Zohar

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 [...]

Collapse of the Wave Function

Meditations on the Maaseh Merkavah – III This is the third installment in the series of posts related to the Ezekiel’s prophesy, Maaseh Merkava, “The Making of the Chariot.” For background information, the reader is referred to my previous posts, “Space – Between Future and Past” and “ Relational Space.” As I wrote in the first post, “Space – Between Future and Past,” Sefirot line up against four letters of Tetragrammaton, Y‑H‑W‑H, as follows: Yud י Chokhmah, Abba Heh  ה Binah, Imma Waw  ו Six Lower Sephirot (Z”A) Heh  ה Malchut   The first two letters of the proper name of G‑d, Y‑H‑W‑H – Havayah, or Tetragrammaton – are י “Yud” (sometimes transliterated as "Yod") and ה “Heh” (sometimes transliterated as "Hey" or "He").  During the reading of the Ezekiel’s prophesy Maaseh Merkava [...]

Wellsprings from Above and Wellsprings from Below

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month… all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. (Gen. 7:11) In calculating the time of the dawn of Messianic revelation, the Zohar writes, And after six hundred years of the sixth thousand there will be opened the gates of wisdom above and the fountains of wisdom below, and the world will make preparations to enter on the seventh thousand as man makes preparation on the sixth day of the week, when the sun is about to set. (Zohar I, 117a) The Zohar calculates this based on the letters of the Tetragrammaton, but brings the verse from this parashah as the mnemonic: “In the six hundredth [...]

The Beard of the Long Face is Found

The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz (a.k.a. the Fridriker Rebbe) told the story about his father, the Rebbe Rashab. Once the brother of Rebbe Rashab, Rabbi Menachem Mendel (a.k.a. the RM”M) told him that he read in a magazine an article that stated that scientists found a nerve in the brain regulating the cognitive function so that when a person needed to remember something he would tilt his head looking up, whereas when the person needed to concentrate, he’d tilt his head down. The Rebbe Rashab took his brother to his study, took from the shelf a book by the Second Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Mittler Rebbe, in which it stated the same thing. The Rebbe Rashab said to his brother, “You’d think he was a doctor, but he wasn’t. He saw Adam [...]

Abraham Meets Abraham From a Parallel Universe

And he [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood over against him…  (Genesis 18:2) On this blog, we often discuss the collapse of the wavefunction as the result of a measurement. This phenomenon is called the “measurement problem.” There are several reasons, for which the collapse of the wavefunction—part and parcel of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics—is considered a problem. Firstly, it does not follow from the Schrödinger equation, the main equation of quantum mechanics that describes the evolution of the wavefunction in time, and is added ad hoc. Second, nobody knows how the collapse happens or how long the wave function takes to collapse. This is not even to consider that any notion that the collapse of the wavefunction is caused by human consciousness, as proposed [...]

Balak – Interference of Souls

Balak the son of Zippor saw all that Israel had done to the Amorites. Moab became terrified of the people, for they were numerous, and Moab became disgusted because of the children of Israel. Moab said to the elders of Midian, "Now this assembly will eat up everything around us, as the ox eats up the greens of the field. Balak the son of Zippor was king of Moab at that time. He sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor, to Pethor, which is by the river of the land of his people, to call for him, saying, "A people has come out of Egypt, and behold, they have covered the 'eye' of the land, and they are stationed opposite me. So now, please come and curse this people for me, for [...]

Maarat HaMachpelah – Double Cave

Give me the Machpelah (double) Cave Genesis 23:9 The first legal acquisition of land in Israel takes place in this Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, when Abraham purchases a double cave, Maarat HaMachpelah, in the city of Chevron (Hebron) as an ancestral burial plot. Today, the immense rectangular structure built over the cave more than 2000 years ago during Herodian era is the oldest house of worship in the world in continuous use. Biblical commentator Rashi explains that the cave was called Machpelah (lit., double) because it had two structures—an upper chamber and a lower chamber. (Another explanation given in the Talmud relates the name of this cave to thee couples buried there—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah. According to Kabbalah, Adam and Eve are buried there as well (Zohar, Ruth 96). Cave of the Patriarchs [...]

Saved by Randomness

Some people may be fooled by randomness but, when we realize that randomness opens the door to the Divine, we are saved by randomness. It is for this reason that two days a year—on Purim and on Yom HaKippurim (which is a Day like Purim)—we read about two lots and we celebrate randomness.

Jacob’s Ladder

And he dreamed, and behold! a ladder set up on the ground and its top reached to heaven; and behold, angels of G‑d were ascending and descending upon it. Gen. 28:12   Last night I dreamed of an atom with a ladder wedged in the nucleus of the atom, with electrons jumping up and down the ladder. For those readers unencumbered by the knowledge of atomic theory, a brief historical introduction may be in order. When the planetary theory of the atom was fir Ernest Rutherford st proposed by Ernest Rutherford in 1909, it depicted an atom as a solar system wherein a nucleus was positioned at the center of the atom, with electrons orbiting around the nucleus as planets orbit the Sun. However, there was a problem. According to Maxwell’s [...]

Leprous Cats and Angry Birds

In the Torah portion Tazriah (Leviticus 13), the Schrödinger cat[1] gets leprosy. Well, it’s not really leprosy, it’s a mysterious supernatural disease called tzara’as, nowadays translated as psoriasis. And it’s not a cat, but a Jew who gets afflicted by tzara’as. In fact, cats, other animals, and even gentiles (i.e., non-Jewish humans) are immune to this spiritual malady. So why do I call a poor Jew afflicted with tzara’as a “Schrödinger cat”? Because he sure acts like one. Indeed, had I not studied quantum mechanics and had I not learned about the collapse of the wave function[2] back at the university, I would have surely discovered it by reading this Torah portion (parshah)! A Jewish person with a skin lesion or boldness (present company excluded) is brought to a priest (kohen), who examines it [...]

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