The World is Built on Kindness

Once Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov commented on the following Talmudic discussion:

Rabbi Akiva was asked, “If the Holy One loves the needy why doesn't He support them?”

He responded, “To save them from the judgments of purgatory...as charity saves from death.” (Baba Bathra 10a)

Rabbi Nathan explained,  “This passage is not difficult at all to understand. There's no doubt that the Holy One can support the needy honorably and bestow upon them all the good bestowed upon the wealthy.

“However since the world is built on kindness, it sustains the world. As such, the world was created only for the sake of human beings, who have free will, to do kindness with each other.

“Therefore, God takes tremendous pleasure when He sees a needy person seeking alms approach a wealthy person and the wealthy person, who has Holy One’s money in his hands, struggles with his selfish inclinations and the evil in his heart; which seek to prevent him from giving charity.

“Then, with his free choice, he overcomes his selfish urges and turns towards the side of kindness, performing the will Creator to extend the Holy One’s kindness to the needy person who approached him with an outstretched hand.

“As such it is brought down in the Holy Zohar (Vayeirah 104a), When the Holy One does kindness with humans, He sends them a gift. What is the gift? It is a needy person through whom they can acquire merit.

“The Holy One loves both the needy and the wealthy. He sends the needy as a gift, in order that the wealthy may acquire merit, through the kindness they do, which sustains the world.

“Therefore our sages teach, More than the wealthy does for the needy, the needy does for the wealthy. (Ruth Rabba 84)

“[This is divinely arranged] in order to save the wealthy from the judgments of purgatory. Besides this, the Holy One has an opportunity to glory in His handiworks, because a human being, endowed with free choice, overcame his selfish urges and did the will of his Creator to sustain the world with kindness.”

~ translated from Otzer Nachmani, 16 (Volume 1, pages 28 and 29).

(This translation was done as part of a project for the BRI. Please note that it's only a preliminary version and not the actual submitted version.)

The Holy Martyrs in Pittsburgh

While the martyrs were slain, most Jewish congregations read from their Torah scrolls about two different kinds of births, both of which profoundly affected history and, according to Judaism, will yet even more profoundly affect destiny.

One was the miraculous, yet open, birth of Isaac, the very first person to be born Jewish. By the character of his birth, you might say that he was born in the light!

The other was the obscured and, though well intended but, incestuous births of the ancestors of Ammon and Moab. They were conceived and born secreted away from society in the bowels of a cave. They were born in the darkness!

With both kinds of birth, the one in the light and the other in darkness, God planned the genetics of the Davidic dynasty and ultimately the Messiah himself. The open birth of Isaac obviously led to the birth of his grandson Judah, the progenitor of the Davidic dynasty.

Then on the hidden, womb-like, levels was born the progenitors of two women who would eventually marry into the Jewish royal line. They too shared in the ancestry of this line of Jewish leaders, leading to the Messiah himself.  They were Ruth the Moabite, the grandmother of King David, and Naamah the Ammonite, the mother of Rehoboam. And so God uses spiritual darkness as a tool to bring about spiritual light.

The most powerful reason I have heard to date, why spiritual darkness leads to spiritual light is because ultimately there is no darkness at all. Everything which appears as darkness, is merely suppressed light! However, since suppression takes a lot more energy than expression, only the very strongest and brightest of lights can undergo suppression, transforming into darkness. The deeper the suppression, the stronger and brighter the light!

Since, light is the default state of reality, darkness is an inherently unstable situation. It’s one that’s an imposed! Among many other things, this explains why there’s so much energy locked up in matter waiting, under the right conditions, to be released as nuclear energy. The relative darkness of matter only exists by the suppression of a certain kind of light known as electromagnetic energy.

I keep reiterating this idea to my study partners in my weekly study sessions in the teachings of Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov.  The teaching we are currently studying discusses how a person can be positively motivated by finding his or her “good sparks”, which means recognizing one’s own good deeds which point to the inner goodness lodged in one’s own heart.

My study partners asked me, “If darkness is really the light, then why are we searching for sparks?”

I responded, “You know how a garment can have a thread sticking out, which if pulled can unravel the whole garment?”

“Yeah”, they nodded and smiled.

I continued,”Though part of the garment, this thread has not become quite worked into its fabric. Similarly, the spark in the dark is like that thread. It tells us where to pull, so we can unravel the darkness and expose it for the light that it is. It’s a key allowing us to open up the darkness.

“Being an imposed state, darkness can never be total. To one extent or another, it will always fail to assimilate every bit of light into its larger bulk. There will always be a spark or two or likely more which threads out from its fabric.”

Yesterday, moment of darkness was cast over the world in general and over the Jewish world in particular. Eleven Holy martyrs ascended in sanctification of God’s Holy Name. It didn’t happen in Western, Central or Eastern Europe, places historically noted for soil soaked in with Jewish blood. It happened right here in America, right in the very State I live in.

However, unlike the historic tragedies of Europe, I was comforted to hear how many leaders and people of good will throughout the world took on the Jewish tragedy their own. They turned to a mourning Jewish community with practical aid, vigils, prayer meetings and supportive words of comfort. They recognized that anti-Semitism is a vile extremism which, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states, only begins with the Jews and pretty soon threatens the entire social structure of a good and decent society.

I cannot claim to know what hidden light lies within the darkness of centuries upon centuries of anti-Semitism and persecution of my People. Though I look forward to this precious light with absolute faith and trust, it has yet to be revealed. I have heard some speculations, but never truly found any of them satisfying. One example of such being, that the State of Israel was a divine gift which emerged from the holocaust; as if implying that the holocaust is somehow justified by the creation of a Jewish State. Can any land, even holy land, be worth even a single human life, let alone six million?

Even if I do not yet see light unravel, with such outpourings of aid and support, I think we see some sparks; in fact many of them. They are in the form of good hearted people world over, who really want to see a better world; one where hatred disappears and life finally finds and celebrates its true meaning and purpose. Working together with these people, might yet help to unravel centuries of bitter darkness and usher humanity into a future filled with hope, celebration and light.  

 --------------O------------

Pulsations

Kabbalah never speaks about God, only about His revelations. The study of theoretical Kabbalah is essentially the study of the revelations God employs to create finite entities and to relate to them. Examples of such revelations include spiritual lights, divine names, sefirahs, God’s speech, the throne of glory, souls, angels, nature forces, prophecy … everything in this physical world too. The Infinite Being Himself can never be defined, understood or grasped by any finite entity, no matter how holy, spiritual or sublime. Therefore, Kabbalah never speaks directly about Him.

In their explanations, books of Jewish mystical thought often rely on the usage of spatial imagery. Though possibly convincing, such descriptions are not intended to be understood literally as referring to physical space. For more accurate understanding, such imagery needs to be divested from physicality.

Our experience of space centers on notions such as closeness, distance and shapes. When Kabbalah employs the terms of closeness and distance in discussions of spiritual entities or realms, one way to divest such descriptions from their physicality is to understanding them as referring to how similar or dissimilar the entities or realms are to each other. Of course there are many gradations along the spectrum from dissimilar to similar, which allow for a very wide range of variation when distance and closeness.

Though space exists in the spiritual realms, it does in way that is qualitatively different than physical space. It's closer to what we relate to as “psychological space”. Psychologically speaking, people who share similarities have the capacity to be close. Those who are dissimilar are considered distant. In that sense two people who live right next door might be considered distant, while two people who are on other ends of the globe might be considered close. The basis for this paradox is that spiritual space and physical space operate differently. Since psychology involves the human soul, it’s not surprising that it echoes the spiritual version of space into our shared physical realm.

This understanding of space bears an interesting implication. Imagine, two spiritual entities becoming progressively more and more similar to each other.  This means that they also draw progressively closer and closer to each other. Then at the moment of complete similarity, they suddenly converge into a single point. So in spiritual space, the notion of “being identically similar” ends up simply meaning, “Being identical”. There’s no such a thing as exact duplication, like we strive for in mass production.

A circle or a sphere is traditionally credited as a shape whose uniform roundness indicates absolute equality and sameness.  While this makes sense in terms of physical space, in spiritual space shouldn’t the correct shape for such equality and sameness be a single point? 

To further elaborate, the expanded size of a sphere seems to indicate differences, as there are some spots which are closer or further away from each other. Along a circumference, spots 90 degrees away from each other cannot possibly be as similar as spots a mere 45 degrees from each other. So what can Jewish mystical thought possibly mean when it employs the metaphor of spheres, such as spherical sefirahs (which will be discussed later)?  

 

The only way I can think of explaining it is that somehow all the points on a sphere are the same and yet, they’re different. But how is this paradox to be understood? 

Possibly, they exhibit active sameness and passive differences. Passive differences are differences which only become expressed when acted upon by an outside force.

However, at first glance this does not seem to entirely make sense. A sphere has an expanded shape, a possible footprint of these passive differences. So, passive differences seem to influence shape. Otherwise, it would be a single collapsed point.  If so, isn’t the expanded shape some sort of expression of an active nature latent within the passivity?  In a slight sense, it is some kind of expression of what’s latent inside. However, a sphere is a very general shape, lacking in defined specifics. So, the only thing it broadcasts is the general expression that indeed passive differences latently lurk within. But very tellingly, it does not express what they are. This should not be viewed as unusual, considering that everything created (or emanated) bears some touch of its opposite and usually manifests it slight measure.

Kabbalah makes very heavy usage of the sphere metaphor in Rabbi Isaac Luria’s description of the opening stages of (emanation followed by) creation. For the sake of brevity, the upcoming cosmic narrative is merely a very brief outline these early stages. It focuses on the bare essentials necessary to grasp the role of the sphere metaphor and what else it might imply.

Rabbi Luria’s narrative opens with an Infinite Light. This Infinite Light filled all reality. Then in the midst of this Infinite Light there was a tiny and even withdrawal of Light, leaving behind a tiny spherically shaped vacuum.

 

 The only entity present in the vacuum was a lingering tenuous afterglow remaining from the vacated Light. Though this afterglow would serve as the raw material for all which would later be (emanated and) created in this vacated area, it still required something more to participate in the structuring of the spiritual and physical realms.

The Infinite Light penetrated into the vacuum by extending a line of light, a pipeline of sorts; alive and flowing with spiritual lights. Hence, the something more arrived on the scene. (It’s likely that the choice of where to penetrate was influenced by which spot along the sphere’s membrane had a passive difference most amenable to receive the penetration.)

To claim that the line of light entered immediately as a straight line extending to the center of the vacuum is an oversimplification, very useful for other summaries of what had occurred. However, this summary requires different details in order to properly depict the role of spheres.

What really happened is that the line of light entered twice, each time in a very different style; first a feminine style and then a masculine style. Also, each entering is referred to as an entry of the sefirahs. Sefirahs are ten basic modes of divine expressions used by God to create finite entities and to relate to them.  

The human soul also has its own parallel to these ten modes of expression which it shares with the body. The soul expresses itself in the human body by sharing its will, wisdom, understanding, kindness, discipline, compassion, taking control, ceding control, seeking relationships and accomplishments. Similarly, as soul to body, by extending the line of light the Infinite Light shares with the afterglow a much higher version of these ten modes of expression.

As mentioned there are two basic forms of sefirahs, feminine and masculine. When the line of light enters in a feminine style, the sefirahs manifest in a spherical shape. When the line of light enters in a masculine style, the sefirahs take on a linear shape.

First the spherical sefirahs entered. The line of light entered the vacated space just a little bit. Then it immediately ballooned out in the shape of a sphere along the contours of the inner wall the vacated space’s membrane. Why? It yearned to be as close as possible to its source, the Infinite Light just beyond the wall.

Had the line of light stopped here, it would never reach deeply enough into the vacated space to achieve its ultimate goal. So, it traveled a bit further down into the interior of the vacated and then ballooned out again in the shape of a sphere. In this instance, it ballooned out as close as possible to inner wall of the first spherical sefirah. Why? It too yearned to be close to the Infinite Light and this was the closest it could get. Then the process repeated a third time, then a fourth time, a fifth time,...until there were a total of ten concentric spheres of spherical sefirahs; each one layered within the other - like the layers of an onion.

I was taught that whatever is round, spherical, circular and cyclical in nature at large, results from the influence of these spherical sefirahs. Since, spheres and circles have no real top, sides or bottom, the spherical sefirahs and what flows from their influence exhibit a, feminine, non-hierarchical quality.

Then the line of light entered the vacated space a second time. This time it was an entry of masculine sefirahs. Being male they matched up with the already present feminine sefirahs. These masculine sefirahs are known as linear sefirahs. Unlike the spherical sefirahs, they bear a hierarchical quality.

As the ten linear sefirahs entered, stage by stage, each one immersed itself in the zone of its matching spherical sefirah; thus, becoming a spiritual version of a couple. Through penetration, not only have the linear sefirahs themselves become immersed in the zones of their matching spherical sefirahs, but also their surrounding auras have also become immersed in these zones as well. It’s like a person diving into a swimming pool. Not only does the person enter the water, but also his or her bathing gear as well.  So too, the auras surrounding the linear sefirahs entered into the zones of their matching spherical sefirahs.

Everything laid out till this point, though oversimplified for brevity, is from standard texts conveying Rabbi Isaac Luria’s teachings and traditional commentaries. When studying Rabbi Luria’s narrative, it is very easy to forget that it’s a presentation of carefully crafted snapshots of key representative stages rather than a full movie version. Thus, if one seeks a more complete picture of what happened, there's a lot of dynamic action to fill in between the snapshots. It’s likely that such gaps are intentional, as they help keep the teachings an oral tradition – requiring a disciple to accept a master. To the best of my current knowledge, the narrative does not elaborate much on the dynamics of the interaction between the spherical and linear sefirahs. It's likely something lost in the stages between the snapshots.

However, is it possible to match up a highly compatible couple and not expect dynamic interaction? As such, it makes sense to me that besides being attracted to the surrounding Infinite Light, the spherical sefirahs are also attracted to the flow of lights alive within linear sefirahs. As they are attracted to both Lights, their love is twofold. Caught between their two loves, the spherical sefirahs pulsate back and forth between their two sources of attraction. When primarily drawn to the surrounding Infinite Light they assume their spherical shape, their default shape.

However, when the lights flowing through the linear sefirahs are particularly strong and clearly radiant, the spherical sefirahs contract closer towards them. As they contract closer, they reshape into ovals; like a chicken eggs, somewhat narrower on top and rounder on the bottom - for the linear sefirahs are more present on the top than they are at the bottom. Then when the presence of lights within the linear sefirahs wanes, the spherical sefirahs are again overcome by their attraction for the surrounding Infinite Light and revert back to their default spherical shapes. Like a beating heart, this process of contraction and expansion keeps repeating. It's reminiscent of the angels in the first chapter of Ezekiel running and returning, of lungs expanding and contracting, of scholars teaching and retreating.

Part of what sets off this series of pulsations for the spherical sefirahs is that the linear sefirahs have pulsations of their own. Sometimes lights flow through them very intensely and sometimes less so; an ebb and flow. For example, by aligning our behavior with Torah guidance we can arouse a greater flow of lights to course through the linear sefirahs. Since creation has to go on, besides what our behavior arouses, there’s always a baseline level of fresh flows of lights streaming through; as, “He constantly renews the act of creation on a daily basis”. (Morning liturgy) However, our efforts intensify these flows and bring more blessing into the entirety of creation.

When the spherical sefirahs contract closer to the linear sefirahs, they likely push the auras around the linear sefirahs closer their bodies, bringing them into closer interaction and union; greatly enhancing their spirituality.

Not being a master of Kabbalah at present, I do not claim to know for sure whether or not I am correct and the spherical sefirahs reshape into ovals when attracted the linear sefirahs in their midst. All I can do is to explain why it makes sense to me that they should. I base it simply on what I presently know and can put together.  I leave it to those more learned and saintly to determine whether or not I was correct; whether partially or fully. To my understanding such reshapings result from an activation of the latent passive differences within what’s actively undifferentiated and hence, spherical. When heavily acted upon, the passive differences awake and partially take on the shape of the forces acting upon them. So, a linear force could conceivably cause a sphere to move out of its default shape and to temporarily reshape into an oval.

If I am correct, the idea of oval shapes indicating union between what’s spherical and linear, may shed some light on one of the factors used to determine the likelihood that an egg derives from a kosher bird. In Judaism, a perfectly spherical egg is assumed to have likely been derived from a non-kosher bird. However, if the egg is oval there's a high likelihood that it derived from a kosher bird.

Regardless of the biological processes which determine the shape of an egg, the spiritual reason may be because a perfectly spherical egg indicates a lack of spiritual influences from the linear sefirahs. In contrast, the shape of an oval egg may bear the spiritual mark of both the linear and spherical sefirahs, while they were in a state of union. If so, then an oval egg is more wholesomely shaped by spiritual influences and should be able to pass that spirituality onto someone who eats it.

----------------O----------------

A Soul’s Mission

-----------------------------

Work n’ Reward

Society

 Rewards us,

  To work us,

God

 Works us,

  To reward us.

-------●-------

For quite a number of years, I have been saddened whenever I heard people say that so and so passed on because he or she completed his or her life’s mission. What in particular about  such a statement saddened me is that it seemed to reduce the value of a human life to a mission, an accomplishment; i.e. something with a price tag - even if a spiritual one. This flew in the face of the notion that a human life is too valuable to measure.

This didn't seem to me to be much different from a mindset which places a value on a human being based on his or her contributions to society. Then once “too old” to truly contribute, the rights of the elderly need to be advocated for in the legislative and / or legal systems. They become vulnerable to the highly unfair accusation that their very existence drains society’s resources.

Similarly, casting someone's life in terms of a “mission” had rung to my ears like a manifestation of the same mindset, just on a different scale - one divine and the other societal.

Recently, a potential direction for reconciliation has dawned on me. When speaking of a soul’s mission, what is it that we’re really referring to? We're likely referring either to a soul’s main mitzvah or to behavior closely associated with that main mitzvah. From a certain perspective, the whole purpose of a mitzvah is to earn one’s eventual spiritual bliss. Why? What's earned does not come with the humiliation of a free handout. Rather, it comes free from the sigma brought on by the bread of shame.

Based in this, the divine motive behind sending a soul on a life mission is opposite from the human motive behind employing someone on a job which contributes to society. Human society rewards a person in order to provide an incentive to work. Often enough, the reward comes with a heavy reluctance. It's viewed as a price to pay - which, if possible, society may try to get around.

In contrast, God sets up a system of work, called “mitzvahs” which contribute to the repair of all the various worlds, only in order to reward us. Mainly, the whole system is driven by the kindness of His desire to give. So, society rewards us to work us. In contrast, God works us to reward us.

So, when we speak of a soul completing his or her mission, perhaps we are not attaching a value to the human being on that mission. We’re merely affirming that so and so did whatever he or she can in life to earn spiritual closeness to God in the hereafter.

--------------O--------------

We're...?

In true truth,

  We’re at once,

 Everything,

  N’ nothing.

But we're cast,

  In illusions;

Convincing us,

  We’re neither,

Everything,

  Nor nothing.

------O------

Curious as a Cat

My wife came up with a brilliant, but simple plan. For months we agonized about leaving our cat alone when going out of town to spend the upcoming Jewish Holidays with my parents. In a stroke of genius, it occurred to her to get a second cat, a kitten for our cat to “mommy”. With same species company, she’s sure not to feel abandoned in our absence.

After exploring our options at a couple of animal shelters last Sunday, by Tuesday we came home with a very friendly and adorable three month old kitten. Despite our attempts to follow the shelter’s recommendation to introduce them to each other slowly, our attempts to isolate our kitten in a separate room fell flat. She cried and cried inconsolably, until she just had to be allowed out; hence, complicating her introduction to her feline companion. The kitten made friendly overtures the older cat, only to be hissed and growled at. This continued for several days.

Then yesterday, on the Sabbath, I was in morning meditation. But it wasn’t working. The cats were too distracting. So I moved my meditation to the privacy of the bedroom. The cats just followed. So, it dawned on me that maybe I am supposed to meditate on the topic of cats.

As the meditation began my mind filled with the thought that though animals were created to play a vital role in the ecosystem, the Creator has other uses for them as well. Among them, to reincarnate souls needing to learn particular lessons. Though I do not know for sure, it makes sense to me that at least a high percentage of animals which interact with humans host human souls. Otherwise, why would such animals have a destiny around humans; unless, underneath it all, they are in some sense human themselves?

To explore what lesson souls reincarnated into cats might be here for, I started to analyze the Hebrew word for cat, חתול, pronounced “chah-tool”. Personally, unless it hits me in the face, I shy away from analyzing numerical values of letters. I just have a sense that there’s more to Jewish numerology than dry mathematical mechanics. Whatever that “more” is I do not know; though I trust that the Torah sages who used numerology very clearly understood what they were doing. 

So, my preferred method is to analyze a Hebrew word is to look to the meaning of each letter of a word. Every Hebrew letter has an actual meaning. By paying attention to letter sequencing, I attempt to build a mini-story from the these meanings. The first letter of a Hebrew word represents its goal. The middle letters represents its means. The final letter its deed, its accomplishment.

In cat, חתול, the first letter is ח, which means “life”, a cat’s goal. The middle letters are תו, which means “mark” and “connection”. A cat curiously explores my “marking” territory with body scent and then “connects” further out to explore beyond. What’s accomplished?  It’s the final letter ל, which means “learning”. Yes, the cat’s curious excursions lead to learning.

Simultaneous to this meditation, as the letters floated in my field of imagination, I observed the two cats go nose to nose for the very first time. Though I don’t necessarily know what this means in cat terms, to me it looked like a tentative kiss.

Then it dawned on me that, though I don’t know for sure, it’s possible that a person who reincarnates as a cat has not displayed sufficient curiosity in exploring the Divine in general and the Torah in particular. Therefore, s/he comes back as a cat to develop curiosity, a thirst to explore and learn. As “Perek Shira” teaches cats are noted for hunting. Hunting leads to learning. I’ve observed cats hunt in the course of their excursions, marking territory and exploring. Plus, this attribute can be employed on the human level in the sense of hunting down concepts and knowledge.

Then it dawned on me that the Holy Rabbi Zusya of Anapoli taught that a person should take everything s/he sees as a lesson in serving God. If I own cats, doesn’t this mean that I need to learn this particular lesson too? Do I too need to access and awaken my partially asleep curiosity about exploring the Divine in general and the Torah in particular? It’s the month of Elul, the month of self improvement. Shouldn’t I improve in any quality I can?

---------------------O----------------------

Events & Objects in Space-Time

According to Einstein space and time are the same fabric. It would therefore make sense for the contents to be the same too. Space contains “objects”. Time contains “events”. So if space equals time then it’s likely that “objects” and “events” equal each other too.

I picture it is as a large paper bag of groceries with distinct symbols emblazoned on either side. Let’s say that one side has a triangle and the other side has a square. As the purchaser carries his/her bag filled with groceries home, s/he meets two friends along the way; a block or two away from each other. The meeting with each friend happens on a different side of the bag. So, one sees a bag with a square and the other sees a bag with a triangle. While greeting, each friend brushes close enough to the bag to briefly glimpse inside and get a sketchy sense of its contents. Later on the two friends happen to bump into each other and share that they met their mutual friend carrying a bag of groceries. Their conversation ends up flowing into a philosophical discussion about the contents of the bag with the square verses the one with the triangle. Of course, since it’s really the same bag, the contents are the same as well. The only reason they may think that the contents are different is because they weren’t sure that they indeed saw the same bag.

Similarly, since “events” and “objects” are the contents of this “bag” called by Einstein “space-time” they should be the same as well. It’s just that since we experience space-time, a single fabric, distinctly as space and time, so the contents are experienced as separately as well. In our experience of time, the contents present themselves to us as “events”. In our experience of space, they present themselves to us as “objects”. But space and time are like two sides of the same “bag” which merely looks different from different perspectives, potentially fooling observers into thinking that they in fact saw two different “bags”.

Free choice is a very interesting topic. There are a variety of approaches to try to explain its relationship to predestination. Some approaches weigh in the Talmudic teaching that the Jewish people are not under the influence of the zodiac, when discussing this topic. However, even this phrase has a variety of understandings.

One possibility is that a zodiac sign, a particular placement of objects in space, allow for humans to behave in more than one closely related way. For example, the Jews left Egypt, during the influence of mars, the bloody planet. Joshua turned the potential bloodshed of the Jews into the blood of circumcision during a mass circumcision rite upon entering the Holy Land. The “event” which matched mars required spilling blood. However, there was a choice as to which way it occurred. In this sense the zodiac, though operative, did not entirely influence how the Jewish people handled an event. They chose to do a Mitzvah, which allowed for an alternative outcome.

There is also another possibility which does not necessarily have to contradict the first one. Perhaps, it merely points to a yet higher level of free choice. There are some who take the teaching that the zodiac does not influence the Jewish people more literally. It seems like they are of the opinion that, in a state of true holiness, one can choose to do an act of pure goodness in a way that’s not at all anticipated by astrology.

This approach carries a very interesting implication. Since the deed was not anticipated by astrology, the person actually creates an “event” for which there was no correlation among the “objects” in space. To restore balance to the space-time fabric, space needs to adjust and compensate for this by somehow changing its “objects” and/or fabric to match. This way the “event” in time has been somehow matched by equivalent changes in space, on the other side of the equation.

Of course I don’t know what change will occur among objects in space. However, if such a deed is possible to do and an unanticipated “event” occurs then the simple logic of the situation calls for such changes. If so, a Mitzvah, good deed, performed on very high levels of holiness might be able to bring changes to the physical universe; possibly an earthly extension of the Lurianic “Tikkun Olam”, cosmic repair.

------------------------O---------------------