The Very Wise Are Always Misunderstood

Please visit a very new and inviting oasis on the Internet Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh. Sample follows:

The Creation of Misunderstanding

“Wisdom” (חכמה, 73), is equal to “misunderstanding” (אי-הבנה). The world was created with wisdom that gives rise to misunderstanding.

The Torah begins, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The numerical value of the entire verse is 2701, the triangle of 73 (the sum of all numbers from 1 to 73). In one of the traditional Aramaic translations of the Bible, the very first word, “In the beginning,” is translated as “With wisdom” (based on the verse in Psalms, “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God”). Wisdom, חכמה, equals 73, but so does misunderstanding, אי הבנה.

The two intellectual faculties of wisdom and understanding (חכמה ובינה) are referred to in the Zohar as “two companions that never part.” But there is a hidden dimension of wisdom that does not unite with understanding. That is the wisdom of “In the beginning…” and that is the wisdom that creates misunderstanding.

Very wise people are always misunderstood. How much the more so with regard to the Creator. He, the epitome of wisdom, is the most misunderstood. But He knows what He’s doing when He creates a world of misunderstanding.

In all of the misunderstanding, in all of the chaos, He plants a seed of understanding, the Divine soul within man, the innate affinity of the consciousness of man to receive God’s Torah.

God wants us to begin our journey in life in a state of misunderstanding, but through the Torah and its ways reach understanding. Even of Moses it says, “Moses merited to understanding.” He didn’t have it from birth.