Ma'amar HaGeulah (The Remembrance, Ch. 8)

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. 8

The very make-up of outer-space will change with the redemption, we're taught here, as well as our reckoning of time. For whole "conglomerates of Luminaries will gather ... each and every evening in order to emanate below", and the sun and moon will combine to form a single Luminary, which will itself be replaced by another one after a time, and so on. And rather than reckon time by the setting and rising of the sun and moon as we do now, we'll reckon it then by the rising and setting of those new Luminaries (see para. 43).

But since we'd already learned in the last chapter that time will implode upon itself, the above changes will apparently be instantaneous. In fact, we might even be justified in saying that those replacements will be *so* instantaneous at a certain point that they couldn't even be said to be changes so much as simultaneous events. But that's mere conjecture.

Proof for it might be found, though, in Ramchal's statement that "people will always sleep" then (see para. 43) despite the rapid change of Luminaries (which seems to be such an inconsequential statement). His point might be that despite the amazing events going on, we'd still be able to take it all in stride and fall asleep because it would all be going on simultaneously, and thus be less jarring to our senses.

Two other features of this stage stand out. We learn that utter goodness will prevail then without impediment (unlike in our day and age, when goodness is thwarted all the time), and that many non-Jews will join the Jewish Nation at that point. The latter will come about as a consequence of their root national Guardian Angels being undone. (Every nation derives its sustenance and existence from a Guardian Angel that's unique to it; ours is G-d Himself, if you will).

After all, Ramchal reasons, once "their source up above is destroyed" -- which is to say, once their roots are undone -- "no branches (will) remain below", i.e., the other nations will be undone, and many of them will convert as a result right then and there (see para. 44), much the way that leaves would have to be transplanted when their trees are uprooted, otherwise they'd wither away.

But despite the fact that they'd have attached themselves onto the Jewish Nation that way, there'd still be a fundamental distinction between the Jewish Nations and those others (see para. 45) -- until the World to Come, when they too would have been utterly assimilated into the national root and soul of the Jewish Nation (see Tikkunim Chadashim #20).

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

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

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