Declining
The
Where do we stand before Moshiach comes?
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Generation
Personal Ability
- Human ability has been generally shrinking with time.
- So at the end of days, we’re rock bottom.
Make sense of it:
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Reduction in Personal Ability
Earlier Generations | Later Generations | |
Intellectual Ability |
The “Oral Torah” wasn’t (even allowed to be) written as people knew it all by heart (hence its name). | - No deep minds. - Can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. |
Emotional Ability (expressed through prayer) |
Prayers were a few pages long (easy & quick to arouse those big hearts of theirs). | - No deep hearts. - We say “OMG!” 100 times a day. - We have thick prayer BOOKS! (takes longer to cultivate our emotions towards G-d). |
Physical Ability |
- Must stand up when learning Torah (the whole day). - Fasting one or two days = no problem. |
- Allowed to sit while learning Torah because we just can’t stand up so long. - We can’t function if we miss a meal. |
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Shift in Focus Over Time
- Reduction in Ability is not only in each of the human faculties (Intellect, Emotion, Action) –
- It slides down across them –
- “The Falling Suka of David”:
- Earlier generations had large intellectual capacity – their main occupation was Torah Learning.
- Later generations are bigger in the realm of Action.
- Not because we’re physically stronger.
- Rather because we have more means at our disposal:
- Funds and technology.
- Doing Charity and Good Deeds like no earlier generation has ever known.
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"Heels of Moshiach"
- Before Moshiach comes, you can hear his heels (footsteps).
- That’s when the generation is also like a heel in comparison with earlier generations:
- Fraught with insensitivity.
- Look – The footsteps of Moshiach and the associated climax are in full swing, but alas, they go straight over our heads!
- However there’s also a plus to being spiritually insensitive:
- Can handle the roughness of Deep Evil.
- Just doing the right thing with earnestness.
- Any other generation would appreciate how ugly and dangerous Deep Evil is, and would go crazy.
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Head | Heels | |
---|---|---|
Within a Generation | Leaders | Simple Folk |
Across History | Forefathers | Pre-Moshiach |
Sensitivity | Very | Hardly |
Today's Brains - in Application
- Philosophy can make important new grounds –
- In the beginning of the journey.
- But when you’re hired to execute, you don’t take out the drawing board.
- Depth of mind was reserved to the philosophers of old.
- The ingenuity we have today is in how to apply past achievements, not dreaming new ideas from scratch.
- Action, not theory. Application, not reinvention.
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G-dly Capacaity
- Earlier generations had it all in their heads
- We have it all (and much more) on the computer
- It works the same way spiritually:
- We can reach far higher levels with the deeper dimensions of Torah than with our own IQ.
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Summary
In Pre-Moshiach Times, personal ability is at record low because:
- Otherwise we’d go crazy (from the Pre-Moshiach Climax).
- That’s how we can handle the Deep Evils that surface then.
- It’s really not about our own capacity, but about the Torah we acquire. The deeper the Torah – the larger our ability to reach the greatest heights – those destined for the Messianic Era.
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Two Appendices:
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Visual Representation
of the change in the landscape of Evil over time
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Daniel 12:10
They will be clarified and whitened, and many will be purified, and the wicked will pervert [them], and all the wicked will not understand, but the wise will understand.
- The verse is dealing with (“they”) Deep Evils...
- “Many” – world scale, not just local instances.
- Everyone can see – “clarified”, or even more so – “whitened”
- But to “understand”, got to be “wise”.
- Why is it happening? The deep evils that have been hidden thus far are rising to the surface – to get cleaned up (“purify”).
- Personal and global.
- How? Via the Deep Good (Torah).
- So be wise.
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Declining Generation
By Itamar Hatzvi
Declining Generation
The reduction in personal ability in pre-Messianic Times
- 1,593