L'olam U-l'olmay Olmayah

Ill Ill Ill Ill Ill Im Ill May tlie !Rs,putationof tlie 1-{igfier'Wfwfeness increasein fe{t presence in a{{wor{dsieven in tlie intersticeswithin wor{ds. Olam has two basic meanings, 1) world, and 2) forever. Commonly, the triple repetition of this term in the Kaddish- L 'olamul 'olmayolmai-ya-is interpreted using the secondmeaning of olamas forever, such as "May the great name be blessed forever and to all eternity (translation from the Chabad Siddur TehilatHashem).If, however, we interpret this phrase using the first (and quite common) meaning of olamas world, then L'olam ul'olmayolmai-ya means "May the great name be blessed into the world and the worlds of worlds. This suggests the parallel co-existence of variously scaled dimensions, a key idea of fractals and chaos theory. The following quotes (from Fractals-The Patterns of Chaos by John Briggs) raise an important subtlety of holism. "In a tiny lily pond drop swims a world within our world. In the detail of that world is yet another. Our own bodies are collections of worlds within worlds at finer and finer scales. (p. 23) Fractal images have led to a growing contemplation that our reality is a place made up of folded worlds within self-similar worldsthat is, of worlds folded in between dimensions. Bend down to look at a moss covered rock and you see a miniature mountain.range covered with trees, a microcosm of our larger landscape. Each life-form in its own way reflects the dynamical system of nature as a whole ..." (p. 30) Fractals show similar details on many different scales. Imagine the rough bark of a tree viewed though successively more powerful magnifications. Each magnification reveals more details of the barks rugosity. . .. this scaling is accompanied by another corresponding pattern of nature's dynamicism: self-similarity. This means that as viewers peer deeper into the fractal image, they notice that the shapes seen at one scale are similar to the shapes seen in the detail at another scale .... One way to explain this is to say that ... nature is holistic, which means that between its "parts" are other "parts of parts," and "parts of parts of parts". When these "parts" and "parts of parts" interact and start feeding into each other, they generate amazing patterns that illustrate that a system's whole movement takes place continuously at every scale." (p.23-s)