The Secret Only Moshiach Can Reveal

This is perhaps the strangest Shabbos of the entire year.

In just a few days we will remove our leather shoes, sit on the floor, read Eichah by candlelight, and mourn the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. Yet this Shabbos we are instructed to rejoice. We eat meat and drink wine, sing Zemiros, and delight in Shabbos exactly as we do every other week.

How can Judaism ask us to move so abruptly from celebration to devastation?

Perhaps the answer begins with the opening words of this week’s Haftorah:

צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה

“Zion shall be redeemed through justice, and her captives through righteousness.”

When we hear the word Zion, we immediately think of Jerusalem.

Chassidus teaches us to think one step deeper.

There is another Zion.

It is the Zion within every Jew.

The Jewish soul.

Why is the soul called Zion?

Because Tzion means a sign or a symbol. The soul is the symbol of Hashem’s Presence within every Jew. Like every sign, it points beyond itself to its Divine Source, even when that Source is hidden by the body.

The soul came from beneath Hashem’s Heavenly Throne. Its natural habitat is holiness. It longs for Torah. It thirsts for Mitzvos. It yearns to feel close to its Creator.

The body is naturally drawn to the physical, to comfort and convenience, to everything the senses can touch and enjoy. And so begins the lifelong struggle between body and soul.

That struggle has a name.

Golus.

Exile is not only a place. It is a condition.

Whenever the body drowns out the soul, Zion is in captivity. Whenever our spiritual aspirations surrender to our material desires, the Beis Hamikdash within us is waiting to be rebuilt.

The Haftorah tells us how that redemption begins. “Through justice”—through Torah. “Through righteousness”—through Mitzvos. Every Mitzvah loosens another chain. Every page of Torah allows the soul to breathe the air for which it was created.

If that is true for one Jew, it is equally true for the Jewish people.

Our personal Golus is only a reflection of the greater Golus.

For nearly two thousand years we have cried over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash and prayed for its rebuilding. We have wandered from country to country, survived inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, communism, and the Holocaust. Every generation has asked the same painful question:

If redemption is Hashem’s ultimate plan, why has exile occupied so much of Jewish history?

It is one of the oldest questions a Jew can ask.

The Rebbe once shared that from his earliest childhood he carried within himself the vision of “a redemption that will explain the suffering, the decrees, and the massacres of exile.”

Those words are extraordinary.

The Rebbe did not speak about a redemption that would erase the suffering.

He spoke about a redemption that would explain it.

There is a world of difference between the two.

No explanation can remove a mother’s tears. No explanation can restore six million lives. No explanation can erase centuries of pain.

But one day, Moshiach will reveal something we cannot yet see.

Not because our questions are wrong.

Because the answer has not yet been revealed.

In Hayom Yom the Rebbe Rashab is quoted as saying that when Moshiach comes, we will long for the days of Golus.

At first glance, those words are almost impossible to comprehend.

Long for Golus?

Who could possibly long for persecution? For fear? For loneliness? For destruction?

Of course not.

We will never long for the suffering.

We will long for the opportunity.

Only in Golus can a Jew serve Hashem when He seems hidden.

Only in Golus can a Jew choose faith over comfort, holiness over convenience, truth over popularity.

Today every act of Torah and every Mitzvah often demands effort. Sometimes it demands sacrifice. Occasionally it even demands Mesiras Nefesh. We do all this without fully understanding its significance, without seeing the immediate reward, and often without even feeling the pleasure. Yet through these very acts, we connect with the Essence of Hashem Himself.

When Moshiach comes, serving Hashem will become the most natural thing in the world. The concealment will disappear. The struggle will end.

The reward will be infinitely greater.

But the opportunity to transform darkness into light will be gone.

That is what we will miss.

There is a beautiful story about a Chossid whom people affectionately called “the Meshugener.”

One Tishah B’Av they found him in an unusually cheerful mood.

“Reb Yid,” they exclaimed, “today is Tishah B’Av! How can you possibly be happy?”

He smiled.

“Why not?”

“But today we mourn!”

He answered with a twinkle in his eye, “Joy is commanded by the Torah. Mourning on Tishah B’Av is Rabbinic. Which one should prevail?”

To everyone around him, he sounded completely irrational.

Perhaps that was exactly the point.

He was not laughing at the Churban.

He was seeing beyond it.

He understood that hidden within the darkest day of the Jewish calendar lies the birth of the brightest day in human history.

That is a perspective most of us simply do not possess.

At least, not yet.

Today we judge history by what our eyes can see. We measure exile by its pain, its losses, and its unanswered questions. Moshiach will teach us to see history through the eyes of Hashem. He will reveal the immeasurable value of every quiet act of faith, every difficult Mitzvah, every hidden sacrifice, and every lonely Jew who refused to let the flame of Yiddishkeit go out.

Suddenly, the long night of exile will no longer appear as a collection of disconnected tragedies. We will finally see the magnificent tapestry that Hashem was weaving beneath the surface all along.

Until then, we continue to mourn. Not because we have lost hope, but because we have not.

We refuse to become comfortable in Golus. We refuse to accept exile as normal. Every Tishah B’Av is another cry from the depths of the Jewish soul: Ribbono Shel Olam, enough. We do not ask You to help us become comfortable with exile. We ask You to end it.

Then—and only then—Moshiach will reveal the secret that has been hidden within every tear.

May that day come now.

May Zion, the soul within every Jew, be redeemed through Torah and Mitzvos. May the Zion of Jerusalem be rebuilt במהרה בימינו. And may this Tishah B’Av become the first of the everlasting festivals promised by our prophets.

Have a Shabbos Breathing the Air of Redemption,
Gut Shabbos,

Rabbi Yosef Katzman