Zimzum in Kabbalah refers to God's self-contraction before the creation of the world and for the purpose of world creation. This term was coined in the 16th century through the teachings of the Jewish mystic Isaac Luria. The omnipresent God before creation must withdraw and concentrate on Himself in the Zimzum to make space in His own center for the creation of the world. This book traces the footprints of Zimzum through Jewish and Christian intellectual history over more than four centuries. From the Kabbalists in Safed to Hasidism, from Christian Hebraists to Newton and Schelling, from mystical manuscripts to the avant-garde of Else Lasker-Schüler or Anselm Kiefer, the interpretations and appropriations of Zimzum blend and enrich the divine and the human, the Jewish and the Christian, and mysticism.