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Leap Out of Exile

A quantum leap is defined as a movement of a particle from one state to the other without occupying any space in between. First it is in one place, and suddenly it is in another place, without any evidence of having traveled between the two places.

This process flies in the face of everything we know about the natural world. Objects don't suddenly appear and disappear; if something is to move from one place to the other, it needs to proceed from point to point in an orderly progression. But on a tiny, quantum level, particles follow none of these rules. Physicists and mathematicians do not have a model to explain this. Is it the particle that is moving? Or maybe space itself is moving, compressing itself so that the particle can do from one location to the other without ever moving.

In the Torah we likewise find stories of "quantum leaps," unexplained journeys that took a fraction of the expected time. One example is the trip of Eliezer, servant of Abraham, to Charan to find a wife for Isaac. He went there with ten camels laden with jewelry and other gifts for Isaac's future bride. To get to Charan he had to cross the desert, a journey of three days, but he made it in one day. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chassidism and a known wonder-worker, has many tales of miraculous journeys that took place in a fraction of the normal time. 

Kabbalah teaches that those episodes in which there was miraculous shortening of the distance, or "kefitzat haderech" in Hebrew, it was not the traveling time that was shortened but rather the distance itself. The tzaddik was suspended, so to speak, above the boundaries of time and space, so that he could move instantaneously from one place to another. The rules of nature remained in place; the tzaddik simply transcended them.

This phenomenon is exactly what will occur with the true and complete Redemption, when, as the prophets tell us, we will fly on "heavenly clouds" to Jerusalem. In one instant we will take a quantum leap out of exile -- not just the physical location, but an entire ethos and mentality -- and find ourselves in Redemption. Our perceptions, our values, our relationships will all change profoundly, and in an instant.  We will transcend the former limitations of exile and experience a new world of limitless revelation, in the time of Geulah
 

 


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