What I wouldn’t give to be able to predict Moshiach’s arrival accurately! So many people have tried, GREAT people. People who we might have thought COULD make an accurate prediction, but didn’t. It’s so elusive, the day of Moshiach’s coming, and it will be until, the Zohar predicts, it will become so obvious that even a child will be able to know with certainty that Moshiach’s appearance is imminent (Zohar, Bereishis 118a).
It doesn’t make it easier to know that there are two possible times for Moshiach’s arrival, what the Talmud calls “achishenah—hastened” and “b’ittah—in its time” (Sanhedrin 98a). We can hasten Moshiach’s arrival any day, any hour, by doing sufficient teshuvah to merit Moshiach’s arrival. Or, we can let history run out on Moshiach’s arrival time and he will come at the last possible moment. Scenario 1 results in peaceful transition to Yemos HaMoshiach. Scenario 2 is via the War of Gog and Magog, and though we dream of the former, we seem headed for the latter.
The Talmud doesn’t like predictions because it disheartens people when they don’t come true (Sanhedrin 97b). It doesn’t mean that they were wrong. They might have been right had all the conditions been met for an early arrival but weren’t…again. The fact that we still await Moshiach means that b’ittah is still yet to come…and that date seems to be unpredictable.
God and the angels know it, and apparently prophets may have as well. The Talmud says:
Eretz Yisroel shook 400 parsas by 400 parsas, and a divine voice emerged and said: “Who is this who has revealed My secrets to mankind?”
Yonason ben Uzziel stood up on his feet and said: “I am the one who has revealed Your secrets to mankind [through my translation. However], it is revealed and known to You that I did this not for my own honor, and not for the honor of the house of my father, but rather it was for Your honor that I did this, so that discord not increase among the Jewish people.”
Yonasan ben Uzziel also wanted to reveal a translation of Kesuvim—Writings, but a divine voice emerged and said to him: “It is enough for you [that you translated the Prophets]!”
Why [was he denied permission to translate the Writings? Because it has in it a revelation of] the end, [when Moshiach [will arrive]. (Megillah 3a)
That is, specifically Sefer Daniel. This of course has not stopped many over the millennia from trying to answer that $64,000 question with something Daniel cryptically said.
Here’s the real question. How does it work? Does Moshiach come because history just happens to demand it at some time or is it the time that makes history demand it. The first option seems to be what achishenah is all about, the result of us taking the lead and history being allowed to follow it. The second, b’ittah, is about us not taking the appropriate lead, forcing us to follow history’s direction engineered from above to get us to where we have to be according to the divine script by a very specific time.
The Talmud has a list of signs that seem to belong to the b’ittah scenario (Sotah 49b; Sanhedrin 97a) which, quite frankly, could be today’s headlines. That’s why some of us look on feeling, “This has gotta be it.”
But then there are things like this:
The [sefirah of] Yesod divides into two, and therefore so does the sixth millennium—to which Yesod corresponds—divide into two [periods of history]. The period that corresponds to the Yesod itself will still be [a history of] destruction and exile, but the period that corresponds to the Atarah (Crown) will be Yemos HaMoshiach. (Hakdamos uSha’arim, Sha’ar HaPoneh Kadim, Ch. 39)
What does this mean? More than can be explained here, but the basic idea is like this. Sefiros are the kabbalistic building blocks of Creation. They are completely spiritual so not visible. There are ten of them, and they are the system God created and continues to employ to implement His will as far as Creation and history are concerned. They possess the potential for all that will ever exist and happen.
Six of the sefiros govern history from Creation until 6000 when the World-to-Come is set to begin. The first four thousand “years” of Olam HaBa (the World-to-Come) will be the result of the tenth sefirah Malchus (which will ascend at 6000), and the first three sefiros in ascending order: Binah, Chochmah, and Keser (the higher up a sefirah is, the more spiritual it is).
Our history since Creation is six millennia corresponding to the sefiros of Chesed (0-1000), Gevurah (1000-2000), Tifferes (2000-3000), Netzach (3000-4000), Hod (4000-5000), and Yesod (5000-6000). The current year is 5782, 782 years in the sixth millennium and sefirah of Yesod. Whatever has happened in each millennium has been a function of its respective sefirah, just as DNA dictates what happens with our bodies.
The change from millennium to millennium is rarely noticeable because they overlap somewhat where they transition from one to the next. But the transition from non-Messianic history to Messianic history will be quite dramatic, and in the midst of a millennium, not at the end of it.
This was built into Creation as it was happening, during a pre-Creation period of history called “Sheviras HaKeilim—Break of the Vessels.” If you know Kabbalah, you know this. If you don’t, you don’t need to for the point being made. To make possible this mid-millennium transition, God had the sefirah that is the basis of the sixth millennium, Yesod, split in two before Creation, to give both parts independent realities.
The main part is the Yesod, and that is the basis for the exiles the Jewish people have endured during this sixth millennium, which we’re still waiting to end. The second part of the Yesod, the Atarah will be the basis of the Messianic Era destined to play out towards the end of this millennium.
The question is, is it a fixed value? Is the division of Yesod into two parts something that can fluctuate, or is it set? And if the latter, what is the proportion of Atarah to Yesod because that will tell us at what point during this millennium we can expect Yemos HaMoshiach to begin.
It’s a great and important question, and the topic of the next entry, b”H.