"The Great Redemption" (69)

"The Great Redemption" by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

-- A Discourse on The End of the Exile and the Beginning of the Great Redemption

Translated by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
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69.

You’ll now come to apprehend the point I’d begun before about how everything is joined with everything else. (It comes to this.) The dimming of the light of the Luminaries allowed the other side to grow stronger, and when it did that, the light of holiness was shut off very much more so than before.

Nonetheless, the Luminaries will be as strong as they’d been before once the redemption comes about, and they’ll crush the husks in their path. This then explains the verse I’d cited before, “They’ll achieve (yaseigu, without the final *nun*) joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing will flee” (Isaiah 35:10).

But when the husks will be swallowed up, in (keeping with) the mystery of “He will swallow up death forever” (Isaiah 25:8), there'll be nothing to hold goodness back. The Luminaries will once again irradiate revelation upon revelation, light after light, and the light will be very great and intense. It’s about that which the verse says “they’ll achieve (yaseigun, *with* the final nun) joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing will flee” (Isaiah 51:11). For “sorrow and sighing” would have already fled, so they’d have “achieved joy and gladness”.

Now, this refers to the second revelation (spoken of above), which will remain (in effect) forever. And it’s here where the elongated final nun is used, since this is the time when the union will be established forever, and when Keter, which is the fiftieth gate (of understanding), is to be revealed.

Why will it be revealed (then)? Because the emendation of the high and exalted Keter that is at the head of all of Atzilut would have already come about. As it’s said, “G-’s spirit will rest upon him -- the spirit of Chochma and Binah” (Isaiah 11:2).

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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