What does “You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing” mean?

Rabbi Landau explains the verse “Pose’ach es yadecha u’masbia l’chol chai ratzon” as a description of how reality takes shape. “Hashem holds your all in potential. And then, he opens his hand and it collapses to your desire.”

He uses a picture from modern physics: life starts as a cloud of possibilities, and the moment you see it, it collapses into one reality. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau stresses that this is only a parable, a finger pointing at the moon. Hashem brings everything into being at every moment, so at every moment endless possibilities exist, and the desire of the living being is what brings one of them into form.

So reality is not locked. “It bends to the eye that sees it.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Hashem holds everything in potential; desire and perception bring it into form.

Deepest human truth

In the book Rabbi Landau writes: the hands are open, and your desire, your look, is what decides.

More questions from this teaching

• Is my reality fixed, or does it depend on how I see it?