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By Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui 

There is a beautiful and mind-blowing story from the history of Chassidus that seems almost impossible to believe at first. It sounds like a miracle that defies the rules of our world. But today, if we look closely at the rules of modern science—especially the secrets of time, gravity, and the universe discovered by Albert Einstein—we can begin to appreciate to some small degree the mechanics of how it happened.

The story features the holy Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760), the great founder of the Chassidic movement, and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon Kitover (1675-1771).

The Baal Shem Tov once wrote a letter to Rabbi Gershon. In it, he revealed that during a special spiritual journey in which his soul ascended into the upper worlds, he witnessed something terrifying. He saw the Heavenly Court holding a trial against Rabbi Gershon and about to sentence him to death. The reason for this harsh judgment was that Rabbi Gershon had been deeply disrespectful toward the head of the local rabbinical court, shunning and ostracizing him.

The Baal Shem Tov loved his brother-in-law deeply, so he immediately ran to the spiritual gates of the court to plead his case. However, the angels closed the entrance and refused to admit him. Standing outside the closed doors, the Baal Shem Tov cried out to the Almighty: “Master of the Universe! Please forgive him. Whatever Rabbi Gershon did, he did it out of pure, holy jealousy for Your sake, trying to defend Your honor!”

Suddenly, a heavenly voice rang out through the spiritual chambers, saying, “Leave him alone, because he was indeed acting out of jealousy for the Lord of Hosts.”

Because of the Baal Shem Tov’s prayers, the heavenly judges decided to cancel the death sentence. However, they ruled that Rabbi Gershon must still be punished: he would become completely blind for exactly one month. This was because, according to Jewish law, a person who is blind is considered as if they were dead. By experiencing a month of darkness, the decree of death would be fully satisfied and erased.

A while after this letter was sent, the Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Gershon met in person. Rabbi Gershon looked at him and said, “I cannot argue with you or doubt your words, because everything you wrote in that letter is absolutely true. The fight between me and the head of the rabbinical court happened exactly as you saw it.”

But then Rabbi Gershon paused, looking deeply confused. “There is just one thing I do not understand. I looked at the date you wrote at the top of your letter. According to that date, you saw my trial in heaven and wrote down the whole story before the argument even took place in the real world! How is it possible that your letter and your experience in heaven happened before the actual event even occurred down here?”

The Baal Shem Tov smiled and gave him an answer that unlocks the secrets of how the higher worlds operate.

“You have no clue how things are seen up in heaven. I am not even talking about the absolute highest levels of God, because at those supreme levels, an experience like this is impossible. But when those very high levels of God, where everything comes from, are wrapped within the lower spiritual worlds, something amazing happens. Ten or fifteen years of human history can be gathered up, bundled together, and shown in one single shot. At that point, an entire decade can be seen in one single instant.”

To understand how the Baal Shem Tov could see the future as if it had already happened, we have to talk about what time actually is.

For a long time, regular people believed that time was like a rigid master clock ticking at the same speed for everyone, everywhere in the universe. But in the early 1900s, Albert Einstein proved that this was completely wrong. Time is not universal. It is flexible. It can stretch, warp, and slow down. Under extreme conditions, two people can experience completely different amounts of time.

Einstein’s famous Theory of Relativity showed us that the ticking of a clock is not absolute. The flow of time is relative, meaning it can be shaped by two main factors: speed and gravity. Science has shown that higher gravity and faster speeds slow time compared to a different frame of reference that is moving more slowly or has weaker gravity.

This is not just a wild theory; scientists have proven it in real-world experiments using ultra-precise atomic clocks that can measure time down to billionths of a second. In one famous experiment, scientists placed one synchronized atomic clock at sea level and another at the top of a high mountain. When they compared them later, they found that the clock at sea level, where Earth’s gravity is stronger, ticked slightly slower than the clock on the mountain, where gravity is weaker.

In another experiment, scientists put an atomic clock on a fast-moving jet plane and kept a matching clock perfectly still on the ground. After the jet flew around, the clock that had been moving fast was found to have ticked more slowly than the one that stayed at rest.

What does this mean for us? It means that if you could hop into a spaceship and accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light, or if you could park your ship near an extreme gravitational source like a massive star, you could slow down time for yourself so drastically that you could travel decades into Earth’s future in just a few weeks or months.

When you finally slow down, turn around, and land back on Earth, the two frames of reference come together to compare clocks. Your calendar shows that 3 months have passed. Earth’s calendar shows that 30 years have passed.

At that moment, you have physically traveled 30 years into the future. You didn’t skip those years like a time machine in a movie; rather, you lived through a highly compressed version of them because your speed warped the very fabric of spacetime around you.

Imagine you are on a spaceship traveling at 99.5% the speed of light. While you are flying through space, you glance at your watch. It doesn’t look weird to you at all. Your pulse beats normally, your thoughts move normally, and your clock ticks at exactly one second per second. There is absolutely no difference in your personal perception of time aboard your spaceship. But out in the rest of the universe, a massive shift is happening. Relative to the people left behind on Earth, your clock is ticking ten times slower!

If you stay on that ship for what feels like exactly one year to you, when you finally turn around and land back on Earth, you will discover that ten whole years have passed for everyone else. You would find yourself in the future, even though your own experience of time felt completely ordinary. You would only realize your clock had moved more slowly once you came back to compare it with Earth.

So, it is a proven scientific fact that different rates of time are possible. In fact, every time you get into a car, ride an airplane, or even just walk down the street, you are moving faster than someone standing still, which means your personal clock is ticking a tiny bit slower than theirs.

Similarly, if you live at a high elevation in the mountains, your clock ticks a tiny bit faster than someone living at a lower elevation, like Death Valley, California, which sits about 60 meters below sea level. This happens because gravity gets slightly weaker the higher up you go, and where gravity is weaker, clocks run relatively faster.

Of course, in our everyday lives, these differences in speed and gravity are so incredibly small that human beings can never notice them without atomic clocks. But the differences are real. However, science notes an important rule: these differences occur only when you compare two different locations or reference frames in the universe. Physics tells us that clocks cannot move at different speeds if they are sitting inside the exact same reference frame.

And that’s precisely the point I am making. Science confirms that time flows faster where gravity is weaker, and in the reference frame of the Baal Shem Tov, that’s precisely what was happening.

But how does this connect to the Baal Shem Tov seeing a future trial?

The holy Baal Shem Tov and other great Tzaddikim (righteous individuals) do not see, experience, or live in this world the way ordinary people do. For them, the universe is filled with less material heaviness and far more spiritual energy. The physical coarseness and density of the world are not their true home.

In Jewish mysticism, the physical world is described as heavy and dense. This physical mass acts like a form of spiritual gravity. Just as the gravity of the physical world traps things in space and slows time, the heaviness of the material world traps our minds in a tight box of linear time, forcing us to experience life only one moment at a time—stuck firmly in the present, unable to see the future.

But a Tzaddik spends their entire life refining themselves, letting go of selfish physical desires, and fully connecting their mind to the Divine light. By doing this, they rid themselves of spiritual ego and heaviness. They live with less “spiritual gravity” and less physical coarseness. Because they have lifted themselves out of the heavy material reference frame, they naturally gain the ability to travel through and experience time and space much faster and differently than regular people do.

When the Baal Shem Tov looked at the world, he didn’t just see physical objects. It is recorded that whenever he looked at a stone wall, a tree, or a river, he didn’t see rocks, wood, or water; he literally saw the specific combinations of Hebrew letters from the Ten Utterances of Creation, vibrating within them and constantly keeping them alive. He famously taught that if the human eye were permitted to see the spiritual vitality flowing into every creation, the object’s physical matter and tangibility would completely disappear from our sight. It is no longer part of their world experience.

We see this same high-level reality in the famous story of the Alter Rebbe (Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi) in late 1812. While fleeing Napoleon’s armies, he was in his final days on Earth, completely detached from the physical world. He asked his grandson, the Tzemach Tzedek, what he saw. The grandson answered simply, “I see the ceiling, the wall, and the wooden beams.” The Alter Rebbe replied, “I no longer see the wood or the ceiling. I see only the Divine life-force, the word of God, that is constantly creating them out of nothingness.”

Because the Baal Shem Tov lived on this lofty spiritual wavelength, his soul was able to ascend to a realm where the heavy timeline of this world is completely bundled up. As he explained to his brother-in-law, in those high places, ten or fifteen years of future events are gathered into a single instant. He stood in a spiritual reference frame where the future had already happened, allowing him to read the decree, fight for his brother-in-law, and write the letter before the event ever took place on Earth.

The most beautiful part of this concept is that it applies to all of us. The Torah says, “Your people are all Tzaddikim” (Isaiah 60:21), meaning that, deep down, every single person has the same spiritual potential to experience a world with less gravity and greater spiritual refinement.

When we make less of the physical world, show less indulgence in the material world, focus less on material greed, and elevate ourselves to a more spiritual identity, we lower our own spiritual gravity. Relaive to the person standing right next to us, we step out of the heavy, slow frame of ordinary time and connect to something higher.

Even science shows us glimpses of this connection at the smallest level of reality. At the quantum level, within the microscopic fields that make up all matter, it is right there at the essence of our own being that the usual rules of space and time break down. Scientists have discovered a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, in which two tiny particles can become so perfectly linked that if you change one, the other reacts instantly, even if they are separated by opposite sides of the universe. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance” because it transcends normal space and time.

When we choose to live a more spiritual life, we tap into our soul’s quantum field. By elevating our consciousness, we can rise above the heavy gravity of the physical world and experience the truth that everything in the universe is ultimately bound together in an unbroken, timeless, and divine unity.

Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui, director of Chabad of Palm Beach, Florida, since 1987, has authored two books: Maimonides Advice for the 21st Century and A Spiritual Soul Book, and is now working on a third book, Physics of the Mystics. Additionally, Rabbi Ezagui regularly contributes to his blog on the Times of Israel. 

For more information on Rabbi Ezagui’s workshops, you can email him at [email protected] and find him online at www.rabbishlomoezagui.com

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