sorta Jewish quotes

The great Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria taught that every created thing possesses a “spark” of divine energy that constitutes its essence and soul. When a person utilizes something toward a G‑dly end, he brings to light this divine spark, manifesting and realizing the purpose for which it was created.
In all physical substances, a material “husk” (kelipah) encases and conceals the divine spark at its core, necessitating great effort on the part of man to access the spark without becoming enmeshed in the surface materiality. No existence is devoid of a divine spark—indeed, nothing can exist without the pinpoint of G‑dliness that imbues it with being and purpose. But not every spark can be actualized. There are certain “impregnable” elements whose sparks are inaccessible to us. The fact that something is forbidden by the Torah means that its “husk” cannot be penetrated, so that its spark remains locked within it and cannot be elevated.
Thus, one who eats a piece of kosher meat and then uses the energy gained from it to perform a mitzvah thereby elevates the spark of divinity that is the essence of the meat, freeing it of its mundane incarnation and raising it to a state of fulfilled spirituality. However, if one would do the same with a piece of non-kosher meat, no such “elevation” would take place. Even if he applied the energy to positive and G‑dly ends, this would not constitute a realization of the divine purpose in the meat’s creation, since the consumption of the meat was an express violation of the divine will. This is the deeper significance of the Hebrew terms assur and mutar employed by Torah law for the forbidden and the permissible.
Assur, commonly translated as “forbidden,” literally means “bound,” implying that these are things whose sparks the Torah has deemed bound and imprisoned in a shell of negativity and proscription.
Mutar (“permitted”), which literally means “unbound,” is the term for those sparks which the Torah has empowered us to extricate from their mundane embodiment and actively involve in our positive endeavors.
The “bound” elements of creation also have a role in the realization of the divine purpose outlined by the Torah. But theirs is a “negative” role—they exist so that we should achieve a conquest of self by resisting them. There is no Torah-authorized way in which they can
actively be involved in our development of creation, no way in which they may themselves become part of the “dwelling for G‑d” that we are charged to make of our world. Of these elements it is said, “Their breaking is their rectification.” They exist to be rejected and defeated, and it is in their defeat and exclusion from our lives that their
raison d’être is realized.