{"id":48987,"date":"2019-02-09T20:37:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T18:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=48987"},"modified":"2022-09-04T08:13:26","modified_gmt":"2022-09-04T05:13:26","slug":"spacetime-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/spacetime-then-and-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacetime Then And Now"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[363,397,420],"acf":{"old_id":"48987","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33877,"related_cahpter":"151","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"A time-warp before Einstein","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having reached \u201cthe plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho\u201d in the previous chapter (see Numbers 33:50), in our chapter, Moses describes the territorial extent of the Promised Land in order to begin the process of apportioning its regions among Israelite tribes. \u201cWhen you come into the land of Canaan, this shall be the land that shall fall unto you for an inheritance, even the land of Canaan according to the borders thereof\u201d (Numbers 34:2). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The expression \u201cthis shall be the land\u201d suggests that Moses is showing, perhaps even pointing out to the people with his finger, the borders of the land they were to possess. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 23:5 and parallels) takes this biblical depiction one step further by transforming Moses\u2019 spatial description into a temporal one: The expression \u201cthis\u201d (<em>zeh<\/em>) teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses all that had been and all that was to be \u2026 as well as every generation and its expounders (<em>dor dor ve-dorshav<\/em>), every generation and its judges, every generation and its leaders, every generation and its transgressors, every generation and its righteous ones; as it says, \u201cAnd the Lord said to him [to Moses on Mount Nebo, immediately prior to his death], \u2018This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I will assign it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross there\u2019\u201d (Deuteronomy 34:4) \u2026 The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Go and say to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: The oath which I [God] swore to you, I have fulfilled for your children. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In having Moses speak to the far earlier Patriarchs, we have here a kind of midrashic \u201ctime-warp\u201d, in line with the Rabbinic exegetical principle that there is \u201cno earlier or later in the Torah\u201d (see Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Shirah 7). Indeed, interpreting Moses\u2019 seeing the whole of the Land as his seeing \u201call that had been and all that was to be\u201d (i.e. all of human history) suggests a kind of aggadic \u201cspacetime continuum\u201d (in which the dimensions of space and time are viewed as a continuous entity) associated in modern times with the special relativity theory of the German-Jewish theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If, as our midrashic tradition states, Moses was given by God to foresee \u201cevery generation\u201d, then it seems that in our generation, Moses oversees us and our deeds as he did the Israelites of his 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