Sparks

To take a break from the winter series, or maybe not, maybe this, precisely, is the series, here's a piece of something I found while reading this morning:

How can evil exist in a world created by God, the Beneficient One? It can exist, because entrapped deep inside the force of evil there is a spark of goodness. This spark is the source of life of the evil tendency....

Now it is the specific mission of the Jew to free the entrapped holy sparks from the grip of the forces of evil by means of Torah study and prayer. Once the holy sparks are released, evil, having lost its lifegiving core, will cease to exist."

- Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, quoted by Annie Dillard in For The Time Being