by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

We stand at a juncture in history which does not seem particularly promising for Jews or Judaism. Sanctions or no sanctions, the Iranians will probably obtain nuclear weapons, and no one can discount Achmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” The State of Israel is subject to relentless pressure from the U.S., Europe, and the Arabs to make territorial concessions in return for little or no promise of peace. President Obama’s recent appointment of a special envoy to fight anti-Semitism highlights the disturbing reality that sixty-four years after the Holocaust, sixty-one years after the establishment of the State of Israel, the hatred persists on a global scale.

Yet, the religious Jew continues to pray every day prayer for the ingathering of the exiles to the Land of Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple (with Divine assistance, not through politics or force), the coming of the messianic era of peace and justice. In the prayerbook too, one of the 12 articles of faith of Maimonides is that we must wait for Moshiach (the Messiah), and though he delay, we expect that any day he will come. It sounds like a wishlist from never-never land, divorced from the grim realities of geopolitics. Indeed, it seems, on the contrary, as if the world is moving further away from any such happy ending.

In his autobiography, To Remain A Jew, Rabbi Yitzchak Zilber tells of how he kept the faith even during the worst times of Russian communism, when merely to observe Judaism was a crime, and belief in God and Torah was anathema. In a remarkable incident, one of his fellow students, by the name of Rodnick, interrogated him as to his beliefs:

“I am told that in the Jewish books it says that you will not remain in exile forever, but that God will gather the Jews in from all over the world and bring them to their land,” began Rodnick. “Such nonsense! Even the dogs aren’t abused as badly as the Jews! (The conversation occurred in the middle of World War Two.) “It’s not even clear that any Jews will be left in another seventy or eighty years. And even if some are left, who will they let go? Even if we were to imagine that Stalin were to announce that the Jews are permitted to go to Palestine, who would go? Not me. None of us here. We are all communist to the bone. How, then, could an intelligent person believe in such things? How can you choose a religion which is so unrealistic?”

Rabbi Zilber acknowledged his belief, adding that “many things written in the Torah and Prophets have come to pass. For example, where it says that God ‘will scatter us among the nations from one end of the earth to the other,’ something no one could imagine at the time it was predicted. So too will the exile come to an end.”

Many years later, after Rabbi Zilber was himself living in Israel, he was active in arranging brit milah for Jews from the former Soviet Union. When they were born, brit milah was illegal; but upon arrival in Israel thousands have eagerly undergone circumcision. One day, none other than Rodnick’s son appeared, waiting on line for his turn for brit milah. Later on, his father came to Israel for a visit and met with Rabbi Zilber once again. The two were walking in the street, when the once-militant atheist lifted up his arms and said, “Yitzchak, that you and me are here—this is God’s doing!”

Rabbi Zilber concludes that he procured tefillin and mezuzah for him, and that some time afterwards, Rodnick sent his grandson to study in yeshiva. (To Remain A Jew, Pp. 80-82.)

While the Torah itself does not speak openly of the messianic era (though the prophets do), there are hints and allusions. One of them is in the passage concerning God’s promise to Sarah that she would bear children. Sarah could not help but laugh when she heard this, since she was already ninety years old and childless. God chastised her for her lack of faith; and a year later she did indeed bear a son, Yitzchak, exactly as foretold.

Like the matriarch Sarah, we find it difficult to believe that our lives can change. Centuries of exile and suffering have so accustomed us to the tunnel, it’s hard to imagine there could be a light at the end of it, much less see it coming. It seems laughable to think that our prayers could be answered, and the whole bleak situation turned around in a day. In the blink of an eye. Yet, just as God made possible the inception of the Jewish people through an old, childless woman, so too will He deliver us, weary and barren of faith, into a new era.*

* The source is Rabbi Shmuel Graineman ed., Chafetz Chaim on the Torah, P. 56.

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