Ma'amar HaGeulah (The Remembrance, Ch. 9)

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. 9

Many people lament the fact that we don't live in "a more perfect world" where things are fairer, better, and more balanced. Well, we learn that that will have come to fruition by this next stage. For "everything that had been impaired and ... imperfect" in the course of the long exile "will come to be rectified" by this point in the redemption (see para. 46). And perfection will be on its way.

Ramchal adds, though, that not only will that be true of everyday things, but that "the Shechina itself will be even more emended and adorned than it had ever been" then. For "all of its legions will hang upon it with great honor and courage", and the "souls of the Jewish Nation will do the same" (ibid.). What that means to say is that everything associated with G-d's Presence in the world will be set aloft by then and emboldened with the flush of that Presence, ourselves included.

Whole legions of angels "will return to their posts then" in the heavens, we're told, "and stand upon their hills" in full Celestial formation, and will "take hold of their roots", and "the souls of the Jewish Nation will do the same" (ibid.). That's to say that by that point both they and we will all draw closer and closer to the Divine Presence from which we all emanated.

Ramchal then makes a very curious, seemingly tangential remark. He says that "there are many ways to emanate and to do ... things", that "nothing is exactly like anything else, and nothing is in vain". That's to say that there's nothing that doesn't draw its existence (i.e., "emanate") from G-d and play out its own vital G-d-given role in the universe. And that everything matters and is very dear in the grand scheme of things. But, where does that admittedly pithy and inspiring notion fit in with the details being offered here of the redemption?

He's apparently offering it because he follows it with the statement that the sephirot Binah, Tipheret, and Malchut "will be united and joined together" (ibid.) by that point (in keeping with the whole idea of things joining together by then and aligning with the heavens). Apparently his point is that the union won't deny the role each individual sephira played in its own right -- it's only that the time will have come when an amalgamation of individuals will prove to be stronger than the sum of its parts, despite the importance of each one.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman and Torah.org

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

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