"50 Is The Number of Transcendence"

14 Kislev 5784 

...So says the author of the book Jewish Wisdom in the Numbers.

50 Israelis were to be released beginning on the 50th day of their captivity that began on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.  That day was Simchat Torah and, according to the Rokeach, the singular form of the word Torah appears 50 times in the Torah text.  The 50th year of the shmitta cycle is the Yovel - national liberation, but 50 is perhaps most familiarly identified with the counting of the Omer which takes us from the Exodus to the receiving of the Torah.  According to the Sfat Emet, there are 50 references to the Exodus in the Torah.

...The momentous event that commemorates the birth of the Children of Israel as a nation was the exodus from Egypt.  Not only is there a twice-daily remembrance of this milestone, but much of mitzvah observance is marked by repeated references to the Exodus.  Its central importance is due to this event celebrating the Jewish People’s brand-new state of existence.

Their deliverance was not only from physical slavery but also from the Egyptian worldview.  The Exodus released them from an outlook constrained by the natural realm. The redemption catapulted Israel into an alternate state of reality.  They exchanged the restricted for the unrestricted, the natural for the supernatural, and the ordinary for the extraordinary.  It was the seminal event that would define what Israel had now become: God’s Chosen People.  Their transcendental quality was now evident in the aftermath of their trailblazing liberation.

The historic event of the Exodus is mentioned in the Torah a total of 50 times.  And the redemption process which started on the first day of Pesach finally reached its completion stage 50 days later at Sinai.  Indeed, God freed the Children of Israel in order that they accept the Torah. The Divine instruction given to Moshe at the burning bush was to lead Israel out of Egypt and bring the nation to serve God at that mountain. – Shavuot: day 50.

The 50 stages of redemption required a minimum 49-day interval for their national metamorphosis.  Prior to their liberation, the Children of Israel had sunk to the nadir of spiritual impurity: the 49th level of impurity.  The Exodus introduced a spiritual cleansing process.  Israel embarked upon a gradual path of ascension, one level after another.  Theirs was a phenomenal rise from their degraded position on the 49th gate of impurity up to the 49th gate of purity.  Finally, they arrived at the highest spiritual pinnacle on the 50th day.

...The creation of Israel in the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot ties into another aspect of symbolism found in this number.  God created the universe with the 50 Gates of Understanding.  The 50 Gates relate to the ascending spiritual levels within the world through which man must pass in order to uncover the inner secrets of creation and in order to comprehend the powers, capabilities, and life forces within.

In a sense, the 50 Sha’arei Binah signify the distance of how far removed man is from God’s wisdom.   It is incumbent upon man to pass through these Gates of Understanding in a journey to uncover the Divine wisdom hidden in the words of Torah.  This often involves the deductive reasoning of understanding, (“bina” in Hebrew) to derive “one thing from something else.” “Bina” is cognate to “bein”, between, which indicates the gap that man must bridge in order to approach his Creator. (Source).

In a video shiur from a few days ago, Rabbi David Toledano said, if my translation is correct, the following: 

"...these 50 Hostages will trigger a new phase in the geulah since we are going to release the sparks and therefore the Clipa will fall...you saw that we are stagnating a little bit, we are in a phase we say to ourselves what is this, how is it going to happen in the North, the other fronts and everything and it stagnates, why because now we are in this phase as soon as they come out you will see, remember the next few days it will be a new phase, in a new dimension,"....

[And this is where he brings in the story from Rabbi David Abuchatzeira that we are moving from the contractions stage to the birth stage of geulah. He continues...]

The original plan was that the same thing that happened in the south was supposed to happen at the same time also from the North and also across Judea and Samaria, but it was "softened" and the South took a big hit, but that brought us to the end of the "contractions" phase and now with the release of the fifty hostages who are specially chosen neshamot,, we are going to move into a more merciful time with big open miracles - the "birth" of Mashiach.

In light of this, I find it highly significant that the foreigners who have been released were counted separately and the "50" are the Israelis. 

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IMPORTANT NOTE!  It was brought to my attention (thank you, Batya) that according to many comments to the Youtube video written by persons claiming to have personally heard the Rav's shiur, what was posted here earlier in the name of the Yanuka was misrepresented.  My profound apologies.