Is "wait 'til next year" a good approach?

This morning I spoke about the kinah of אאדה עד חוג שמים – our pursuit of Gd, our approach to others for assistance, the failure of others to assist, and finally our appeal to Divine mercy. Perhaps the best-known line in the kinah is בכל שנה אומרת היא השנה הזאת, the annual declaration, "This is going to be the year."

We are familiar with the accounts of communities which buried their kinos after Tishah b'Av every year. [I have wanted to do this for the past few years, but we are renting, so we don't have a yard…] We know of great leaders who kept packed suitcases by the door, and who saved their finest clothing for the arrival of Mashiach.

And we train ourselves to say "Wait 'til next year." We sing לשנה הבאה בירושלים ("next year in Jerusalem") after Yom Kippur, at the Seder, and on various other occasions. We recite the Ani Maamin saying that we will wait for Mashiach every day. We consider it quasi-heretical to act as though Mashiach isn't coming imminently.

But I wonder if we aren't harming our chances, to a certain extent. Saying "This is going to be the year" suggests that we are a championship-contending team, bounced in the first or second or third round of the playoffs, perhaps missing one or two key pieces in order to get over the hump. Many teams that think they are just one or two pieces away don't make major moves, don't re-examine their conditioning practices and uproot and re-build their drafting policies. They try to maintain their strengths, and add that one more thing.

The result is that teams trick themselves into thinking they are already contenders and go for years with an aging nucleus, disregarding their many flaws, until they collapse. (I would give specific examples, but this post is going up Motzaei Tishah b'Av and I'm not in the mood for that sort of thing.) Teams need to know when it's time to go into re-building mode.

I wonder if our "Next year in Jerusalem" chants and our "This is going to be the year" confidence don't lead us to believe that we are on the cusp, just about there, and therefore not in need of a major overhaul. We treat our beautiful, booming land of Israel, our schools with their unprecedented enrollments, our shuls with their daf yomi programs, our community kollelim, our beautiful mikvaos, our number of children studying in Israel, our kosher food, our anti-lashon hara programs, as evidence that we are strong. If ony we could just add one piece, a little reduction of that pesky sinas chinam, we'd be great.

We are unreasonably optimistic, and we don't uproot everything. We campaign for money for our institutions without asking whether they need a re-boot. We add minyanim without asking whether we are really davening. We build new mikvaos without looking at the emotional health of our families.

I'm rambling and ranting a bit; I apologize. But I can't shake the feeling that instead of putting out videos and making speeches about the one thing we need to change, the one thing to add so that maybe we'll see Mashiach and this will be the last Tishah b'Av, we - each individual Jew, lay and clergy alike - ought to be making a real list, designing a multi-year or multi-decade rebuilding process as individuals and as members of communities, and getting on with it.

Israel celebrates 60... but remember Zecharyah's message

Sixty!

Sixty, in the Torah, is a measure of completion:

• The sages refer to the number of Jews who left Egypt as "60 myriads" (Talmud, Megilah 29a)
• Large gatherings in general are defined as gatherings of "60 myriads" (Talmud, Berachot 58a).
• The Temple in Jerusalem was 60 cubits long (Kings I 6:2).
• Sixty warriors surround the bed of King Solomon, a full complement of defenders (Song of Songs 3:7).
• Sixty myriads of angels crowned the Jews at Mount Sinai when we accepted the Torah (Talmud, Shabbat 88a).

There is an element of completion, then, in reaching the age of 60, however battered and broken we may feel at times; mazal tov!

I submitted the following column to the Allentown Morning Call's Religion section, in honor of the occasion:

A Lesson from Zechariah, on Israel's 60th Birthday

Some 2400 years ago, as the Jews were slowly building the Second Temple in Jerusalem, they asked the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 7), “Shall we continue to fast for the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

Commentators explain that this question was born of frustration with the slow pace of Jewish redemption from their exile to Babylon. Persian King Cyrus had permitted the Jews to return to Israel and build their Temple anew, but the process had been hampered by Samaritan antagonism as well as Jewish poverty. Those who remembered the glory of the First Temple were unimpressed by the diminished beauty of the second. Only a small percentage of the nation had even returned from exile at this stage of the building process. And so the nation wanted to know: Is this what redemption looks like? Is our suffering truly over, or are we simply in another phase of our exile?

Fast-forward to our own day, and May 2008, as Israel celebrates its sixtieth anniversary of modern statehood. When this new incarnation of a Jewish country was first established, just a few years after the Holocaust, many Jews looked upon its birth as a Divine nod of approval, the first sproutings of Messianic redemption. A holiday, Yom ha’Atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) was established, complete with special prayers of thanks and great celebrations.

Over the past sixty years, Israel has succeeded in fulfilling much of that messianic promise. Millions of Jews have been saved from persecution in other countries, such as France, Argentina, Yemen, Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union. The Torah is studied there in dozens if not hundreds of institutions. Sites barred to Jews by generations of Arab rulers are now open for all to access. A thriving economy, great universities, a society with civil rights for all of its citizens, a democratically elected government and a free press, all of these have been introduced for the first time in many centuries into a land which had been governed by one despot or another for almost two thousand years, since the eviction of the Jews by the Roman empire. In many ways, the past sixty years have seen a great, even messianic, Jewish renaissance in Israel.

But, at the same time, the question of Zechariah’s era resonates with Jews of today’s generation. For thousands of years, Jewish sages have taught that a messianic time would mean peace with the nations around us, a return to Jewish religion by all Jews, and a Temple on the Temple Mount. It is for this that Jews have prayed, “And may our eyes behold Your merciful return to Zion,” three times each day, for millenia. And so Jews today look at constant warfare, internecine squabbles, political corruption and significant poverty among children and the elderly, and ask the question of their ancestors: “Shall we continue to fast for the destruction of the First Temple? Or has our period of mourning ended?”

To this question, Zechariah’s answer is as relevant today as it was in his day. The prophet reminded the populace of the sins which had preceded the First Temple’s destruction, as well as the exhortations of his predecessors: “Judge truthfully, and act with generosity and mercy toward each other. Do not cheat the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and do not plot evil against your brother in your hearts.”

In other words: Dithering about whether deliverance has arrived, or not, is a waste of time. Better to focus on righting wrongs and building a proper society, and ensuring that we earn whatever redemption God has in store.

This is a timeless message, for Jews and for all humanity’s eschatology-oriented religions: Divine Redemption will come, whatever its form, when it is Divinely decreed. Our responsibility is not to attach a label to this salvation, but to work to make it a reality.

You might also see my derashah here.

Redemption must be learned (Derashah, 7th day of Pesach)

If the elephant never forgets, then we, the Jewish people, are a nation of pachyderms. Every two-bit country that oppressed us and then disappeared is commemorated with at least a holiday if not a book in Tanach, and every tyrant, king and general who attacked us and was then killed during the past 3400 years is marked for special ignominy. We don’t forget anything.

The best example of our inflexible hold on history is Pesach. We escaped Egypt, and now, every year, we spend a week not only marking our redemption but even eating the same food we ate at that time, 3400 years in the past!


However, Pesach is more than just another holiday in which we hold on to our past - after all, Pesach is the only event in Jewish history that actually requires full-scale, dramatic, re-enactment.

• We have no such re-enactment for the Akeidah.

• We have no such re-enactment for the giving of the Torah at Sinai - we do learn all night on Shavuos, but that’s a custom rather than a biblical mitzvah.

• We have no such re-enactment for the building of the Mishkan or Beis haMikdash, or for their destruction.

You might be able to make a case for Succos as re-enactment, but we certainly have no staging with the philosophical depth and legal complexity of the Pesach Seder for anything in Jewish history. Why this? Why is it so critical that we envision ourselves on this march through the walls of a long-dead empire?

Perhaps the key is in the Geulah experience itself, in teaching Jews of every generation how best to appreciate and handle גאולה, Redemption.

גאולה, as the word is used in the Torah, means more than being saved from a threat:
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming a slave from slavery.
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming family land that has been pawned.
The Torah’s term גאולה refers to redeeming property that had been dedicated to the Beis haMikdash, so that now it may be used for common, mundane purposes.

גאולה is about changing our state, enabling a fresh start, breaking new ground, without being beholden to the people we were before or the world in which we lived before - and because we are creatures of habit and comfort and fear of the new and unknown, גאולה is a hard experience for us to absorb. גאולה can frighten us into hiding like a groundhog who has seen his shadow, or like the Jews in the desert who complained to Moshe, “We would have preferred the slavery of Egypt to the insecurity of this new way of life.”

The trail of Jewish history amply illustrates the difficulty of embracing גאולה; our national narrative is littered with redemptions which offered the opportunity of a new start, but which ultimately failed either because we didn’t recognize them, or because we weren’t willing to grasp them:

• The Assyrians invaded Israel, exiled the northern ten tribes and then turned to the South. It seemed inevitable that they would conquer ירושלים - but King Chizkiyahu, Yerushalayim and the nation were miraculously spared. This could have been a real גאולה, the gemara even says that Mashiach could have come at that point, had the people celebrated and embraced Gd adequately - but they did not thank HaShem immediately with great song, and the opportunity was lost.

• Purim offered another גאולה, as the Jews celebrated their escape from Haman and thanked HaShem. But shortly thereafter the Jews were given Persian permission to return to Israel and build the second Beis haMikdash, and the great majority did not go.

• I would make the case that 1948 was a potential גאולה as well, a watershed moment when Jews could have returned en masse to this new, Jewish land - but, again, it was only a partial גאולה because some went but the great majority did not.


The megilah we read today, שיר השירים, sums up the problem of the failed גאולה. HaShem is described as a suitor at our door, his hand outstretched, calling to us, פתחי לי אחותי רעיתי יונתי תמתי, Open up the door for me, my sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one! But the response of the Jewish people is a reluctant excuse, רחצתי את רגלי איככה אטנפם, I have washed my feet, how can I dirty them? It’s an excuse, a paltry excuse for declining גאולה.


Pesach, on the other hand, was a case of successful גאולה, successful redemption, as we marched out of Egypt and all the way to Sinai to receive the Torah. We recognized the opportunity, and we grasped it - and so, today, we use Pesach in order to accustom ourselves to the idea and opportunity of redemption, of instantaneous change, of a Divinely ordained shift that demands we rush בחפזון to keep up.

• We imagine what it was like to be a slave, familiar with matzah and marror, and suddenly find ourselves eating a korban Pesach.

• We imagine what it was like to be downtrodden, born into servitude, and suddenly learn that the heritage of Avraham counts for something, that the promises of the past are more than legend, that the Creator of the Universe wants a relationship with us.

• We imagine what it is like to see our world’s priorities and obligations turned upside down in the frenzy of redemption.


We need Pesach to help us imagine what it is like to embark into a new world of possibility so that we will understand the nature of גאולה and so that it will no longer be intimidating. In every generation, we train our children to see themselves leaving Egypt, to have their lens widen from the closed perspective of the slave to the wide-open vista of the free, to understand what it means to have the shackles suddenly removed. Pesach is our training ground for freedom.


As I pointed out before, the Torah’s vision of גאולה is not an all-or-nothing term reserved only for Messianic redemption; גאולה refers to every change of status, every shift in our existence, large and small. All of these are opportunities.

גאולה may be a job offer. גאולה may be an opportunity to attend a class. גאולה may be an invitation from a spouse, a parent, or some other relative to apologize and re-start a troubled relationship on a healthier footing.

Pesach tells us to keep our eyes open, to watch for Moshe coming out of the desert to tell us that our slavery is over, to recognize the גאולה for what it is and to capitalize on our opportunities.

The ultimate גאולה, whether we call it the first sprouting of our national redemption or just the fulfillment of our Jewish dream of living in our own land, is the return to Israel. That’s the whole ball-game, a fulfillment of the Torah’s instruction to us to take possession of Israel and pass it on to our descendants, and the chance for us to celebrate the Torah and its mitzvos in their intended way.

We’ve been through, several times, the many legitimate reasons why people cannot make aliyah. Health reasons for some, responsibilities in America for others, and so on. But Pesach teaches us to keep our eyes open for גאולה, to recognize it when it comes, and to leap at our chance to escape Mitzrayim and head toward our land.

They tell the story of a man who drowns in a flood, declining all human efforts to rescue him because he’s waiting for a Divine miracle. When he goes before Gd for judgment, Gd explains that all of those human efforts were the miracle, the redemption Gd was sending.

May we learn to recognize our גאולות, large and small, and take advantage of them when they come.