According to a powerfully thorough video documentary on the history of science floating around the Net (http://video.google.com/videoplay), a fascinating three-tiered, heirarchical pattern has emerged:
1) Materialism: The agenda of the original Scientists was to establish concrete laws of nature. Most of these men started off as philosophers who sought to "bring down" the lofty Greek ideas and mythological speculations into the "real world." The mind was accordingly seen not as an end-all but a most powerful means for focusing the spirit onto the tangible. Seeing, for them, was believing.
2) Energy: Around the 18th and 19th centuries, the world of science began to metamorphize into an awareness of a whole new dimension of existence that is much more essential than materialism. No longer was seeing believing, but sensing a higher existence. Good ole, Jewish Einstein became known as its main discoverer of this new stage in science and his famous E=MC2 became its mantra.
3) Information: Up until this very day, a RADICAL revolution in science has been taking place since around the time of the Holocaust. It's been heralded in by a pair, called Watson and Crick, who discovered a cellular phenomena called D.N.A., which has since been characterized as an "irredicibly complex information unit." This age is respectively called the Information Age. It's all about "irreducibly reducing" the challenges of this world into self-contained units, that function as if they have minds of their own.
Now here's the spin. There's an UNbelievable parallel between this triad of material, energy & information… matter, light & DNA… and the Patriarchs: Avraham, Yitzchak & Yaacov!
Now please, just think about this for a moment. Starting with the last Patriarch, Yaacov, let us consider the fact that he did have two very distinct personas, was known for his extremely "informative" relationship with Torah, and did have a daughter named… DiNA !!!
Alright, go ahead and smile. But the way this pans out in Jewish history is truly eye-opening.
Now please, just think about this for a moment. Starting with the last Patriarch, Yaacov, let us consider the fact that he did have two very distinct personas, was known for his extremely "informative" relationship with Torah, and did have a daughter named… DiNA !!!
Alright, go ahead and smile. But the way this pans out in Jewish history is truly eye-opening.
First of all, the three Patriarchs were each given Promises about their progeny. By way of some very potent metaphors, Genesis tells us that they were assured that the Jewish people would be as innumerable as the stars, the sand and the dust. According to the Nesivos Shalom [Breishis, Par. VaYeitzei pp.202-207 ], the subtle distinctions bewtween these metaphors are very significant. Their meaning is as follows:
STARS – Those Jews who are highly spiritual, whose inner lives shine far above this world, are being assured of extraordinary personal success beyond even what they dreamed of achieving (like occurred with the Prophets and Sages).
SAND – Those spiritually bedraggled Jews whose only merits are their willingness to hold back their waves of lust which seek to drown out their basic purity, are being endowed with a unique capacity to unify. Like a sand particle has nothing by itself but everything when apart of an entire beach front, so too these Jews will have tremendous success if they work together in selfless communion.
DUST – The average Jew, who is very much involved in this world, in the positive sense of attempting to do Mitzvahs through it, is being imbued with tremendous potential for spiritual growth. As long as their relationship with water (symbolic of this-worldly passions), the lives of such "dusty Jews" will be blessed from on high to blossom straight towards the stars, as the name Israel, Yisra-e`l, literally means “striving straight towards G-d.”
Now let's develop this a bit more:
AVRAHAM – His life was not only a star of spiritual success in his becoming the greatest of G-d-lovers [Is. 41] but he excelled in an ability to translate whatever he learned into a language from which even the most spiritually pathetic, sand-people could gain. Hence we learn that even the Am HaAretz, the "people of the earth," were full of praise for Avraham as a "prince of G-d" [Gen.23: 6], and our tradition is full legends about how Avraham wooed even staunch idolaters to acknowledge Monotheism. Thus, in perfect synchronicity, he receives the blessing of his progeny being as numerous as both the stars and the sand.
YITZCHAK – His greatness was in focusing on Avraham's highest vision. The stars were his aspiration while he made no pretense about touching sand-people. Well, except for his wicked son Esaav, who forever seemed to be drowning within oceans of passion if not for the lifesavers his father kept sending him, until he decided on just one last swim....
YAACOV – His claim to fame was his recognition of the limitations of his strength. While his natural endowment was dusty, growth-determined strife from the crooked earth straight towards the stars, which was so much more balanced than his father's and grandfather's star focus that he was able to command the loyalty of each and every one of his children – still, he knew this path was vulnerable. For it was predicated on being above the sand; on being above the lure of tayvas, this-worldly passions, and therefore never needing to fight them. Hence if ever a member of his clan would give in to his tayvas, he'd lose all connection to Israel! Thus Yaacov pleads at the outset of this parsha for his seed to have immediate access to grandfather's "lowest" merits – the power of fighting back tayvas visa vie Jewish unity.
STARS – Those Jews who are highly spiritual, whose inner lives shine far above this world, are being assured of extraordinary personal success beyond even what they dreamed of achieving (like occurred with the Prophets and Sages).
SAND – Those spiritually bedraggled Jews whose only merits are their willingness to hold back their waves of lust which seek to drown out their basic purity, are being endowed with a unique capacity to unify. Like a sand particle has nothing by itself but everything when apart of an entire beach front, so too these Jews will have tremendous success if they work together in selfless communion.
DUST – The average Jew, who is very much involved in this world, in the positive sense of attempting to do Mitzvahs through it, is being imbued with tremendous potential for spiritual growth. As long as their relationship with water (symbolic of this-worldly passions), the lives of such "dusty Jews" will be blessed from on high to blossom straight towards the stars, as the name Israel, Yisra-e`l, literally means “striving straight towards G-d.”
Now let's develop this a bit more:
AVRAHAM – His life was not only a star of spiritual success in his becoming the greatest of G-d-lovers [Is. 41] but he excelled in an ability to translate whatever he learned into a language from which even the most spiritually pathetic, sand-people could gain. Hence we learn that even the Am HaAretz, the "people of the earth," were full of praise for Avraham as a "prince of G-d" [Gen.23: 6], and our tradition is full legends about how Avraham wooed even staunch idolaters to acknowledge Monotheism. Thus, in perfect synchronicity, he receives the blessing of his progeny being as numerous as both the stars and the sand.
YITZCHAK – His greatness was in focusing on Avraham's highest vision. The stars were his aspiration while he made no pretense about touching sand-people. Well, except for his wicked son Esaav, who forever seemed to be drowning within oceans of passion if not for the lifesavers his father kept sending him, until he decided on just one last swim....
YAACOV – His claim to fame was his recognition of the limitations of his strength. While his natural endowment was dusty, growth-determined strife from the crooked earth straight towards the stars, which was so much more balanced than his father's and grandfather's star focus that he was able to command the loyalty of each and every one of his children – still, he knew this path was vulnerable. For it was predicated on being above the sand; on being above the lure of tayvas, this-worldly passions, and therefore never needing to fight them. Hence if ever a member of his clan would give in to his tayvas, he'd lose all connection to Israel! Thus Yaacov pleads at the outset of this parsha for his seed to have immediate access to grandfather's "lowest" merits – the power of fighting back tayvas visa vie Jewish unity.
But let's not stop here. Consider the pattern of Jewish history from the time the Israelites began to settle the Holy Land:
THE FIRST TEMPLE – After a generation in the extremely anti-materialistic desert, the emphasis in this period was on uplifting, through sacrificial rites, all of material existence. To be sure, the chances of the vagabonding Israelite clan descending into Egyptian slavery and then returning to the holy land with such a trans-materialistic agenda defy all evolutionary odds!
THE SECOND TEMPLE – This period revolved around revealing the essential energy behind the Jewish enterprise: the recording of the Oral Torah (Talmud). Towards the end of this period, shortly after the original Chanuka, this "nuclear" Judaism exploded in Greece (starting with the translation of Tana"ch into the Septuagint, over which we fast on the 10th of Tevet)… and we've been living within the dust of its fall-out ever since!
THE THIRD (soon to come!) TEMPLE – This is the "Information Age;" the time about which our prophets have told us the Earth will be filled with knowledge of G-d, as clear throughout the Book of Isaiah. Not just mind-knowledge, but EARTH-filled knowledge! Something very, very deep will come alive from within our most sand-filled lives. Aye it's the power of father Yaacov's prayers taking root. And the power of his DiNA leading us back to Torah…
Now, one, last, truly unbelievable comparison. A major prayer we say on Chanukah, which always falls out around the time we read about Dina:
THE FIRST TEMPLE – After a generation in the extremely anti-materialistic desert, the emphasis in this period was on uplifting, through sacrificial rites, all of material existence. To be sure, the chances of the vagabonding Israelite clan descending into Egyptian slavery and then returning to the holy land with such a trans-materialistic agenda defy all evolutionary odds!
THE SECOND TEMPLE – This period revolved around revealing the essential energy behind the Jewish enterprise: the recording of the Oral Torah (Talmud). Towards the end of this period, shortly after the original Chanuka, this "nuclear" Judaism exploded in Greece (starting with the translation of Tana"ch into the Septuagint, over which we fast on the 10th of Tevet)… and we've been living within the dust of its fall-out ever since!
THE THIRD (soon to come!) TEMPLE – This is the "Information Age;" the time about which our prophets have told us the Earth will be filled with knowledge of G-d, as clear throughout the Book of Isaiah. Not just mind-knowledge, but EARTH-filled knowledge! Something very, very deep will come alive from within our most sand-filled lives. Aye it's the power of father Yaacov's prayers taking root. And the power of his DiNA leading us back to Torah…
Now, one, last, truly unbelievable comparison. A major prayer we say on Chanukah, which always falls out around the time we read about Dina:
You, in Your abundant compassion,
stood up for (the Makabees)
at the time of their distress,
You struggled their struggles,
You judged their judgments…
THEIR DISTRESS – over the ideological supremacy the Greeks sought through mastering “nature.”
THEIR STRUGGLES – against the Hellenistic belief that Judaism can be lived as a soulless culture, as a ceremonial religion without the crucial, life-transforming foundations of Circumcision, Torah learning, Shabbos and holydays.
THEIR JUDGMENTS – transliterally: Danta es DINAm.
Get it?
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