I like the Hebrew phrase for creatio ex nihilo: yesh me'ain, "something from nothing".
Here is a fantastic article that beautifully illustrates your topic today:
http://www.quantumtorah.com/creatio-ex-nihilo-and-the-number-theory/
I especially enjoyed the part about the Axiom of Existence. And then there's this:
Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (the Gra) once said that it is impossible to understand Torah without understanding science. At the very least, science and mathematics can provide vivid illustrations of highly abstract Torah concepts. Our ability to see supernal spiritual concepts reflected in this lowest of worlds is in itself a testimony to the fact that the physical world is but a small part of a greater universe composed of innumerable parallel levels of reality which all reflect the same unifying principle of creation.
Whoo-hoo, I've been vindicated! :)
Abstract Torah concepts, like a ladder to heaven firmly planted on the [horizontal] ground:
Perspective 101 is a vanishing point created from parallel lines. World/eternity (olam) - the meaning *is* a vanishing point. And Joseph's coat was a ketonet passim, a coat of stripes - passim - which is also the word for railroad rails. Trains, where DO they go?
Last night I was going back over the verse about Joseph's favored status and his coat. One thing that has always bugged me is the reason that he was the favorite:
Gen 37:3. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a coat with long sleeves:
Why not because he was his beloved Rachel's son? That really seems to be the obvious reason in the totality of things.
Well why not, if the reasons are one and the same. Zakunim (old age) = 207 = ohr (light).
That rolls right back to Creation in Genesis 1 and the multiple allusions to Rachel in there. The end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning in the end.
Even more reason to connect if his old age involved a time a long time down the timeline track... at the place of the vanishing point, where the passim of Joseph's coat are touching yet not touching.
Joseph's favored status is mentioned before we read about Joseph's dream of the sun (Jacob) and moon (Rachel) and eleven stars, which in the short view (minus Rachel, for her soul had gone out but not yet returned) was fulfilled in Egypt.
Now if Joseph could find the pathway to erase the hatred of his own brothers by their own free will, which involved the revelation of total knowledge 22 years later, then Jacob could certainly have perceived that Joseph was the key to rectifying the hate of Esav, through Esav's own free will. Joseph's bones are the plotline of a great story!
Gen 30:24. And she called his name Joseph; and said, The Lord shall add to me another son:
Rachel saw in Joseph another son... it was the long view. No wonder Jacob and Rachel were quite the match. The result was Joseph.
And she called his name Joseph; and said, The Lord shall add to me another son:
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age;
Israel: the name given to Jacob when he prevailed over the sar of Esav, given to him by the sar of Esav himself.
Joseph + Edom = Joseph + David + Yechidah (the all inclusive soul of the Mashiach) = 207 = ohr
There was even a very important message from the moon delivered to earth on that date. That whole mission is a treasure trove of names and mathematical and visually symbolic evidences of
Our ability to see supernal spiritual concepts reflected in this lowest of worlds [which] is in itself a testimony to the fact that the physical world is but a small part of a greater universe composed of innumerable parallel levels of reality which all reflect the same unifying principle of creation.
See, I really *didn't* go off on a tangent. Then again, what's a tangent. :)
