הדרך הישרה - למה צריך גאולה?

By studying redemption and Mashiach, we already begin to enter a state of redemption. Sit here so he can watch. >> Long live the King Mashiach! So today we will talk about the Jewish people's need for redemption.

Why do we need redemption? Is it so that we will have abundant livelihood, so that we lack nothing physically? Is it so that everyone will be healthy? Is it so that there will be a resurrection of the dead?

Why do we need redemption? The Rambam already tells us: The sages and prophets did not yearn for the days of Mashiach in order to rule over the whole world. The sages did not wait to be the kings of the world, for the whole world to be at our feet, or for everyone to be our servants; not so that the nations would praise them, nor for everyone, for the whole world to respect us; not to eat and drink and rejoice, but so that they would be free

for Torah and its wisdom, with no one to oppress or distract them, so they would merit the life of the World to Come. This means that the sages and the righteous did not wait for redemption to have physical abundance, to be kings, to rule the whole world, for the whole world to be their servants, or for everyone to be healthy.

They did not wait for that; they waited so they could occupy themselves with Torah all day, and thereby—exactly—they would also merit the life of the World to Come that they had always been awaiting. This is the Jewish people's expectation for redemption: to be able to serve Hashem all the time with joy. The Rebbe speaks about this matter, that at first, as Jews, when we wait for redemption, we think of physical things , of physical Jewish matters like health , that there won't be...that everyone ...that there won't be death, strife, or conflict. Yes, exactly, a life of prosperity.

So one might—we might think : what is the problem? Why is redemption needed? We will have prosperity, the Holy One, blessed be He, will bless us, we are already in the Land of Israel and that's it—why do we really need redemption? So the Rebbe tells us: even when a Jew reaches a state where he has perfection in everything he needs, he still, he still wants Mashiach.

Why does he want Mashiach? Because at the end of the day, you, you, you, you are here in this world, and you also have mitzvot. Part of the mitzvot is not just putting on tefillin and wearing tzitzit; you have a mitzvah to go out and earn a living, and "Hashem your God will bless you in all that you do." In order for the Holy One, blessed be He, to bless you, you must act, you must go to work, at least even for a short time during the day. And during the time that you go to work, you cannot learn and pray.

You are now working, you are doing your work outside—it is true, it is service of Hashem, but it is not like when you serve Hashem now with your body; you are now creating a means for the service of Hashem. And ultimately, if we look at our daily lives, most of the day, most of what we do—it is all just a means. You wake up in the morning, you study Chassidus, you go to prayer, and after that, you eat. Why do you eat?

To have the strength to go to work. >> You go to work so you’ll have money, a place to sleep, food, education for the children, and all those things. Actually , half of your life, or even more than half of your life, you are constantly just going for, for, for. Everything is basically just a means to an end.

And when a Jew realizes this situation, that actually everything he does is a means, and it's not...although it is a means, it is a great thing, it is service of God, yes, every act of a Jew should be for the sake of Heaven, but it’s not... it’s not like sitting all day and studying Torah, it’s not like sitting all day by the side of the Holy One, Blessed be He, so naturally, a Jew feels sorrow over this. It is sorrow for a Jew , it is

like forced labor, he is constantly going and working. Yes, and part of what will be in the Redemption is that we won’t need, we won't need anything, everything will be in abundance for us, we won't even need to go to work, it will be, it will be.

>> But let me speak for a moment, we will get to all the details afterward at the end. But the point is that there will be non-Jews who will work for us, not so they will be our slaves, but simply so that we can engage in the real matters, that we can sit and study Torah properly . Now, in addition to this matter that we lack Torah study and that we don't have enough time to be connected, to think about the Holy One, Blessed be He,

there is another matter: even if I could sit here in the study hall, I am here in the Land of Israel, everything is in abundance, there are robots working for me, I don't know what—it’s still not perfect, because at the end of the day, I am missing so many, many, many commandments that I cannot perform right now. The vast, vast majority of commandments are actually impossible to fulfill.

Most of the commandments dependent on the Land, Shmita, Jubilee, even the daily sacrifice that we cannot offer every day because we have no Holy Temple. Therefore, when a Jew thinks about this, it should touch him, it should be missing to him, that I now don't have, I don't have sacrifices now . If a Jew now, Heaven forbid, did something not good, or conversely, if something good happened, a child was born, he cannot now come and thank the Holy One, Blessed be He, in the Holy Temple,

bring a sacrifice, and rejoice, that is something that should be missing for him. Now, of course, the Rebbe, the Rebbe Melech HaMashiach, says that the fact that you know now that you are missing all of this, everything that should be in a rectified world, in a world of Redemption, in a world that has a Holy Temple, it shouldn't cause you to feel weakness, that "it's too hard for me, I don't want to continue working." But on the contrary, precisely because of this , you should want

to complete even more and do even more in the Torah and commandments that you do have right now And when you, when a Jew walks with this thought, reaches into the Torah and dedicates all the time he has to studying Torah and fulfilling mitzvot— then it is not, it is really not only not hard work, it becomes a matter of pleasure for him.

And of course, he is not satisfied with just the work, but continues to yearn for the revelation of the King Messiah, the Mashgiach. Now you are bringing another point here; this is specifically Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein, the Mashgiach in Ponevezh. He brought up the point that when the people of Israel went out of Egypt, it was—it was by the power of their faith. That the people of Israel believed in Hashem, that Hashem would take them out of Egypt, and in the end, the Holy One, blessed be He, did take them out of Egypt.

And at the exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel were not yet the chosen people; the Holy One, blessed be He, had not yet announced to the people of Israel, had not yet given them the Torah. The Torah is actually a type of agreement on how the world is actually going to work: the people of Israel perform mitzvot, and through this, they give vitality to the world. This was even before that; this was the promise given by the Holy One, blessed be He, to our father

Abraham, to our father Isaac, to our father Jacob. Whereas we—we have already merited the Torah, we have already received the Torah, and we are already the chosen people of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that is it, there is no going back, thank God, and if only.

If at the exodus from Egypt, the Holy One, blessed be He, said—after all, before the exodus from Egypt, in the Covenant between the Pieces, which we read two weeks ago, the Holy One, blessed be He, tells our father Abraham that it is true the people of Israel will suffer in Egypt in exile, but after that, I will judge that nation—I am going to judge them, the nation that oppresses the people of Israel. So if back then at the exodus from Egypt, when the Holy One, blessed

be He, only had a promise to our father Abraham and the Holy One, blessed be He, struck the Egyptians so hard, how much more so will the Holy One, blessed be He, do to all the nations that oppressed us and killed us in exile, how much more so. It is from this faith, with the help of God, that we will merit the revelation of the King Messiah immediately, our righteous Messiah.