Two months ago, HaRav Ginsburgh dedicated his annual 18th of Elul farbrengen, commemorating the birth of the two great leaders the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe to speaking about the concept of an “order,” as hinted to by Rebbe Isaac of Homil, one of the greatest Chasidic intellectuals. In this deep class, the Rav presented a vision of how we might merit to usher in the Days of Mashiach through the current political apparatus used in the State of Israel. Join us to find out how the ideal Prime Minister of Israel might be considered a king leading an entire generation every term in office and which of three areas in the life of the Jewish people he should focus on during each term.
This class was particularly important because the Lubavitcher Rebbe was often heard speaking of three areas of Jewish life that require absolute integrity: integrity of the Land of Israel, integrity of the Jewish people, and the integrity of Torah. Politically, the Rebbe encouraged us to vote for the party that best fights to uphold these three areas. However, it was not necessarily clear, what happens when there is no single political party that fights for all three areas. What is their order of precedence? In this farbrengen, HaRav Ginsburgh provides an in-depth answer to this conundrum, which many face when going to vote.
Rabbi Isaac of Homil and the Need for a New Order
Rabbi Isaac of Homil is considered one of the greatest intellectual minds in Chabad, a movement known for the intellectual demand it requires of its followers. Rabbi Isaac was a chasid of the Alter Rebbe, the Ba’al HaTanya, Rebbe Schneur Zalman of Liadi. Because of his unique mind, Rabbi Isaac wrote his own interpretations of the Alter Rebbe’s teachings in a series of deep works known by the collective name, Channah Ariel. After the Alter Rebbe’s passing, Rabbi Isaac continued as a chasid of his son, the Mittler Rebbe, and subsequently devoted himself to the Alter Rebbe’s grandson, the Tzemach Tzedek, even though the latter was many years his junior.
Apart from his written works, there are many oral traditions that were passed down from him, bits of wisdom and insight that were heard from him over the years. One of these goes as follows:
Reb Isaac said before his passing: The world is falling, and we will need to have in this world once again the Rebbe (meaning the Alter Rebbe, of blessed memory). After a while, he said: The world is falling greatly, so there will be a need for an order, that is, the Baal Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, and the Alter Rebbe.
Meaning that before the Mashiach can come, we need three individuals who will, like the first three leaders of the Chasidic movement, lift the world up from where it has fallen to. They themselves are not the Mashiach, but they will pave the way for him. Order is needed after there is a downfall, after the situation falls apart. Rabbi Isaac saw that because the world was falling, what the first three generations achieved—the three tzaddikim: the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Magid of Mezritch, and the Alter Rebbe—was not enough to keep things on track. A new order would be needed. Because of the terrible turmoil that we the Jewish people would go through before the coming of Mashiach, the pogroms, the terrible Holocaust, the enlightenment and the distancing of Jews from their heritage, from Torah and mitzvot, even from the faith taught by the Ba’al Shem Tov, a new order would be needed to lift the spirit of the Jewish people once again. We will need another Ba’al Shem Tov, another Maggid, another Alter Rebbe, and they will need to succeed even more than the original three generations did.
When we consider Rebbe Isaac’s statement with a bit more perspective, we see that the order of the first three leaders of the Chasidic movement was an order of tzaddikim. Chasidut set out to create a different kind of relationship between the leadership—the tzaddikim—and the lay people—the chasidim. Tikkunei Zohar begins with an enumeration of seven types of leaders that correspond to the seven lower sefirot: men of kindness, men of might (who control their inclinations), masters of Torah, prophets, visionaries, tzaddikim, and kings. The Tanya, based on the Torah, enumerates three types of leaders: heads, sages, and men of discernment. These correspond to the three higher intellectual sefirot: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. What we learn from this is that the leadership of the tzaddikim is in fact the ninth form of leadership in Jewish history (and it follows that the tzaddikim are leading up to the return of the kings, specifically, the Mashiach who is a king like David). In other words, the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Maggid, and the Alter Rebbe constitute the ninth order of leadership, the order of tzaddikim.
Our main innovation will now be to explore what the new order of leadership needs to be. This will be the order of leadership of kings that will usher in the days of Mashiach. There are rabbinical sources that speak of three generations of Mashiach. What we are saying is that whomever these kings are, they can immediately become the Mashiach through their success. What will these three leaders do? The Lubavitcher Rebbe set the foundation that there are three matters whose perfect integrity we must maintain: the integrity of Torah, the integrity of the Jewish people, and the integrity of the Land of Israel.
The Three Terms of Leadership
What we want to say is that for three leaders to be kings even before the coming of Mashiach, they must hold the office of the Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Anyone who is familiar with the situation realizes that nothing could be further from a “king of Israel,” then those who have held this office until now. However, we have been teaching for years that we are seeking to change the situation from the core. We are looking for someone like the Ba’al Shem Tov to be appointed as the Prime Minister. Since the Prime Minister is elected by the people through elections held every few years, we can argue that a generation in the context of Israeli politics, is one term. The word generation has many different interpretations: it can be 70 years long, 40 years, and it can be a single term of government. So, if we say that three generations of leadership are needed to establish a new order of kings, then these three generations could even be the three terms of a single individual appointed Prime Minister of Israel.
In the first term, he will act like the Ba’al Shem Tov, in the second like the Maggid, and in the third like the Alter Rebbe. Now the Ba’al Shem Tov’s main interest was the Jewish people. So, in the first term, our Prime Minister will focus on social issues and ensure the integrity of the Jewish people. He should in fact make this the focus of the platform he runs on because he needs the support of the people who should vote for him, knowing full well what he plans on doing. All the areas that require integrity are essential, but the first order of business, the one that the Ba’al Shem Tov would focus on is the integrity of the Jewish people. It is the area in which we are hurting the most right now and it is what is most preventing us from moving towards the days of Mashiach. This includes the schism between different groups in Jewish society. Restoring our integrity as a people depends on the commandment of Ahavat Yisrael, love of our fellow Jew. We are called upon by the Ba’al Shem Tov to love every Jew without reservation. Our love for our fellow Jews eventually extends to love for all human beings as well as for all creatures. If this succeeds in the Land of Israel, it will quickly spread to Jews everywhere and will influence the entire world.
The second generation, or the second term if it turns out to be the same Prime Minister, will focus on the integrity of the Land of Israel. If our Holyland is viewed as a good place to live, a country that is full of love, friendship, and peace between Jews, it will encourage world Jewry to make Aliyah. To declare our sovereignty over the entire land, we need a consensus. The thought that somehow this can happen without a consensus is foolish. You cannot conquer the Land of Israel by yourself. Once the integrity of the Jewish people is restored, the entire land can be claimed and the borders can be expanded further.
Finally, we come to the third generation, or once again, the third term, when the focus will be on the Torah’s integrity. Like Schneur Zalman of Liadi who united the revealed and concealed traditions in Torah—the nigleh and the nistar—we are tasked with restoring the centrality of Torah to our lives. This is achieved by first and foremost basing our laws and our judiciary on the Torah. This is the true judicial reform we need—not the judicial reform that the present leadership has been trying to carry out for the past few years.
In practical terms, the first term does not require that people become strictly Orthodox in their observance. It is enough for the first term to focus on instilling faith, life with faith, and this includes faith in the sense of what the Ba’al Shem Tov called, having faith in one another. It means that every individual respect others, take an interest in others, and certainly not cheat them or cause them grievance. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s followers were all friends: “All of Israel are friends” (יםרבל חא רׂשיל יכּ). The second term is dedicated to using the consensus that has been created to protect the integrity of the entire Land of Israel. The goal of the third term is that all the Jews who live in the Land of Israel live according to the Torah and its principles of justice with the feeling that this leads to the joy of Torah as it was given at Sinai and to the feeling of God’s joy in the Torah, which is revealed through the joy found in Torah innovations.
From Prime Minister to Mashiach
As noted earlier, it might be that if all three terms are led by the same individual, the same individual who continually reinvents himself and renews his focus, that individual might not just lead us toward the coming of Mashiach, but may be the Mashiach himself. Isaiah describes Mashiach as someone who is constantly elevating and improving, “Behold, my servant will succeed, will rise, elevate, and attain great heights.”
As discussed elsewhere, the stages of the Mashiach’s development parallel the stages described in Maimonides' description of the required actions of Mashiach. According to Maimonides description of the Mashiach’s rise, his first act is just his background as a scholar like King David his progenitor. During this stage, before he is recognized as even being the Mashiach in potential, he might be the three times elected Prime Minister (or this stage could be completed, as discussed, by three separate individuals) focusing each term on the Ba’al Shem Tov’s simple faith in God and the Torah, on creating a consensus among the people, and on preparing the way for a Torah based legal system. The sages describe this stage as the coming of Elijah the prophet, the harbinger of the Redemption. Elijah is famous for instilling the simple faith of every Jew that there is only God and no other force ruling the world—“Havayah is God” (יםה-לא אהוה הו). Elijah is also described as the one who will foster understanding between generations, creating a sense of solidarity and consensus. Finally, Elijah is tasked with clarifying the final halachic rulings and providing the necessary genius that scholars of Torah require to fully comprehend the Torah, thereby paving the way for using the Torah as the basis of a legal system.
Once this order of the pre-Messianic era is complete, the Mashiach can appear, first as Mashiach in potential, and then subsequently as Mashiach in practice. Thus, we have a new insight into Maimonides description:
If a king will arise from the House of David who diligently contemplates the Torah and observes its mitzvot as prescribed by the Written Law and the Oral Law as David, his ancestor, reflects the pre-Messianic order orchestrated by Elijah.
... [If he] will compel all of Israel to walk in [the way of the Torah] and rectify the breaches in its observance, and fight the wars of God, we may, consider him Mashiach in potential.
The state of Mashiach in potential is usually associated with the Midrashic figure of Mashiach ben Yosef. And finally, the third stage:
If he succeeds in the above, builds the Temple in its place, and gathers the dispersed of Israel, he is definitely the Mashiach.
The third stage is associated with the definitive state of Mashiach also known as Mashiach ben David.
