Rashi was a rabbi from France, famed as the author of the first comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud, Torah and Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). Rashi's commentary has been included in every edition of the Talmud since its first printing in the 1520s.
Rashi also wrote an extensive commentary on the Hebrew Bible completed in the last years of his life. It was quickly accepted as authoritative by virtually all European Jewish communities, Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike.
It would later come to have an impact on the Christian version of the Old Testament through the work of the Franciscan scholar Nicholas de Lyra, who often cited Rashi.
Rashi was the only child born to his parents, at Troyes, Champagne, northern France. On his father Yitzchak's side, he was reportedly the descendant of Rabbi Yochanan Hasandlar, who was a fourth generation of Gamaliel (the Elder), himself reputedly descended from the royal house of King David.
Several legends surrounding Rashi's birth have passed into Jewish folklore. Two of the most famous stories concern his conception and birth.
One story relates that Rashi's parents were childless for many years. One day, his father, a poor vintner, found a valuable gem or pearl. A bishop wished to acquire this jewel for decorating his church (or vestments). However, rather than have this jewel be used for such a purpose, Yitzchak threw it into the Seine. When he arrived home, a man was waiting for him. "You threw the gemstone into the water so it wouldn't be used for idolatry," the man told him. "Now your wife will have a son who will illuminate the world with his Torah." This harbinger was none other than the prophet Elijah. The following year, Yitzchak and his wife were blessed with a son.
Another legend relates that Yitzchak decided to move temporarily to the city of Worms, Germany. He and his wife lived in the Jewish quarter and attended the small synagogue there, awaiting the birth of their child. One day, as Yitzchak's wife was walking down the narrow alley, two large carriages came charging through the alley. There was no room to escape, so she turned to the wall and pressed herself against it. The wall miraculously softened and accommodated her pregnant form. The carriages rushed by and she was unscathed. An indentation in the size, height, and shape of a woman's pregnant belly in the wall of the Rashi Shul was shown to visitors to the city until the building's destruction during the Hitler era. The building has since been reconstructed, using much of its original material.
Rashi became a spiritual pillar of the Jewish communities which had been ravaged by the crusade. He returned to help rebuild the destroyed Jewish Community of Worms and rededicated the synagogue there, which for millennia has been known as the "Rashi Shul."
Legend also surrounds the writing of this commentary, which is seen by many to have been written with ruach hakodesh—divine inspiration—to explain its mass appeal. Rabbi Chaim Joseph David Azulai wrote in his Shem HaGedolim: "Apparently, Rashi wrote his commentary by using a secret [technique to gain Godly inspiration], and therefore he fasted 613 times [before undertaking this project]."
1070 AD Rashi founds a school of Kabbalah in the Court of the Count of Champagne, from which the first Grail romances were composed by Chretien de Troyes
1105 AD: At the instigation of Hugues de Champagne, monks of the Cistercian order begin intensive study of ancient Hebrew texts. They are assisted by Jewish scholars from the famous Kabbalah school of Rabbi Simon bar Jochai - Rashi of Troyes.
Alchemy Timeline
The Templars and the Grail
"The Creation" by Michelangelo, an anatomy student of Samuel Sarfatti who was personal physician to Pope Julius II and as a consequence brokered the deal for Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Is the picture depicting an image in which God reaches back to Eden from the future to Adam's outstretched hand?
What we are talking about here is a universe designed and created from the future. In such a universe, things that seemed to be mere random coincidences, acquire new levels of meaning. becoming part of a new kind of "supercausality". Unhappy with the classical explanation of causality, because it left so many meaningful events in his life unexplained, psychologist Dr. Carl Jung coined the term 'synchronicities' which are meaningful coincidences. Thoughts and events sharing a common meaning are attracted to each other like magnets, across the seemingly impenetrable barrier of space-time; although there is no ordinary causal relationship between them, they are inextricably linked.
Jung relates a story of such a synchronicity that occurred to him while conducting analysis with a young woman. "The night before coming to see him she dreamt that she had been given a golden scarab. Jung was sitting with his back to the closed window listening to her recount her dream when he heard a gentle tapping behind his shoulder. Looking round, he saw a small insect knocking against the windowpane. Opening the window, the insect flew in and he caught it in his hand. what he saw was a scarabaeid beetle, the closest equivalent to a golden scarab one could find in Switzerland. 'I must admit', Jung wrote, 'that nothing like it has ever happened before or since and that the dream of the patient has remained unique in my experience.' Jung kept coming across connections which 'I simply could not explain as chance groupings.'"3
And, as Sarfatti points out, "The invisible world of the quanta obey the superluminal dictates of the future."
Now that's really a coincidence...Coming events cast their shadows before. - James Joyce, Ulysses
Alan Wolf and a few other authors are all coming to the same conclusion that influences from the future contribute essentially to what actually happens now in addition to influences from the past and from the absolute elsewhere outside the light cone. The indeterminism of quantum events is explained by the idea that an effect here and now at the quantum level has not only the common sense past "retarded" causes but counter-intuitive future "advanced" or what Aristotle called "final causes". This return of old teleological ideas of meaning, purpose and destiny into physics is also found in the "strong" and "final" versions of the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by John Barrow and Frank Tipler. Indeed, Frank Tipler has published a recent book, "The Physics of Immortality", which lends support to this author's peculiar view in which "God" is defined in physical terms as the ultimate Future and Final Cause literally creating the universe backward-in-time ( BIT ). This sheds new light on Wheeler's "IT from BIT" remark.
Dan’s comment on awakening readers’ interest reveals that he still has his own strong motive to make his readers believe the claims and ideas he presents in the book. Dan also reveals to be a spiritual seeker for the rest of his life. It seems that his book The Da Vinci Code shows the guidelines along which Dan is proceeding spiritually. I am very much in doubt that a person whom one of the strongest motivations for life is a lifetime spiritual search, would write something in his book that is meaningless or insignificant to him. The fact is that a person interested in spiritual matters wants to share his spiritual findings and beliefs to others too. This is how I believe that also Dan Brown did when he wrote his book The Da Vinci Code.
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I agree with you in our individual pursuit for spiritual truth nothing is meaningless or insignificant - the greatest difficulty comes in our interpretation of the information we are presented with ?
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