“Yichud” continued (3)

Ramchal defines God’s Yichud later on in Klach as “the underlying truth (of all of reality) which God hid away … in order to (eventually) reveal it in stages before humankind’s eyes”. And he informs us there that God only concealed His Yichud at first and will eventually reveal it in order to “then disclose (the fact that) His Yichud had already reigned from the first” [1].

That’s to say, God had reigned supreme from the first but He hid that fact (in order to allow us free-will so that we might play our part in the great perfection, as Ramchal says elsewhere there); but that fact will eventually become known and manifest. And as a consequence of that revelation, “there will be eternal delight (in the world), which is the delight that the souls will experience by the demonstration of this truth”, as a result of which humankind will be raised “to greater and greater heights as had been planned from the beginning” [2].

As such let it be said that Ramchal’s point is that there has always been one single underlying truth: the fact that, despite appearances to the contrary, God’s will alone governs the cosmos and nothing else. Though we’d always been taught that, it has not been clear; once it will be clear we will revel in that fact and ascend ever upward in our appreciation of it.

This process will begin with the onset of the Messianic Era, but God’s Yichud will only be revealed in its entirety by the end of the sixth millennium, after the Great Day of Judgment [3].

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Notes:

[1] Petach 49, p. 187 (Friedlander’s edition).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. p. 188. See Sanhedrin 97 for the chronology. For Ramchal’s references to the six and seventh millennia see Derech Hashem 1:3:9, 4:4:11; Adir Bamarom p. 188; Iggerot Ramchal 4; and Pitchei Chochma v’Da’at 97. Also see Ma’amar HaIkkurim, ”B’Geulah”.

(c) 2010 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org

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