The Great Revelation of Wisdom

The first medrash in Medrash Raba tells us that Hakadosh Baruch Hu “looked into the Torah and created the world”. In other words, our holy Torah is the blueprint for creation. According to this, it should be that everything that happens in the world is in sync with the Torah. However, at face value it would appear that, at times, the world and the Torah are going in two opposite directions. Regarding the giving over of Torah: every generation that is further removed from Sinai is further removed from the proper understanding of Torah. This is alluded to in the gemara in Shabbos that says the previous generations were like ‘malachim’  and we are like donkeys. And for this reason Rishonim are more authoritative than Achronim etc. However, when it comes to the physical world we are all witnesses to the indisputable phenomenon that as time goes on the understanding of science and technology is greatly increasing. How do these two things go together?

The truth is that on a simple ‘pshot’ level these two patterns do not blend together.  Anyone who has studied Torah and secular studies recognizes that while in Torah, texts from hundreds of years ago (and much more) can be of the highest authority, when it comes to secular knowledge usually the more recent works are the most reliable ones. However, there is a remarkable well-known Zohar Hakadosh that can help us begin to solve this conundrum. The Zohar Hakadosh ( Vayera 117A) says that in the 600th year of the sixth millennium the gates of wisdom from above and the wellsprings of wisdom from below will be opened, and the world will be prepared to enter the seventh millenium like a man who is preparing on Friday as the sun begins to set for Shabbos. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the “wellsprings of wisdom from above” refers to an increased understanding of Torah knowledge while the “wellsprings from below” refers to an increased understanding in physical matters. So according to the Zoahar Hakadosh in 5,600 (1840) incredible spiritual and physical wisdom began to........

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