Yeridat ha-dorot

Yeridat ha-dorot (Hebrew: ירידת הדורות), meaning literally "the decline of the generations", or nitkatnu ha-dorot (נתקטנו הדורות), meaning "the diminution of the generations", is a concept in classical Rabbinic Judaism and contemporary Orthodox Judaism expressing a belief in the intellectual inferiority of subsequent, and contemporary Torah scholarship and spirituality in comparison to that of the past.

It is held to apply to the transmission of the "Revealed" (nigleh) aspects of Torah study, embodied in the legal and homiletic Talmud, and other mainstream rabbinic literature scholarship.

This idea provides the basis to the designated Rabbinic Eras from the Tannaim and Amoraim of the Talmud, to the subsequent Gaonim, Rishonim and Acharonim.

This paradoxical dialectic relates in Kabbalistic terminology to descending immanent "Vessels", and successively higher transcendent "Lights" through the history of creation.

Nowadays, this authority is not delegated to the current generation's Sages, and thus the Torah can not be commentated on, in matters concerning the Halakha, if it is in contradiction to Chazal's commentary.

Earlier on, up until the midst of the Tannaim era, when there was a Sanhedrin (a Jewish law court), Chazal had also the authority to decree predestinations and to enact new religious regulations, in any matter they saw fit, concerning issues that were not included in the written "Torah", or were not handed at Biblical Mount Sinai.

Rishonim ("the first ones") were the leading Rabbis and Poskim (Halachic decisors) who lived approximately during the 11th to 15th centuries, in the era before the writing of the Shulkhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law) and following the Geonim.

However, Kabbalistic (Nistar-"Concealed") scholarship advances with successive new descriptive articulations, through a progressive process of revelation of new doctrines by select supreme Tzadikim.

The new articulations of Nistar by rare Tzadikim involve the descent of new, successively higher Divine intellect into man's conceptual understanding.

"[1] In ascending order:[1] While Lurianic Kabbalah completed the full, transcendent structure of traditional Jewish metaphysics, this explanation places the Hasidic philosophical focus on Omnipresent Divine immanence as the culmination of Kabbalistic thought.

The concept of Yeridat ha-dorot is particularly influential in Haredi Judaism, which regards not only Halakha but even customs of old as possessing divine inspiration and wisdom which later generations cannot match.