Will Jewish History Just Go On Forever?

At the Passover seder each year, Jews read the story of the exodus from Egypt. For many, the dry and heavy words of the Hagaddah are the least important part of Passover. Being with family, creating memories and eating traditional foods easily trump the often difficult to understand words of the Hagaddah.

 

Which is a shame, because the whole point of the Hagaddah is supposed to be to remind us that God has a plan for the Jewish people and that He has unlimited power over the universe to make those plans come to fruition. Has there ever been another time in history when millions of slaves of one nation were brought out from the midst of another nation and taken to freedom in an atmosphere of miraculous plagues and vengeance? Never!

 

It’s almost like the ponderous Hagaddah lulls us into losing touch with the amazing redemption our people experienced in Egypt. How many sit around a Passover table asking the well-known fifth question “When do we eat?”

 

It’s such a shame to miss the significance, awe and splendor of the Sound and Light Show that God performed in Egypt in order to free us from bondage. Ten plagues! Splitting of the sea! Clouds to accompany us! Manna from heaven to feed us! Drowning of the enemies of the Jewish people! It’s an incredible story of redemption.

 

And yet, in Judaism, we have an even bigger story coming, and so many Jewish people are unaware of it.

 

We are taught by the great 12^th century Jewish scholar and philosopher Maimonides, also known as Rambam, that “The belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era,” is one of the Thirteen Fundamental Principles of Jewish faith. It’s one of the 13 cornerstone beliefs that form "the fundamental truths of our religion and its very foundations."

 

According to tradition, the Jewish Messiah is a person who will step into the chaos of history and inaugurate the messianic era, where the evils of the world are no more and all people will be focused on spiritual goals. It is said that every generation contains a person who is a potential Messiah. When God determines the Jews to be ready for, and worthy of, the ultimate redemption, that Messiah will be announced and will become known throughout the world.

 

The messianic era will be a time when the Jewish Messiah will rule over the entire world for good. He will also introduce the world to the deep and profound teachings of the Torah.

 

Unlike the exodus from Egypt, which seems like ancient history, there are countless Jews who believe the ultimate redemption is coming sooner rather than later, possibly in our lifetimes. I know this because I’m one of them. After much research and study, I began to see Jewish history differently. Rather than an endless succession of time that passes year after year, I came to understand that pre-messianic history has an end point. And we are rapidly approaching it.

 

If the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people is not real to you, if it's not something you've ever given much thought to, but you’d like to know more, the internet is chock full of Information about the anticipated redemption, known in Hebrew as geula. There are geula blogs, geula Facebook groups, geula lectures on YouTube and much more available.

 

If you’ve always thought that history would go on and on indefinitely, or if you’ve never thought about history as we know it coming to an end and the world transitioning to a different kind of existence, now is a good time to begin pondering.