One of the things that makes a doctor a doctor is their training to read signs that could indicate some form of illness. A good diagnostician is a doctor who not only recognizes such signs, but what illness they might point to. That is crucial, of course, for knowing how to respond with the most effective treatment.
The reason why this works is because everyone’s body is basically built the same way. Health is everyone’s goal, and illness lets us know when we have it or it is being threatened. If everyone’s health was based upon different things, doctors and nutritionists would have a far more difficult time helping people to stay healthy.
It works the same way with history. There are certain givens about the way the world works and man in it that make certain predictions about the future possible, sometimes even reliable. We call those “trends,” and some happen quite naturally and others as a result of shrewd marketing and advertising.
It especially works this way with Jewish history, because it is specifically the result of Hashgochah Pratis, personalized providence. God of course oversees the rest of the world as well, but in a more general way called Hashgochah Klallis, or general providence. It’s why history can look random sometimes.
Jewish history is not just the background against which millions of Jews live out their personal lives connected only by a common religion. It is a plan, a map with a very specific beginning and end, and every point between them has been planned, calculated, and directed by God on the most minute level to make sure everything is always according to His will.
It may seem to us at times as if Jewish history is going no where specific, or even backwards. But in actuality it is always going forwards from God’s perspective, on target and always on time along its very long journey to ultimate fulfillment.
That’s what makes the signs so important. That’s what makes them meaningful. They are God’s way of letting us in on what He is up to when He wants us to know, as Yosef told an amazed Pharaoh:
Concerning the repetition of the dream to Pharaoh, it is because the matter is ready from God, and God is hastening to do it. (Bereishis 41:32)
One could argue, and many have, that this was only true in Biblical times. That was when God still spoke directly with man, and even included Him in His plans:
God said, “Shall I conceal from Avraham what I am doing?” (Bereishis 18:17)
Today we live in a period of intense hester panim, the hiding of God’s face. Of course God still runs history, every last part of it. But ever since we pushed God out of our picture, He has pushed us out of His. We’ve become more like unwitting passengers on God’s boat, trying to make the best of our lives while history does its thing in the background. We’ve lost the merit of any kind of advance warning.
Yes, and of course, no. We have in our possession reliable sources that, as a result of Hashgochah Pratis, have become signs in their own right about what is happening and what it means. These are only a few examples.
One. Kibbutz Golios
This is something that many take for granted, and really should not. Even if someone doesn’t believe that Torah was given directly by God to the Jewish people over 3,300 years ago, they have to believe that the Torah we have is at least 2,000 years old.
Why? Because other religions that we accept to be that old base themselves upon the Torah. Josephus, the Roman historian since before the Second Temple was destroyed talks about and quotes the Torah. And yet, even before the Temple was destroyed the Romans started shipping Jews out of Eretz Yisroel, the Torah mentions this:
It will be, when all these things come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you that you will consider in your heart, among all the nations where God your God has banished you, and you will return to God, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul, and you will listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you this day you and your children, then, God, your God, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you. He will once again gather you from all the nations, where God, your God, had dispersed you. Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, God, your God, will gather you from there, and He will take you from there. And God, your God, will bring you to the land which your forefathers possessed, and you [too] will take possession of it, and He will do good to you, and He will make you more numerous than your forefathers. (Devarim 30:1-5)
This prediction of kibbutz golios, the future ingathering of the exiles is an absolutely remarkable prediction and promise. It was made so much earlier than it could ever have happened, and yet was accepted as fact by the people hearing it. It takes knowledge of the future to make it, and authority to promise it and be believed. Otherwise no one would think to make it, and no one would agree to believe it.
Even more remarkable is the fulfillment of it. A lot of history has occurred during those 2,000 years, and enough persecution and exile to cause the Jewish people to disappear completely. Any other nation with a similar history has.
By the 1700s, the Jewish people had been scattered to the “four corners” of Europe only, while the community in Eretz Yisroel had dwindled to almost nothing. Between the Crusades and the Arab marauders, Eretz Yisroel had been savaged and ravaged and ceased to be a safe haven for Jews. For the most part, the once prosperous land remained barren from north to south, and under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1740, that began to change because the year was also 5500 from Creation, the half-way point of the sixth millennium. According to Kabbalah, each millennium corresponds to a day of Creation, so just as the half-way point of a day is sunrise (Neitz), mid-millennium is the “sunrise” of the millennium.
That is not as significant during the first five millennia of history as it is during the sixth one. Just as Friday is Erev Shabbos, the sixth millennium is the Erev Shabbos of history, Shabbos in this case being the seventh millennium and first stage of the World to Come, and it says:
Just as a person prepares himself on the sixth day after the sun begins to descend for the beginning of Shabbos, likewise will the world be rectified in advance of the seventh millennium, “the day that is completely Shabbos.” (Zohar, Vayaira 117a)
As the Gemora says, you have to prepare on Erev Shabbos if you want to eat on Shabbos. It is true in halachah and as a metaphor, because so many things in life only succeed with the proper preparation. In the case of the Shabbos of the week, we know what that means. What about with respect to the Shabbos of history? How do we prepare for that?
With two periods of transition and transformation, Yemos HaMoshiach and Techiyas HaMeisim—the Messianic Era and the Resurrection of the Dead. The Messianic Era will be the end of the yetzer hara and all evil (and therefore free will as well), and resurrection is necessary to restore our bodies to their former spiritual glory in preparation for the World to Come.
We do not know when the Messianic Era will begin, or if it already has. However, the Zohar does says that the period of resurrection will last for either 210 or 214 years, and that it will follow 40 years of Kibbutz Golios. It is during those 40 years, assumedly, that the verse from Devarim will apply in earnest.
In earnest, as opposed to…?
Well, it was in 5500 that the Vilna Gaon decided to kick off the process by training and sending his students to Eretz Yisroel to begin rebuilding the yishuv. Though he was mocked by others around him, he was certain the time had come to move in the direction of the final redemption, and that meant kibbutz golios.
The hardships were tremendous and disheartening. It was like trying to light a fire with a single match on a windy day while wood was wet. The chances of success were incredibly slim and some even returned to Vilna. Even the Gaon himself had to turn back while on his way to Eretz Yisroel, never making it there after that.
Miraculously, progress began to be made with great self-sacrifice. Over time, the community was expanded and conditions were improved, and more Jews started coming. There were five waves of aliyah between 1882-1939, at which point the population of Eretz Yisroel numbered 450,000.
Today, there are 7,000,000 Jews living in Eretz Yisroel, more than half of the world’s Jewish population. That alone has redemption-like implications. If the Zohar is to be taken literally, the final phase of Kibbutz Golios began either in 1986, when Russia unexpectedly imploded and let Jews emigrate, or in 1990, when the Persian Gulf War began and eventually resulted in a weakening of Jewish influence in America (perhaps signaling the beginning of the end of that exile).
Furthermore, let’s say that the Zohar is correct, that Techiyas HaMeisim will last either 210 or 214 years and follows 40 years of Kibbutz Golios, which may have begun as early as 1986 and as late as 1990. That would mean that there is either two or four years left until the first resurrection…two or four years until the end of the Messianic Era, because Moshiach will have no role to play during that perfect period of history.
Have we been watching the final redemption unfold over the past 200 plus years and not even known it? Have we been living through the end stage of Kibbutz Golios unaware? Has God been flashing a sign of redemption right in front of our faces, and we have been looking somewhere else? And all He had to do to hide what He was doing was take advantage of our ability to overlook miracles and take them for granted.
Up Next: The War of Gog and Magog.