"The Great Redemption" (18)

"The Great Redemption" by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto

-- A Discourse on The End of the Exile and the Beginning of the Great Redemption

Translated by Rabbi Yaakov Feldman
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18.

As such, this union comes about at the time of the P’kidah, when the light grows stronger from within with a great ferocity. But the union will not be permanent and will only to be for a while. And that’s why there’ll be stirrings for redemption and repentance among the Jewish Nation, and they'll await the time they'll become holier yet. As it’s said, “I opened to my Beloved but my Beloved turned away” (Song of Songs 5:6).

Don’t say, though, that the P’kidah itself won't have accomplished this and that it would arrived at that state on its own. For as the verse responds, “my soul failed when He spoke” (Ibid.). For the soul -- about which it’s said, “my soul is among lions; and I lie down among those set on fire, sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, and whose tongue is a sharp sword” (Psalms 57:5) -- had already escaped from its prison when it said the above. And indeed, that was actually the whole point of the P’kidah.

(c) 2005 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

(Feel free to contact me at feldman@torah.org )

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