Ma'amar HaGeulah (The Visitation, Ch. 5)

Ma'amar HaGeulah

-- "The Great Redemption", a reworking of Ramchal's "Ma'amar HaGeulah"

Rabbi Yaakov Feldman's series on www.torah.org

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"The Great Redemption"

The Visitation: Ch. 5

It's important to realize that only the *inner* aspect of things will begin to heal in the course of The Visitation -- not the everyday and tangible parts of things. For as Ramchal put it, "there are inner and outer aspects" of the Supernal Luminaries under discussion, which are "termed their 'body' and 'soul'" (see para. 19).

The point is that while a lot will have gone on internally and on a soul-level in the course of The Visitation, not a lot would have been accomplished yet "on the ground" so to speak. And as we know, it's only by means of a fusion of body and soul that anything everlasting can be accomplished (as will be the case in The Resurrection of the Dead, though that's beyond the subject at hand).

That explains why we'll get discouraged after the initial stirrings of hope and teshuvah will have subsided, and why we'll lose the inspiration, spirit, and drive that had come upon us for a time. For what we we're hoping for wouldn't have come to full flower.

In any event, Ramchal explains what will set off those inner-reparations alone by that point in Kabbalistic terms. As he put it, while "The Visitation will emanate from (the sephirah of) Yesod, ... The Remembrance (which will come later on) will emanate from (the Sephira of) Tipheret" (see para. 20).

What that means to say is that Yesod, the Sephira that's right above Malchut (the last Sephira, and the one associated with the Shechina), will indeed be reconnected to the Shechina by that point, but that's all. Tipheret -- which is appreciably higher and deeper than Yesod -- will only have been *stirred* rather than activated.

Nonetheless, Ramchal offers that despite the limitations of the above, certain important things will indeed be activated by this, the fifth, stage of The Visitation. Let's see what.

The Zohar (2:95b) tells us that at a certain point in time some auspicious souls were filched by the forces of evil who "refused to set them free" (see para. 22). They have dwelt on certain hills and mountains since then. Ramchal informs us that they'll be set free in the course of The Visitation "with the help of the upsurge of light that will shine upon them" then (ibid.).

That upsurge will be generated by the first messiah, Moshiach Ben Yoseph, we're taught. For he'll "leap over all the mountains and hills those souls are found in" and grant them -- as well as other very great souls (see para. 23) -- the capacity to leave, "in order to be amended and repaired ... so the world can (eventually) bask in great and mighty light" (ibid.). Those recondite hills and mountains are said to be "the husk’s dark mountains and pitch black hills" (see para. 21) -- regions that no good soul would ever want to be left behind in.

Moshiach Ben Yoseph won't stay around for long, though; as "he’ll have to leave before the husks sense" his presence (ibid.). But he'll be there long enough to accomplish that task, and he'll reappear later on.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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