"The Great Redemption" (52)

"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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52.

I’ll now explain the order of things -- how things developed from the day mankind appeared on Earth to the end of days -- in some detail. And you’ll see how deep G-d’s thoughts are.

G-d even allotted a place for the husk when He created the world, at the very lowest of levels. (And He allowed for it to exist so as) to test mankind and to grant him a goodly reward for his efforts.

Know however that the axiom that “G-d has made the one (i.e., good) as well as the other (i.e., evil)” (Ecclesiastes 7:14) functions throughout this period. While holiness and impurity haven't (yet) attached themselves to each other, nonetheless the husk turns to holiness and yearns to attach itself to it, but it hasn’t been permitted to, since it was assigned a role that it can't (yet) circumvent.

But know as well that G-d created mankind within the mystery of Binah alone, which is why he was created male and female in a single configuration, back to back. So he has been given the assignment to complete the rectification within the mystery of Chochma, as I’ll explain later on.

Now, had G-d already rectified the various worlds within the mystery of Chochma, the husk would have been destroyed (without man’s input). (It’s thus clear that) the rectification is (indeed) in mankind’s hands.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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