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It Is Not Good For Man To Be Alone

And the Eternal G‑d said: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helpmate opposite him.” (Genesis 2:18)   The end of this verse is rather puzzling. Why would the woman designated as a helpmate for Adam be opposite (literally “against”) him? One can perhaps soften things by translating the Hebrew eizer kenegdo as “counterpart.” However, in a literal translation, the question remains. A simple explanation is well known: if a man is worthy, his wife would be his best friend, ally, partner, companion, and helpmate. If the man is not worthy, however, his wife would be his opponent and antagonist. An esoteric interpretation offered by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, in his commentary on this verse in “Torah Ohr,”[1] provides a deeper meaning. He writes [...]

Three Angels: Past, Present, and Future

And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, three men stood over against him… (Genesis 18:1-2)   In the Torah portion Vayeira, three men appeared to Abraham as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent. The Talmud states that these three men were angels: Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael. Michael came to tell that Sarah will give birth to a son; Raphael came to heal Abraham after his circumcision; and Gabriel came to destroy Sodom. However, on a metaphorical level, it appears to me that these three angels personify three aspects of time: past, present, and future. Here are several clues that hint at [...]

Noah’s Ark — Sailing through the Flood of Time

Time is a storm in which we are all lost. " (William Carlos Williams, Introduction to "Selected Essays") I always had a hard time relating to the story of the Flood on a literal level. Why would G‑d want to wipe out all people He created in full knowledge that they would sin? Like it was a surprise for G‑d! G‑d, who exists above time, which He created, cannot be surprised—He knows the future. Then why to create humanity, just to destroy it later? And animals. . . what was their fault? They have no freedom of choice. They act on instincts hardwired in their genome as they were created. Why punish them? Lots of questions, few answers. If the Torah says the flood happened, it must have happened. However, the Torah is [...]

Cosmic Symphony

Strings vibrate, Souls tremble, Angels are running and returning, G‑d is touching and not touching – The rhythms of the universe… Nothing stays still… all is in flux. The inexorable flow of time is synonymous with the existence itself. Indeed, everything exists in time. However, from where does the time come? This is, perhaps, the greatest mystery of science. In modern physics, we do not know what time is, let alone from where it comes. We only know how to measure it – by counting the number of periodic intervals, which we accept as a unit of time. For example, in antiquity, people used a night-day cycle as the basic unit of time. This cycle was born out of observations of the apparent rotation of the sun around the earth (although, in reality, [...]

Fitting Pieces of the Puzzle Together

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – IV This is the fourth and the final installment in the series of posts related to Ezekiel’s prophesy, Ma’aseh Merkava, “The Making of the Chariot.” For background information, refer to the previous posts, “Space – Between Future and Past,” “Relational Space,” and “Collapse of the Wave Function.” Regular readers of my blog may be wondering about my last post “Futurist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,” which was about my new interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is not a physics blog, however; the Quantum Torah blog is about Torah and physics (or, more broadly, Torah and science). What did the last post have to do with Torah? Hopefully, it will all now become clear. Last Shavuot I had a very unusual experience. Sitting in shul listening to the reading [...]

Futurist Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

(A popular summary of the paper “Towards Futuristic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” by Alexander Poltorak being currently prepared for publication) Quantum mechanics (QM) is one of the most successful theories of physics that withstood the test of time. Indeed, it is one of the best-tested theories known to science. Yet, we hardly advanced in our understanding of the meaning of QM since its inception almost a century ago. The indeterministic nature of the theory puts it at odds with both classical physics and our intuition, and continues to perplex physicists and philosophers of science today as it perplexed Einstein, who famously said, “G‑d does not play dice with the universe!” Superposition and entanglement seem to defy common sense and, yet, they have been confirmed experimentally time and again. The phenomenon known as the [...]

Space – Between Future and Past

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – I We do science by studying nature. We study physics in a lab, peering into space, or working out mathematical models with pencil and paper to see if they fit experimental data. However, great mystics of the past were able to see how this world operates by gazing into spiritual worlds above. On Shavuot, the holiday when we celebrate the revelation on Mount Sinai, we read the prophecy of Ezekiel (the First Vision of Ezekiel) called Maaseh Merkavah (or Ma'aseh Merkabah) – Work of the Chariot. Masters of Kabbalah have taught us that understanding the Work of the Chariot gives the initiated an understanding of the works of nature. This Shavuot, studying and thinking about Maaseh Merkavah, I came to understand some profound insights about the physics [...]

About Midnight

And Moses said: “Thus saith the Lord: About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt; and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of cattle.  (Ex. 11:4-6) In the original verse, in Hebrew, Moses uses an unusual expression “k’hatzot halayalah.” The normal way of saying would be, “hatzot halailah” – at the midnight. (in Heb. laila means “night,” and hatzot means “the middle,” i.e., the middle of the night, or midnight.) However, the verse says, “k’hatzot halayalah.” Every commentator struggles with the addition of “k” before “hatzot.” Grammatically, the prefix “k” in Heb. is called kaf hadimiyan and signifies a likeness or [...]

By |2019-01-15T09:57:44-05:00January 15th, 2019|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Shabbat Bereshit – Past, Present, and Future

In the last post, Tishrei—Past, Present, and Future, we discussed how all Tishrei holidays – Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah – are connected by the same thread of time and, more specifically, the unification of past, present, and future. This cluster of Tishrei holidays is culminated and concluded with Shabbat Bereshit, when we start the new annual cycle of reading the Torah. Not surprisingly, Shabbat Bereshit follows the same pattern of unification of past, present, and future. The Torah starts with the creation of the world. The story of Creation, obviously, relates to the past. The word “bereshit,” means, in the beginning. The root of “bereshit" is “reshit” – beginning. Beginning, however, points into the future – to something that will follow the beginning in the future. The Lubavitcher [...]

Tishrei — Past, Present, and Future

The months of Tishrei is full of holidays, and they all share a common theme—the unification of time—past, present, and future. Picart, Blowing of the Shofars on Rosh Hashanah It all starts with Rosh HaShanah. Traditionally translated as the New Year, it literally means the Head of the Year. The word shanah has the same letters as the word shinui — “change.” As Aristotle famously wrote, time is change. The sages of Kabbalah agree—time, in its essence, is change. Thus, Rosh HaShanah can be translated as the Head of Time, or the Beginning of Time (since a related Hebrew word, reshit means the “beginning”). Indeed, it is all about time. Rosh HaShanah has three main themes—Ziḥronot (remembrances), Shofrot (Sounds of the Shofar), and Malkhiot or  Kabalat Ol Malkhut Shamayim (acceptance of [...]

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