"The Great Redemption" (62)

"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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62.

I’ll now go back to explain what will happen ultimately, when the end comes about. Moses alluded to it when he said, “When you’re in distress and all these things have come upon you” (Deuteronomy 4:30), and David said this when he peered upon that time, “Why do You stand so far away, G-d? Why do You hide yourself in times of distress” (Psalms 10:1). Understand this well.

Know that a great aperture was originally opened upon the Holy Land, which was the gate from which all blessings and peace were to go forth fully and without restriction. But this gate was closed off when (our) sins caused the Holy Temple to be destroyed, and small windows were opened in their place which have far less command than the gate had. And thus it’s said “My Beloved ... stands behind our wall gazing in through the windows, peering through the lattice” (Song of Songs 2:9).

Now, once these (small) windows were opened they were ordered and assigned to stay open throughout the exile and to not close up for even a moment, otherwise the world would be destroyed. Once the redemption comes about -- (and may it do so) speedily and in our days! -- the gate that had been shut will be reopened, and we won’t even recall the windows.

The truth is, they will have already stopped functioning (once the gate opens), for as it’s said, “there can be only one leader to a generation, not two” (Sanhedrin 8A). And so once the gate rules the windows can no longer do so. That’s (also) in keeping with the mystery of “one kingdom cannot overlap another (kingdom's reign) by even a hair's breadth” (Berachot 48B).

Thus as soon as it comes time for the redemption the (great) gate will begin to stir awake and to open, and that stirring will bring on a great illumination that will (even) pass through the (small) windows, since nothing else will be able to rule by then. And from that day onward the gate will grow greater and greater in all its details, as the windows disappears in stages.

As such, the gate will have been erected (indeed) but only up Above, for it won’t be known of down below until the windows stop ruling, as they’d been charged to do from the first.

(c) 2006 Rabbi Yaakov Feldman

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

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