The Edge of Redemption
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to Elijah: When will the Messiah come? Elijah said to him: Go ask him. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi went to the Messiah and said: Greetings to you, my rabbi and my teacher. The Messiah said to him: Greetings to you, bar Leva’i. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to him: When will the Master come? The Messiah said to him: Today. Sometime later, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi came to Elijah. Elijah said to him: What did the Messiah say to you? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to Elijah: The Messiah lied to me, as he said to me: I am coming today, and he did not come. Elijah said to him that this is what he said to you: He said that he will come “Today, if you will listen to God’s voice” (Psalms 95:7)
-Sanhedrin 98a, edited
Like the ominous refrain from Jaws, every day from the 17th of Tammuz pulls us further into an inescapable undertow — swelling toward inevitable calamity. The weight of 27 days of anticipatory mourning renders us motionless. By the time the 9th of Av arrives, we are burdened with unbearable grief, humiliation, and anguish. We collapse, affixed to the floor, as wave upon wave of testimony crashes over us: hunger, horror, desolation. The rollers do not slake our thirst — they deepen it. We are drenched not in water, but in tears.
The next morning, we take our places again, sunken to the ground. “We can endure,” we think. Certainly, we can make it to the end of the day.
Long before the end of the day, still in that early morning with the hardest and longest hours of affliction ahead, our eyes alight upon the words of a poet who has survived eons of submissiveness to foreign powers while yearning to once again experience God’s power. The refrain in each stanza vibrates between the elation of the Exodus – “when I was redeemed from Egypt,” and the anguish of Destruction – “when I was exiled from Jerusalem.”
when I was exiled from Jerusalem.
when I was exiled from Jerusalem.
And then — a tectonic shift.
No longer resigned to drown in despondency, no longer sitting and waiting, he strips off his bonds and fashions his future,
Gladness and joy, while anguish and sighing will flee,
when I return to Jerusalem!
This nameless prophet extends his unshackled hand from the midst of his exile and reaches out to us in the midst of our remembrance. He holds us, comforts us, transforming our dreams to seem less like the tattered bundles of hope that we gathered upon expulsion, and more like the cornucopia of promises that we will carry to deliverance.
With centuries of desolation behind him, with centuries ahead of him until the return to Zion, he challenges us to “shake off the dust and arise.” He dares us to see as he sees; suffering will end – yes, peace will flow – yes.
Certainly, by the end of days.
Or today, our poet insists, if we listen to God’s voice.
