Ma'amar HaGeulah (The Remembrance, Ch. 1)

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 Remembrance: Ch. 1

The Remembrance will be more comprehensive than The Visitation and will play itself out in fifteen stages. Let's recap Ramchal's layout of The Visitation, though, before we go on, and see how it will lead to The Remembrance since the two phases are interconnected.

The first thing The Visitation will accomplish would be to "emend the first imperfection of the exile, which was the hiding of the Divine countenance and the dimming of the light" (see para. 24). That is, it will see to it that the Shechina be hoisted up out of the dust of exile, and that the lengthy and arduous process of reconnecting the Divine Luminaries begins.

But that will only start when, "the Tzaddik (i.e., the sephirah of Yesod) will descend and conjoin with Malchut (i.e., the Shechina)", its partner in the redemption process. And when the Shechina will "derive the ability and wherewithal to rise up out of the dust" (ibid.) as a result.

The many souls "that (had been) stuck in darkness" for the longest time we'd cited before "will be enstrengthened as well and will escape" then, thanks to Moshiach Ben Yoseph (who'll foreshadow the ultimate Moshiach). And then "the Moshiach" that is, Moshiach Ben David, "will rectify himself and get ready to be the redeemer". That will be followed by the first stage of The Remembrance, when our people begin to "desire, love, and be faithful to their shepherd to a very great degree" (ibid.), as we'd indicated.

The point is that once we start to sense the Moshiach's presence in our midst and begin to understand that the great redemption is upon us, once the souls sequestered in darkness for so very long come to the fore, and once G-d's Presence begins to manifest itself more and more palpably as the Shechina dusts itself off and prepares to shine -- all that will "then bring about peace and tranquility" (ibid.) and set the stage for The Remembrance. Since it's the combination of our people readying itself for the Moshiach's arrival and its reveling in the sense of the Divine, in combination with Moshiach readying himself to assume his role, that's needed most to set it off.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

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

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