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Kefitzat Haderech
 
 
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Kefitzat Haderech and means, verbatim, "jumping of the path/road/way", a Hebrew equivalent of the English expression "short cut".

In Torah study
Torah study

Torah study is the study by Jewish people of the Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature and similar works, all of which are Judaism's religious texts....
 and Jewish folklore, kefitzat haderech is the ability to jump instantaneously from one place to another
Teleportation

Teleportation is the transfer of matter from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, either by paranormal means or through technological artifice....
 or travel with unnatural speed. The term is originally found in Midrash
Midrash

Midrash is a Hebrew language term referring to the not exact, but comparative method of exegesis of Biblical texts, which is one of four methods cumulatively called Pardes ....
im to explain anomalies of travel in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
. In East European Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish folktales, especially those associated with the Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism

Hasidic Judaism is a type of Orthodox Judaism or Haredi Judaism Orthodox Judaism religious movement. Some refer to Hasidic Judaism as Hasidism, and the adjective chasidic / hasidic applies....
 movement, kefitzat haderech was utilized by various revered holy men.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was a Nobel Prize in literature laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon. In English, his works are published under the name S....
, an Israeli writer who won the 1966 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize , established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Nobel Peace Prize in 1901....
 for literature, incorporates the ability in some of his work.






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Kefitzat Haderech and means, verbatim, "jumping of the path/road/way", a Hebrew equivalent of the English expression "short cut".

In Torah study
Torah study

Torah study is the study by Jewish people of the Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, responsa, rabbinic literature and similar works, all of which are Judaism's religious texts....
 and Jewish folklore, kefitzat haderech is the ability to jump instantaneously from one place to another
Teleportation

Teleportation is the transfer of matter from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, either by paranormal means or through technological artifice....
 or travel with unnatural speed. The term is originally found in Midrash
Midrash

Midrash is a Hebrew language term referring to the not exact, but comparative method of exegesis of Biblical texts, which is one of four methods cumulatively called Pardes ....
im to explain anomalies of travel in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible

The term Hebrew Bible is a generic reference to those books of the Bible originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic....
. In East European Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish folktales, especially those associated with the Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism

Hasidic Judaism is a type of Orthodox Judaism or Haredi Judaism Orthodox Judaism religious movement. Some refer to Hasidic Judaism as Hasidism, and the adjective chasidic / hasidic applies....
 movement, kefitzat haderech was utilized by various revered holy men.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Shmuel Yosef Agnon was a Nobel Prize in literature laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon. In English, his works are published under the name S....
, an Israeli writer who won the 1966 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize , established in the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel; it was first awarded in Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature, and Nobel Peace Prize in 1901....
 for literature, incorporates the ability in some of his work. In an Agnon story based on one of the above-mentioned Hasidic folktales, a righteous rabbi is given the gift of kfitzat haderech and uses it to "jump" into the treasuries of the Habsburg
Habsburg

The House of Habsburg was an important royal house of Europe and is best known as supplying all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1452 and 1740, as well as rulers of Spanish Empire and the Austrian Empire....
 Empire, take sacks full of newly-minted gold coins, and jump back to his shtetl
Shtetl

A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in pre-The Holocaust Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Poland, Galicia , and Romania....
, unnoticed by anybody. He uses the money to help poor or persecuted Jews, and the story implies that the power would be taken away should he take any of the gold to himself.

Later, when the Emperor plans to make decrees harmful to the Jews, the Rabbi uses his power of kfitzat haderech in order to jump into the audience chamber and beat the Emperor with his stick - being visible (and tangible) to the Emperor himself but invisible to his councillors and guards.

The name Kwisatz Haderach
Kwisatz Haderach

"Kwisatz Haderach" is the name of a prophesied messiah in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe....
 from Dune universe
Dune universe

The Dune universe, or Duniverse, is the politics, science, and society fictional universe of author Frank Herbert's six-book series of science fiction novels which began with 1965's Dune ....
 (referred to as the "Shortening of the Way") is presumably derived from the term kefitzat haderech. The term "Haderach" is of Semitic origin: "ha" is a Hebrew prefix for "the," and "derech" means "way," "road" or "path." "Kwisatz" is related to "kfitzah", "the leap."

See also

  • Kwisatz Haderach
    Kwisatz Haderach

    "Kwisatz Haderach" is the name of a prophesied messiah in Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe....
  • Tay al-Ard
    Tay al-Ard

    Tayy al-Ar? is the name for Thaumaturgy teleportation in the mystical form of Islamic religious and Islamic philosophy tradition. The concept has been expressed as "traversing the earth without moving"; some have termed it "moving by the earth being displaced under one's feet"....
  • Teleportation
    Teleportation

    Teleportation is the transfer of matter from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, either by paranormal means or through technological artifice....