Teshuva First?
If the world was the way it was meant to be, we would all be in Eretz Yisrael. The Temple would be standing, the Kohanim would be bringing sacrifices, and there would be a king and a prophet to lead us.
Why is that not how the world looks today? Well, any child could tell you, and indeed we say so every day davening, “because of our sins, the Temple was destroyed.” And as we say in musaf on Yom Tov, “because of our sins, we were exiled from our land.”
Why were we put into exile? Why didn’t Hashem allow us to remain in Eretz Yisrael peacefully, with the Temple, witnessing the open miracles that happened there every day? The reason is because the Jews turned away from Hashem, abandoning his Torah, which brought this exile upon us.
So it follows, that in order for exile to end and for Moshiach to come, all Jews must return to Hashem, do teshuva, and live their lives according to Torah. Then Moshiach will come and we will be returned to our land. Indeed, as the Gemara says, the time for Moshiach to come is here, all we need to do is teshuva.
There is however a slight problem with this. We know that we must wait for Moshiach to come every day. Not only must we wait for him, but we must expect him to come every day. We wake up every morning and state that Moshiach can come today. Children proclaim, “we want Moshiach now!” And, as the Rebbe often said at farbrengens, Moshiach could come during this very farbrengen, while we are sitting here, before we even get up to daven mincha!
But look around, how can Moshiach come? Did the Jewish people do teshuva yet? Are all Jews leading their lives according to Torah? It is unrealistic to think that all of a sudden, in an instant, every Jewish person will suddenly do teshuva, and Moshiach will come.
In this talk the Rebbe answered this question. He began with answers that had already been given in the past, and then went on to correct all of our notions about Moshiach and redemption.
First of all, the Rebbe said, it is indeed possible that the Jewish people can all do teshuva. The Zohar says that teshuva can be done “in one moment.” So it is realistic that in one moment everyone will do teshuva and Moshiach will come.
Furthermore, there is a ruling in Rambam, that if someone says to a woman, “I am marrying you on condition that I am a tzadik,” they are considered married and he must give her a get if he changes his mind. Even if he was a sinner all his life, we cannot say that the condition was for certain not met. It is possible that at that moment a thought of teshuva entered his mind, and that alone would make him a tzadik.
Greater Longing and Yearning
“We must experience greater longing and yearning for the Redemption,” the Rebbe demanded. “One of the ways this is accomplished is through studying more Torah on the subjects of the Redemption and the Bet HaMikdash. Studying these topics greatly hastens their actual realization, to the extent that we will go directly from studying these subjects to greet our righteous Moshiach. We will inform him, ‘we have just completed studying the laws associated with your coming!’
An additional motivation to study these laws is that we must expect Moshiach’s arrival every day. In that case, these laws [concerning the Redemption and the Bet HaMikdash] are matters that every Jew—men and women alike—must know in order to put them into practical use on a daily basis, such as many of the laws of the offerings.”
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Every Jew, at one point in his life or another, entertained the thought of doing teshuva and returning to Hashem. Perhaps it was only for one second, and maybe he never acted on it at all, but the fact that the thought entered his mind is enough to cause Moshiach to come.
Then the Rebbe went a step further. Every Jew descends from Yaakov Avinu. No matter which tribe he is from, and more so, no matter what he did all his life, rachmana litzlan (G-d save us), to disparage any Jew, saying this one has this yichus (ancestry), and this one another.
The yichus of every Jewish person is that he is the child of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. And when one belittles another Jew, it is as if he is starting up with the pupil of Hashem’s eye!
For an indication of how Hashem will treat the Jews, we can take a look at the daily davening. We say in tachnun, “Hashem should redeem the Jews from all their troubles.” And then immediately afterwards we say, “He will redeem them from all their sins.”
This tells us what the order of the redemption will be. First Hashem will redeem us from exile; not just from some of our troubles, but of ALL our troubles.
He will take us out of exile, every individual the way he is —tzaddikim (the completely righteous), beinonim (the intermediate ones), and the third type (rashaim—wicked people) —and only then will he redeem us of our sins.
Hashem does not have to wait for Jews to do teshuva. Not for one specific person, or two specific people, or for the whole of the Jewish people. That’s not the order that Hashem chose to implement. Rather, first we will be redeemed from this exile, and then of our sins.
May we merit the complete redemption speedily in our days.
reprinted from Derher.
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