And Jacob called his sons, and said: “Gather yourselves
together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you
in the end of days.”
Genesis 49:1
The Talmud explains that “Jacob wished to reveal to
his sons ‘the end of days’ (ketz hayomin—the
time of the final and complete redemption by Moshiach), whereupon
the divine presence departed from him.”[1]
This raises the obvious question: Why did Jacob wish to do
such a thing? What would such knowledge have achieved? On
the contrary, had the children of Israel known the date of
Moshiach’s coming, would this not have had a most adverse
effect on their morale? Would not the knowledge that the Redemption
would be more than 3,500 years in the future be a source of
discouragement and despair for the Jews in Egypt?
The Opportunity
In the “Song at the Sea” (the psalm of praise the
people of Israel sang at the shore of the Red Sea upon their
deliverance from Pharaoh’s armies), there is a verse
that reads, “Bring them and plant them on the mountain
of Your inheritance, the base for Your dwelling You, G-d,
have made; the Sanctuary, O L-rd, that Your Hands have established.”[2] The Zohar explains that had we been worthy, G-d
Himself would have brought us into the Holy Land and would
Himself have constructed the Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple)
in Jerusalem, making these eternal and unalterable deeds.
In other words, the Exodus from Egypt would have constituted
the ultimate redemption. It was only because of a series of
failings on our part (including the sin of the Golden Calf
and that of the Spies) that our entry into the land of Israel
and the construction of the Beit Hamikdash were achieved
by human means,[3] and were as mortal and vulnerable to corruption
as their achievers. Thus we still await the day when G-d Himself
will gather us from the ends of earth and rebuild the Beit
Hamikdash,[4]
making His manifest presence in our lives invincible and everlasting.[5]
It was this “end” that Jacob wished to reveal.
Had we known that the Exodus from Egypt (which was foreordained
in Abraham’s covenant with G-d) was meant to be the final
and ultimate redemption, we would have been driven to seize
the moment and ensure that its full potential would indeed
be realized.[6]
Building in the Dark
Nevertheless, G-d prevented Jacob from disclosing this to
his children. The “end of days” was to remain a
mystery, regardless of how its revelation might encourage
our efforts to perfect the world and prepare it for redemption.
For in order for man to truly participate in the perfection
of creation, it is crucial that the time frame for the advent
of the messianic era be unknown to him.
As we said above, the final redemption is a divine act, unequivocal
and eternal; so if man is to play a meaningful role in bringing
it about, it is through deeds that are themselves unequivocal
and eternal. Hence the state of galut in which we find
ourselves: a state of physical and spiritual displacement,
a state in which G-d’s guiding hand in history is hidden
and our lives seem abandoned to chance and caprice. When a
person retains his integrity and loyalty to G-d even under
such conditions, he is manifesting an “eternal”
commitment—a commitment unshakable by equivocations of
time and place.
Thus, galut is not only something from which we need
to be redeemed, but also the condition that enables our meaningful
participation in the redemption process. Galut means
being in the dark: inhabiting a world in which a corporeal
husk obscures its rich spiritual content; a world that is
deaf to the chimes of the cosmic clock of history and blind
to its own steady advance toward harmonious perfection. Only
under such conditions are our positive deeds vested with the
eternality that categorizes the messianic; were we privy to
the “end of days,” our deeds would be of a provisional
nature, buttressed by our clear vision of history’s progression
toward perfection.
Supra-Conscious Knowledge
And yet, Jacob did reveal the “end of days”
to us. Not that he actually told us when Moshiach is coming—G-d
prevented him from doing so to ensure that our experience
of galut is complete and yields the “eternal” commitment
that makes us genuine partners in the divinely perfect world
of Moshiach. But the very fact that he desired to tell
us had its effect. The Torah states that “G-d does the
desire of those who fear Him”;[7] if Jacob desired that we know,
then, on some level or another, this knowledge was communicated
to us.[8]
Furthermore, Jacob is one of the three Avot (forefathers)
of Israel, of whom our sages have described as “served
solely as a vehicle for the divine will, every moment of their
lives.”[9] If Jacob desired that we know the
secret of the “end of days,” it is a desire that
is utterly consistent with the divine will. G-d wants that
we should want to know, and that we should indeed know, so
that we should be driven by this desire and knowledge. At
the same time, He does not allow us to expressly know, so
that our deeds should be true and unconditional—not contingent
upon such “inside information.”
So we live our lives in the dark, bereft of any conscious
sense of our place in history. Seconds before the outbreak
of dawn, we perceive only the blackest of nights. But this
is only the surface of our lives—the level on which we
act to bring redemption to the world. Underlying this surface
is a knowing soul—a soul attuned to the supernal timetable,
a soul sensitive to the moments most opportune for redemption
and empowered to reveal this knowledge and potential.
Based on an address by the Rebbe, Shabbat Vayechi, 5741
(December 20, 1980)[10]
Adapted
from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe by Yanki Tauber
[1]. Talmud, Pesachim 56a.
[3]. Joshua leading the conquest of the Holy Land with
the aid of armies and arms, and King Solomon building the
Beit Hamikdash with the aid of 150,000 masons and porters
and 3,600 overseers.
[4]. See Deuteronomy 30:3 and Rashi, ibid.; Rabbeinu
Bechaya on Genesis 26:22.
[5]. Zohar I, 221a; See also Talmud, Eruvin 54a and
Midrash Rabbah, Shemot 32:1.
[6]. At the time of Jacob’s passing, the Exodus
was still 193 years away—beyond the plausible lifetimes
of Jacob’s children and grandchildren, but near in
the context of its potential as the culminating event
of history. Furthermore, the “end of days” is
not a fixed time but a “deadline”—a point
in time that marks the latest possible date for the Redemption,
which can be achieved earlier through the positive deeds
of man (Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a. Indeed, the Exodus did
take place well before its final deadline, after 210 years
in Egypt instead of the 400 years prophesied to Abraham—see
Rashi on Genesis 15:13; Ralbag, ibid.). Thus, if Jacob
would have revealed the true significance of the Exodus
to his children, they would have been even more driven
to hasten it with meritorious behavior.
[7]. Psalms 145:19. See Likkutei Torah and Ohr HaTorah
on Deuteronomy 3:23.
[8] The elimination of Moses’ name from the Torah-section
of Tetzaveh, because he said to G-d, “If You
will not [forgive the children of Israel for the sin of
the Golden Calf], erase me from the book You have written”
(see p. 205 and sources cited there). So certainly a positive
desire of a tzaddik has its effect, since, “A
positive phenomenon is exponentially more potent than a
negative one” (Talmud, Sotah 11a, et al.).
[10]. Likkutei Sichot, vol. XX, pp. 228-234
