misguided and at worst demonic. This position is often called Exclusive Particularism. Such a path denies God the freedom and power to reveal Himself in many ways to His beloved children.
On the other side, some maintain that every path leads equally to God. This outlook is called Universalism. My struggle with this view is that it can flatten all faith into a vague sameness—so diluted that no real truth remains.
I would like to suggest that there is a Third Way, a Middle Way. And I am calling this Zoharism.
Jewish mysticism refers to this supernal light as The Zohar, a Hebrew word meaning radiance or brilliance, suggesting not just physical brightness but a spiritual illumination that reveals hidden depths.
"From the moment the world was created, the Holy One, blessed be He, created the light of the Torah and clothed it in this world. This light is called the Zohar." — Zohar I:1b
The Torah—often mistranslated as “Law”—is more accurately understood as Teaching or God’s Way. It is the divine path of love, compassion, empathy, gentleness, and wisdom. The light of Torah is this brilliance, this supernal light, this Zohar: a radiance meant to guide, heal, and illumine all who seek God’s presence.
According to the Rabbis, we can glimpse this radiance through the study of Torah, through prayer that opens the heart, and through acts of kindness and justice. These experiences are not constant but arrive as fleeting flashes of divine insight—moments in which God allows us a taste of His hidden brilliance. They are gifts from above, glimpses of the day when the Supernal Light will fully envelop creation. As Rav Shaul (Paul) reminded us, we now see "through a glass darkly," but even those dim glimmers can be enough to guide us toward hope and faith.
The key to finding the Middle Way is expressed beautifully in James 1:17: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."
If every good thing has its source in God, then when we encounter goodness in other religions, we can recognize it as flowing from Him. These may be human perceptions of the divine—moments when the soul connects with its Maker and glimpses the hidden light. We do not need to embrace every teaching of another faith in order to honor the truth it carries. Notice, too, that James calls God the Father of Lights—a reminder that He is also the Father of the Zohar, the radiant supernal light.
So when Islam exhorts us to "...do good; indeed, Allah loves the doers of good." (Qur’an 2:195), we can affirm that this is truly of God. Likewise, when Buddhists declare that we all have a Buddha-nature, we can understand this as their perception of that dimension of the soul created in God's image—untainted by sin —what Christian mystics call the True Self.
In like manner, when my Christian co‑worker told me that he despised gays and even fired his landscaping company when he discovered the owner was gay (a true story), I saw in this nothing but darkness—tohu va‑vohu. Absent from his words was the Torah’s and Yeshua’s clear command to love others as ourselves, regardless of their sins or struggles. Similarly, when some Jews claim that Jews possess inherently higher souls than Gentiles, this too reflects tohu va‑vohu, a distortion of God’s light.
Thus God’s radiance can be glimpsed in every faith tradition, and likewise, shadows and darkness can creep into every faith.
I hold that my faith is true and has its source in God. But I also hold that people of other faiths have perceived God's Light, at least to some measure.
I urge us all to seek the Middle Way (a phrase borrowed from Buddhism, yet deeply resonant here). May we draw strength and encouragement from every brief glimpse of God's Zohar, wherever it shines forth. May we carefully examine our own beliefs and practices, lest what we call light prove to be darkness. In walking this path, we will not fall into the extremes of particularism or universalism, but instead live as Zoharists—people of the hidden light.