shechinah

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The Mystery of the Eighth Day

And on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Leviticus 12:3 In the Torah portion of Tazria, we are commanded to circumcise a male child on the eighth day. In the previous Torah portion, Shemini, we read that the dedication of the Tabernacle (Mishkan) also took eight days, and only on the eighth day the Shechinah (“divine presence”) rested on it. What is the significance of the eighth day? Chasidic philosophy interprets the eighth day as the day after seven days. In numerous writings (ma’amarim) and talks (siḥot), the Rebbes of Chabad stated that seven days represent nature, whereas the eighth day is a day above nature.[1] The eighth day represents the supernatural. Why, you may ask, do the seven days represent nature? We are told that the number [...]

By |2024-04-14T21:40:11-04:00April 14th, 2024|Kabbalah, Leviticus, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Space, Spirituality, Tazria, Time, Uncategorized, Vayikra|0 Comments
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Gazing at the Shekhinah

In his commentary on this week’s Torah Portion, Yitro, Rabbi Chayim Vital, writing in the name of his teacher, the Ari-zal, states that Abel was punished for gazing at the Shekhinah—the divine presence.[1] But what relevance does this have to the Torah portion retelling the greatest event in Jewish history (and, indeed, the history of human civilization)—the Sinaitic epiphany—the giving of the Torah? This is the Torah portion, where we read the Ten Commandments. What is the relevance of the sin of Abel to the Ten Commandments? More generally, what is Abel’s connection to this Torah portion? That is easy to understand. The Torah portion Yitro starts with the story of Jethro (Yitro), Moses’s father-in-law, coming to Moses in the Sinai desert with his daughter—the wife of Moses—and her two children. Rabbi Chayim [...]

By |2024-02-05T15:05:18-05:00February 4th, 2024|Bayesian probability, Collapse of the wavefunction, Exodus (Shemot), G‑d, Kabbalah, Neuroscience, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Reincarnation, Superposition, Superposition, Uncategorized, Wavefunction, Wavefunction of G‑d, Yitro|2 Comments
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Sanctuaries in Space and Time

We are quite familiar with space—we move freely in space back and forth; we concur space on land and beyond; we reclaim land from sea; we turn deserts into gardens; we turn desolated space into sprawling cities. We are, on the other hand, helpless in the face of time. We cannot move freely in time. We can’t move back in time. We are swept forward in the inexorable flow of time. We do not understand time; we cannot change it. We are masters of land, but not of time. It is for this reason, when G‑d instructed Moses how to build a sanctuary for Himself, He could not have started with time—we would have not the faintest idea what it meant—a sanctuary of G‑d in time—let alone how to do it. That is why G‑d started with space, instructing Moses how to build the Mishkan—a Sanctuary in space—first. Only then He commanded Moses about Shabbat.

By |2021-03-14T22:21:57-04:00March 14th, 2021|Parshah, Sefirot, Shemot, Space, Terumah, Time, Uncategorized, Vayakhel|2 Comments
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Why the first humans were not allowed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge

As always in science, every answered question breeds new questions. Now that we understand that the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are metaphors for, respectively, the wave function and the collapse of the wave function (see my earlier post, "The Tree of Knowledge as a Metaphor for Superposition of States and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle"), we are faced with more questions. Why did G‑d not want Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge? And what was so terrible about the forbidden fruit that eating it warranted capital punishment?[1] Let us recall that, according to our tradition, Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating from the Tree of Knowledge only for three hours. Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day—the Eve of the Sabbath (Erev Shabbat). With [...]

By |2019-12-26T18:43:29-05:00December 26th, 2019|Bereishit, Bereshit, Collapse of the wavefunction, Creation, Genesis, Mashiach (Messiah), Parshah, Physics, Quantum Theory, Shabbat, Spirituality, Superposition, Uncategorized, Uncertainty Principle, Wavefunction|4 Comments
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Unified Field Theory and the Dew of Resurrection

And ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook (Levit. 23:40) After completing his masterpiece, the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, Albert Einstein spent the rest of his life working fruitlessly on unifying gravity with electromagnetism. His quest was to develop a unified field theory that would unify his General Relativity, a theory of gravitational, with Maxwell electrodynamics. To his great dismay, Einstein never succeeded in developing a unified field theory. It was actually even worse. While working tirelessly on unifying two known classical fields – gravitational field and electromagnetic field – Einstein missed the incredible progress in quantum physics, of which he was one of the founders and for which he received his [...]

By |2019-05-20T03:48:19-04:00May 19th, 2019|Emor, Kabbalah, Leviticus, Mashiach (Messiah), Names of G‑d, Parshah, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Quantum Field Theory, Quantum Theory, Relativity, Resurrection, Sefirot, Sukkot, Uncategorized, Vayikra|4 Comments
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Mishkan – a Metaphor for Quantum Reality, II

Continuing the theme of my last post, Mishkan – a Metaphor for Quantum Reality, the analogy between the Tabernacle (“Mishkan”) and quantum reality goes even deeper. The quantum world is best described today by the Quantum Field Theory. According to this theory, there are no particles, only fields. When we interact with a field, it manifests itself as a quantum of the field, which, to some extent, looks and behaves like a particle. For example, when we interact with an electromagnetic field, it manifests itself as a photon – a quantum of the electromagnetic field. An electron, according to the Quantum Field Theory, is not really a particle but a quantum of the electron field, which is a quantum field that is spread across the entire universe. This quantum is an excitation of [...]

By |2019-06-03T09:46:40-04:00May 29th, 2017|Bamidbar, Bamitbar, G‑d, Isaiah, Mashiach (Messiah), Names of G‑d, Numbers, Parshah, Physics, Quantum Theory, Science, Space, Uncategorized|2 Comments
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The End of Days II

This post is a continuation of the earlier post, The End of Days I. In this Torah Portion, Shemot, we read about the encounter between Moses and the Almighty at the Burning Bush. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Moses) in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed… Moreover, He said: 'I am the G‑d of thy father, the G‑d of Abraham, the G‑d of Isaac, and the G‑d of Jacob.' And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon G‑d. And the Lord said: 'I have surely seen the affliction of My people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their [...]

By |2019-10-17T15:09:26-04:00January 5th, 2015|Mashiach (Messiah), Names of G‑d, Uncategorized|1 Comment
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The End of Days I

In this Torah portion, Vayechi, Jacob, gathers his children to reveal to them “Ketz HaYamim”–“the End of Days.” Rashi explains that Jacob’s intention was to reveal the date of the coming of Mashiach (Messiah). Jacob called for his sons and said, "Gather and I will tell you what will happen to you at the end of days. (Gen. 4:1) However, he proceeds rebuking his sons without revealing to them the Ketz — End of Days. Rashi says that Jacob looked into the future and saw his children being in exile for a long time. Rashi says that the word “ketz” (end)—spelled in Hebrew Kof-Tzadik—has the numerical value of 190. (Kof=100, Tzadik=90. 100+90=190). Jacob gazed 190 years into the future and saw his children still enslaved in Egypt. He became depressed and Shechinah (Divine Presence) left him. [...]

By |2017-01-13T15:54:32-05:00January 2nd, 2015|Genesis, Mashiach (Messiah), Names of G‑d, Pentateuch (Chumash), Sefirot, Uncategorized, Vayechi|1 Comment
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Global or Local?

And let them make me a Sanctuary that I may dwell among them (Ex. 25:8) In modern physics, there are two paradigms usually expressed as locality and nonlocality.  Theoretical physics was born when Isaac Newton published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, where he formulated his laws of motion and the universal law of gravity.  The law of gravity says that two masses attract each other proportionally to the product of their masses and inversely proportionally to the square of the distance between them. This law said nothing about the nature of the gravitational interaction, it did not explain the mechanism of this attraction at a distance.   Newton was bothered by the question of how one body can act on another body far removed from it with nothing in between, i.e., the notion of “action [...]

By |2019-02-06T16:45:19-05:00February 2nd, 2014|Exodus (Shemot), G‑d, Pentateuch (Chumash), Physics, Quantum Theory, Science, Shemot, Terumah, Uncategorized|3 Comments
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