From
Rabbi Eli Munk, The Seven Days of the
Beginning, (Feldheim) note 6,
p. 11:
"The day that
five elders wrote the Torah in
Greek for King Ptolemy was as hard for Israel as the day when the
(golden) Calf
was made, because the Torah could not be translated as it should be."
The
following two quotations from the sages are taken
from The Light Beyond, Adventures in
Hassidic Thought,
©1981 by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York:
Maznaim
Publishing, ISBN 0-940118-33-5):
pp:
158-9:
"Rabbi
Yehoshua Avraham of Zitmar [said]:
'Our sages
teach us that the Torah was created two thousand years before the world.
'This is
difficult to understand, since the Torah contains accounts of many
events that
happened after creation. How can the
Torah speak of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, the holy Patriarchs, and
all the
other happenings recorded in the Torah?
All these things had not yet happened (when the Torah was written).
...'Actually, when the Torah was first created, it was a mixture of
letters. The letters of the Torah were
not yet combined into words as they are now...
'Whenever
anything then happened in the world, these letters were combined, and
the words
were recombined to form the account.
'This was
true of the account of creation, and the story of Adam and Eve. The
letters
combined with each other, forming the words that told this story.
Similarly, when an individual died, a
combination of letters was formed, saying that he had died. The
same was true of the rest of the Torah.
'As soon as
an event (that was to be recorded in the Torah) took place, a
combination was
immediately formed, corresponding to that event. If a different
event had taken place, the
letters would have combined differently.
The Torah is God's wisdom, and it has no end.'
Rabbi Yehoshua Avraham of Zitmar,
Geulath Yisroel, Pithgamin Kadishin.
Quoted in "Sefer Baal Shem
Tov," Zoth
HaBerachah 4. Cf. Machazeh Avraham,
Zoth HaBerachah 5.
pp
160-1:
"Rabbi
Levi Yitzchok [said]:
...'In its
sequence of descent to this lowly world, the Torah must become clothed
in a
material garment, which often consists of stories. When God
grants a person knowledge, understanding
and intelligence, uncovering the mask that blinds his eyes, he can see
the
wonders of God's Torah. The people on
this level are few, however, and the majority only understand the Torah
according to its simple meaning.'......
"See
Zohar 1:153a, 1:201a, 3:98b, 3:152a, Zohar
Chadash 10d."
The
following excerpt from the Zohar is taken from Louis Ginsberg, On Jewish Law and Lore, ©1955
Jewish Publications Society of
America. New York: Athenum, 1970. LCC
#55-6707, pp. 144-145
"Regarding
these levels, the Zohar [Zohar, iii.
152] states:
'Wo [sic]
unto the man who asserts that this Torah intends to relate only
commonplace
things and secular narratives; for if this were so, then in the present
times
likewise a Torah might be written with more attractive narratives...Now
the
narratives of the Torah are its garments.
He who thinks that these garments are the Torah itself deserves to
perish and have no share in the world to come.
Wo unto the fools who look no further when they see an elegant
robe! More valuable than the garment is
the body which carries it, and more valuable
even than that is the soul which animates the body. Fools see
only the garment of the Torah, the
more intelligent see the body, the wise
see the soul, its proper being, and in the Messianic time the 'upper
soul' of
the Torah will stand revealed.'"
|