NITSAVIM_DEUTERONOMY XXIX:9-XXX:20
Hershel Schachter, Rosh Kolel of Yeshiva University, quotes the writings of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, one of the Gaon of Vilna most distinguished disciples. According to Rabbi Chaim, the Gaon held that the Chumash Devarim, the fifth of the five books of the Tora, consists of ten Sidrot determined by the weekly reading and that the sections of Nitsavim and Vayelech should be regarded as a single unit.
According to the Talmud, the world will last for 6 millennia, which will then give way to a universal Shabbat. These six millennia are divided into 3 stages. The first of these is called Tohu, because it refers to the disorder and anarchy that characterized it. The second stage, Tora, which began with the appearance of the three patriarchs, is based on the Tora received at Mount Sinai, a document in which God manifested His Will to humanity through the Jewish people and specified the path that must be traveled to conquer and eliminate the Tohu, the chaos that reigned in the beginning.
Today we are in the third stage: redemption, the messianic moment. The calculation is as follows. Patriarch Avraham was born in 1948 years after the creation of the universe (we start from the reference that today we are in the year 5782, according to Jewish tradition), and began his mission to propagate the monotheistic ideal at the age of 52.
According to the Talmud, the nomenclature used for the document that Moshe wrote according to the express Will of God is the Tora Shebichtav, the Written Tora, although simultaneously the Tora Shebealpe, the Oral Tora was also given. The Oral Tora collects the different explanations about the Mitzvot, ordinances, and details of some of the stories contained in the written document. The Tora Shebealpe was finally formulated in writing in the text called Mishna. The author of this Mishna was Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, who died in the year 220 of the Common Era. If one considers that after his death some amendments were still made, we arrive at the year 240, which completes the second period of the millennia. In this manner, the year 2240 of the common era will signal the end of the third period: the days of Mashiach.
The Vilna Gaon held that the 10 Sidrot of Devarim represent the last 10 centuries of humanity, and in each of these sections, you can find some specific message about that century. The Tora predicts the events that unfolded at each stage. A notable example is a fact that the Sidra (usually referred to as Parsha) Ki Tavo, which corresponds to the 1840-1490 century of the common era, contains the Tochacha, which consists of a series of warnings about the disasters that will befall the Jewish people if they move away from the Path of the Tora. It is clear that the century alluded to includes numerous pogroms and the beginning of the Nazi period, which produced genocide: the greatest destruction in the history of humanity.
The chapters contained in Nitsavim and Vayelech mention the coming conquest of the Promised Land, the need for Teshuva: the return to ancestral roots, and the Mitzvah of writing the text of the Tora. Taking into account the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the intensive phenomenon of the Baale’i Teshuva, the thousands of young people who return day by day to the tradition of their ancestors, and the vigorous resurgence of Torah study in our days, one can appreciate a direct correspondence between the biblical text and current events.
Exceptional figures such as the Vilna Gaon, possessing a privileged intellect and deep spirituality, could see more clearly the correspondence between the Sacred Scriptures and the development of History. However, it is a sobering intellectual exercise that invites you to read the Tora with greater attention to messages that are not obvious in the course of light reading.
