|
So according to “The Hollow Men,” by T S Eliot, but recently it is the bang that worries us. A poll recently found that one in seven people believe the world will end during their lifetime (or, presumably, just after it). The same poll suggests that one in 10 people have experienced fear and/or anxiety about the eschatological implications of today. But reassurance is at hand.
While the End of the World may not seem like a Jewish subject, it turns out that Jewish history is full of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it theories. Usually according to these theories, the world will go on but in a different way, with the Messianic Age ushered in, often in blood and tears. These days, with senseless violence on the rise, including the slaughter of innocents, it may feel as if we are living in the birth pangs of the Messiah. Jewish folklore often portrays the era just before the Messiah’s coming as a terrible time. And yet the real vision of the end of days in Judaism is not about war and violence but peace and the reunification of families and nations.
For Judaism, the end of the world is not something to fear but something to await with joy. For when we witness the suffering in our world and find every reason to despair, we do not despair. Why not? Because somewhere deep within us burns the hope for redemption. When we designate for the needy funds we might wish to spend on ourselves, or volunteer hours we might prefer to while away, or speak out when we might take refuge in uneasy silence, I believe it is because we sense the messianic promise. And when we aspire to something higher and feel the glimmering of union between our souls and the divine, the encounter of the people we are with the people we wish to be, the meeting of the universe we inhabit with the universe God so long ago declared “very good” – I believe we are anticipating the time of salvation.
In her book, Rabbi Elaine Glickman writes, “the ancient Greeks and Romans who once conquered our ancestors looked to the past, saw their shining histories as the Golden Age of the universe. But our people has always looked forward. Our people has always waited for something more. Our people has always waited for the Messiah.
A Talmudic sage named Raba once taught that after we die, we appear before God to account for how we spent our time in this world. God wants to hear about our actions – what we did and what we discussed, if we behaved with honor and conducted ourselves with integrity. Then God poses one more question, and it is perhaps the hardest one: Did you, God asks, hope for redemption? Of course, we don’t know if this conversation will ever really take place. But isn’t it telling that of all the questions God might ask about our inner life – whether we ever entertained a belief in another deity, or lusted in our hearts, or spaced out during religious services – our ancestors imagined only one: Did you hope for redemption?"
Why? Maybe because if we can keep our hope for redemption intact after a lifetime of witnessing the imperfections of this world, we deserve all the heavenly reward God can give. Maybe because hoping for redemption enables us to live the way we deserve to live: with faith, and trust, and conviction that things will get better than this. Or maybe because even if we don’t live to see it, we deserve to experience the amazing and wonderful and exhilarating certainty that the Messiah will come.
In this season of hope and redemption, I wish you a good Pesach!
|
