Cinderella (4)

Exile and Redemption

The faith in redemption is paramount in our theology.  The Torah, stamped with divine truth, prophesies the redemption of the Jewish people.  God has foreknowledge of world history.  Therefore, we pray to Him to involve Him in our redemption.

 

     Rihal teaches us that the process of world redemption continues to take place, even while the Jewish people are in exile.  Divine providence functions in ways that are mysterious to us, and seem to bring about the complete opposite of redemption.  Rihal and the Rambam after him (Rambam, laws of kings, chapter 11), teach us that the mysterious workings of divine providence stand behind the success of Christianity and Islam as well.  The message of Judaism was spread to the ends of the earth through these messengers.  Thus Rabbi Abraham, son of the Rambam writes in his father's name:

 

"By keeping my Torah, you will be world leaders, your relation to them as that of a priest to his flock, the world will follow in your footsteps and imitate your actions and follow your paths.  This is the explanation I received from my father of blessed memory." (Rabbi Abraham son of the Rambam, commentary on Bereshit and Shemot)

 

This idea is repeated in Rabbi Bachya ben Asher's "Kad Kemach:"

 

"And the reason for the dispersion in my opinion...is that the Jews be spread among the nations...and they will teach them the belief in the existence of God and of the divine providence that hovers over every detail of human existence." (Kad Kemach, Redemption)

 

     Later this idea was expressed by Rabbi Chayim ben Betzalel, brother of the Maharal.  In his interpretation of the prophecy of Isaiah the servant of God he writes,

 

"And we may also explain: God wished to oppress the Jews and disperse them among the nations for the sake of the goodness of the other nations who are also the work of His hands; through the Jews who are dispersed throughout the world the true faith will also be spread throughout the world...for God desired the nations also to hold the true faith...for this reason they [the Jews] are called children of Yizrael, [literally, God will plant], for they are the seed that God planted throughout the world, like the person who plants his wheat and does not throw it down in one place but spreads it to all the edges of the fields, so the Jews were dispersed to the four corners of the earth, so that through them the true faith would spread throughout the world. (The Book of Life, Book of Redemption and Salvation, chapter 7)

 

     Exile is a trial, a trial that is part of a divine plan of history.  However, the proof of the truth lies also in the ending of the book of Job, which closes, despite everything, with redemption.  The key to understanding this ending lies in the verse that tells us that God "returned the exiles of Job" (Job 42:10). This verse loses its meaning if it does not create an association with other similar verses: "when God shall return the exiles of Zion...Return, O God, our exiles."  The return of the sons and daughters of Job represents the return of the nation after the exile.  The end of the book prophesies the redemption, and bears witness that despite everything, history owes a debt to the Jewish people.  Ultimately, history will be altered, and the world will witness the redemption and the return.

 

     We cannot think about the history of our ancestors in exile without an awareness of their greatness.  However here too, thank God, our situation has changed.  We, the modern successors of the Kuzari, must emphasize different things today.  These are the ideas Rihal will teach us in the end of the fifth section of the Kuzari.  We must understand that in our day the exile is a trap, and our attitude towards it must be one of repudiation and aliya (literally, going up) to Israel.  The status of exile today can be summed up in one sentence: exile today is not a punishment, it is a sin.

 

The Dry Bones

 

Rihal discusses the question of the fate of the Jewish people in his discussion of the suffering of the individual (3:11).  He teaches us that the meaning of suffering for the individual must reflect the meaning of the suffering of the group as well. 

 

"For when the confusions of logic arouse in his heart the length of the exile and the dispersion of the people and the dwindling of their numbers - he must first comfort himself with accepting divinely proscribed fate as I have said, and then with the attempt to punish sins, and then with the reward and punishment which await in the World to Come and cleaving to the Divine Presence in this world."

 

A third stage is added to the first two responses to suffering.  To the philosophical stage in which we accept the meaning of evil, we add the understanding of reward and punishment, and to these we add a third stage, the persuasion that the sufferings of the past build us up towards the future.  This is true both with regard to the individual and the nation.  To this Rihal adds:

 

"And if Satan brings him to despair by saying, "shall these bones live?" for our imprint among the nations has been greatly reduced and our memory is forgotten, as it is said, "our bones have dried up we have lost hope, we are doomed," he must think of the miracle of the exodus from Egypt...and then it will not seem impossible to him that we will return to our former state even when there will be only one person left of us, as it is written, "fear not, worm of Ya'akov." for what is left of man after he becomes a worm in his grave?"

 

Here we meet once again with Rihal the daring commentator.  There are many ways that the term "worm of Ya'akov" is commonly explained.  Particularly well known is the explanation of the Sages that, like the worm, our power is in our mouths.  However, Rihal takes an amazing leap of interpretation here.  He takes "worm of Ya'akov" to mean a worm on a dead body, the final sign of life.  Despite it all, we will rise again.

 

     Here we see, regarding both the individual and the nation, that suffering is first and foremost a trial.  This is in essence Job's question.  Job asks the question of suffering, and refuses to accept the standard philosophical answers.  Yet, he believes.  In next week's lecture, we will analyze the meaning and essence of this faith.

Translated by Gila Weinberg