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<a style="font-family:Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:18px;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/279438730/geulah.shtml">Defining Ge’ulah</a>
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<span>Posted:</span> 28 Apr 2008 09:56 AM CDT</p>
<div style="margin:0;font-family:Times New Roman, Times, serif;line-height:140%;font-size:12px;color:#000000;"><p style="padding-left: 30px;">R. Shimon said: When the Holy One, blessed be He [– HQBH], came to create Adam, the ministering angels formed themselves into groups and parties. Some said, “Let him be created,” while others urged, “Let him not be created.” Thus it is written, ” חֶֽסֶד־וֶאֱמֶ֥ת נִפְגָּ֑שׁוּ, צֶ֖דֶק וְשָׁל֣וֹם נָשָֽׁקוּ׃ — Love and Truth fought together, Righteousness and Peace kissed each other.” [Tehillim 85:11] Love said, “Let him be created, because he will dispense acts of love”; Truth said, “Let him not be created, because he is compounded of falsehood”; Righteousness said, “Let him be created, because he will perform righteous deeds”; Peace said, “Let him not be created because he is full of strife.” What did Hashem do? He took Truth and cast it to the ground. Said the ministering angels before HQBH, “Sovereign of the Universe! Why do You despise Your seal? Let Truth arise from the earth!” As it is written [in the continuing words], “אֱ֭מֶת מֵאֶ֣רֶץ תִּצְמָ֑ח — Let truth bloom up from the earth.” [v. 12]</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: right;"><em>-Bereishis Rabba 8:5</em></p>
<p>Man was created with Hashem’s knowledge that with the existence of free-willed beings, Truth would be submerged and have to emerge over time through the process we call history.</p>
<p>The Qetzos haChoshen has a beautiful comment on this <em>medrash</em>. He noted that here truth is described as <em>tatzmiach</em>, blooming. When we make the <em>berakhah</em> after an <em>aliyah</em>, we say <em>“vechayei olam nata besocheinu</em> — eternal life [or perhaps: life of the world{-to-come}] was planted within us.” The Qetzos explains: Torah is the seed from which our <em>medrash</em> tell us Truth blooms.</p>
<p>Rav Shim’on Shlop writes about the difference between the first <em>luchos </em>and the second ones.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">AS A BEGINNING OF this preparation, so that one is ready to acquire Torah, the Torah requires specific conditions. The first condition is toil and contemplation, as our sages explain “‘If in my statues you go’ (Vayiqra 26:3) … that you should be toiling in the Torah.” (Rashi ad loc, quoting Toras Kohanim 26:2)</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">One can use this to explain the whole notion of breaking the [first] Tablets, for which I have not found an explanation. At first glance, understanding seems closed off. Is it possible that Moses our teacher would think that because the Jews made the [Golden] Calf they should be left without the Torah? He should have just waited to teach them until they corrected their ways, not break them altogether and then have to fall before Hashem to beg for a second set of Tablets. Our sages received [a tradition that] there was a unique ability inherent in the first Tablets. As it says in Eiruvin (folio 54), “What does it mean when it is says, [of the first Tablets] ‘[The Tablets were made by God and written with God’s script] engraved on the Tablets’ (Shemos 32:16) ? Had the first Tablets not been destroyed, the Torah would never have been forgotten from Israel.” (Eiruvin 54a) Which is, they had the power that if someone learned them once, it would be guarded in his memory forever. This quality Moses felt would cause a very terrible profaning of the holy to arise. Could it happen that someone destroyed and estranged in evil deeds would be expert in all the “rooms” of the Torah? Moses reasoned a fortiori from the Passover offering about which the Torah says “no foreign child shall eat of it.” (Shemos 12:43 [To explain: If one offering can not be possessed by a non-Jew, how much more so should the entire Torah not be possessed by someone who is not merely a non-Jew, but an evil person.]) Therefore Moses found it fitting that these Tablets be shattered, and he should try to get other Tablets. The first Tablets were made by G-d, like the body of writing as explained in the Torah. The latter Tablets were made by man [Moshe Rabbeinu], as it says “Carve <span style="text-decoration: underline;">for yourself</span> two stone tablets.” (Shemos 34:1) Tablets are things which cause standing and existence, that it’s not “letters fluttering in the air.” Since they were made by Hashem, they would stand eternally. But the second ones, which were man-made, only exist subject to conditions and constraints.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The beginning of the receiving of the Torah through Moses was a symbol and sign for all of the Jewish people who receive the Torah [since]. Just as Hashem told Moses, “Carve for yourself two stone Tablets”, so too it is advice for all who receive the Torah. Each must prepare Tablets for himself, to write upon them the word of Hashem. According to his readiness in preparing the Tablets, so will be his ability to receive. If in the beginning or even any time after that his Tablets are ruined, then his Torah will not remain. This removes much of Moses’ fear, because according to the value and greatness of the person in <em>Yir’as Hashem</em> [Awe/Fear of Hashem] and in <em>middos</em>, which are the Tablet of his heart, this will be the measure by which heaven will give him acquisition of Torah. And if he falls from his level, by that amount he will forget his Torah, just as our sages said of a number of things that cause Torah to be forgotten. About this great concept our sages told us to explain the text at the conclusion of the Torah, “and all the great Awe Inspiring acts which Moses wrought before the eyes of all of Israel.” (Devarim 34:12 [the Torah’s closing words])</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: right;"><em>- <a title="Introduction to Shaarei Yosher (see pp 6-7)" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/ShaareiYosher.pdf" target="_blank">Introduction, Shaarei Yosher</a></em></p>
<p>Thus, with the giving of the Second <em>Luchos,</em> the Torah was made a dynamic process. Rather than a Torah entirely contained in writing, external to the people for easy reference, it is now make part of the people, and part pf our process of growth in both wisdom and in <em>middos.</em> (And even, as Rav Shimon continues, of our material progress.)</p>
<p>R’ Chaim Brisker (Derashah 17) writes something similar to Rav Shimon Shkop’s words on the second <em>luchos</em>. He says that the first <em>lucho</em>s contained the entire Torah, even down to “a question a student will ask his rebbe in the last generation.” With the second <em>luchos </em>came the concept of Oral Torah and the need for Torah study. They entail Hashem’s choice to make Torah less well known but more internalized into the people. Making the nation Hashem’s “parchment”.</p>
<p>Rav Chaim refers to the thught of Chazal which says that had we not made the Golden Calf, the redemption from Egpt would have been the complete redemption. That sin necessitated further exiles, a longer process to reach the ultimate <em>ge’ulah</em>, And this is why the first <em>luchos</em> could not exist in a post-calf world — for two reasons. First, because without the Torah being intimately tied to the Jewish People, our host nations would have co-opted it. And second, the unity of the people and the Torah would give us a self-definition that would enable us to survive as a distinct people.<em></em></p>
<p>The picture I am drawing using the concepts of Rav Shimon and Rav Chaim is of history as a process by which Truth, which had to be compromised by the creation of Man, is planted again in the Heart of the Jewish People as Torah, and through that Man is refined, the Torah is refined, and Truth sprouts forth from the ground, reconciled with the refined human being at the culmination of history.</p>
<p>It certainly sounds like a definition of <em>ge’ulah</em>, redemption, in the sense of describing the redemption of the universe and of the human condition.</p>
<p>Following his theory that phonetically related roots are similar in meaning, Rav Hirsch places the “<em>ge’ulah</em>” in the same family as \יעל\ (to progress), as ג and י are articulated in the same part of the mouth, as are א and ע. The meaning would also be shaded by other \גל\ roots that lack the middle א semivowel — \גלל\ (to revolve) and \גלה\ (to reveal). Our definition can thus be phrased as “a process for the the ultimate revelation of truth.”</p>
<p>And thus it is no surprise that the dips in the process, where it takes what looks like a step away from the embodiment of Truth in order to cause a greater revelation, is called “<em>galus</em>” (exile).</p>
<p>There is an interesting implication here. (The startling element is not in my embellishments, but in the original <em>Qetzos</em>.) Torah is not being described as Truth. Rather, it is the seed and process from which Truth blossoms.</p>
<p>One wonders if this is related to the Maharal’s explanation of <em>machloqes</em> (disputes in halakhah). In <a title="Aspaqlaria: Haachic Process, part I" href="http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2007/11/halachic-process-part-i.shtml" target="_self">an earlier entry</a>, I described his position as follows:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">The Maharal’s position is that “<em>divrei E-lokim Chaim</em> — the word of the ‘Living’ G-d” is simply too rich and too complex to exist in this world. Therefore they are mapped to oversimplified models, related to Hashem’s words the way a shadow is a flattened representation of the original. And thus, different people looking at the problem from different directions will get different shadows — even though they are all accurate representations of the same thing.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">To finish out the metaphor: The angle at which we look at <em>Devar Hashem</em> is our “<em>derekh</em>“, our path in how we . This <em>derekh</em>, just like the lamp, is determined by two things: <em>mei’ayin basa, ule’an ata holeikh</em> — from where do you come, and to where are you going? Where the lamp is, and the angle it points. Different people were put together differently, and can have different emphases in how they interpret the ultimate goal.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">The complexity of <em>Devar Hashem</em> causes the illusion (to us) of paradox. It’s no more real of a paradox than the <a title="Wikitext: The Blindmen and the Elephant" href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Blindmen_and_the_Elephant">5 blind men who argue about the nature of the elephant</a>. The one who felt the elephant’s ear would argue an elephant is like a fan. The one who felt its leg would think it is like a tree. But it’s only because we can’t capture the full picture.</p>
<p>It is possible to say that history is the process of closing the gap between Truth in its full richness, and Torah as our ability to make it manifest. Or, as the <em>mequbalim</em> would say, <em>“Lesheim yichud Qudshah berikh Hu uShechintei</em> - For the sake of the unity of the Holy” — i.e. Remote — “one and His Presence” — i.e. as we Perceive her amongst us.</p>
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