Introduction | Geulah Brachamim Program – By Pinchas Winston
I WAS SECULAR for the first two decades of my life. Until that time, I had never even entertained the possibility of being an Orthodox Jew. I’m not even sure that I knew what one was, other than the fact that they lived in the past and according to defunct ideas and rules.
An unplanned but inevitable series of events changed the course of my life. Two years later, my quest to better understand myself led me to Torah Judaism. One year later, by the age 22, I was an “observant” Jew and attending yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem. I have not looked back since.
Four years after that I was married and learning in Kollel. The next year we were expecting our first child, the gender of which we chose not to know until birth. It was only well into the pregnancy that it occurred to me that not only might it be a boy, but that within nine years he could know more Torah than me.
It was very unsettling.
By that time I knew how to learn, but I also had a late start. There was SO much to learn, and at my age, it didn’t go as quickly as it does for younger minds. It would not take long, I panicked, before my son’s learning would surpass mine. Would that not lessen his respect for me?
Right there and then I made my second life-altering decision. At that moment, I decided to use those “nine years” to my benefit, to accelerate my Torah learning, and learn ALL of “Shas.”
“Shas” is spelled Shin-Samech. It has a quotation mark between the two letters to indicate that it is really an acrostic. The Shin is the first letter of the word “Shishah,” and the Samech is the first letter of “Sidrei.” Together they mean, “Six Orders,” a reference to the six “orders” of the Mishnah, the basis of the Oral Law and therefore, the entire Talmud.
The Talmud is vast. The simple text, which is far from simple to understand, itself is vast. But, to properly understand Talmud, which is crucial for understanding how to correctly live as a Jew, one must also learn its commentaries, which are just about countless. It is one of the few things in life one must learn how to learn.
It is challenging enough just to learn a single page of Talmud correctly. Needless to say, it is more than imposing to try and learn ALL 2,711 pages of Talmud that way. Most don’t even consider trying, especially when their understanding of Aramaic, the official language of the Talmud, is still quite inadequate.
There were some “shortcuts,” and there are even more today. Since my emphasis was more on knowledge attainment than on developing learning skill (I did that in yeshivah), I used some of them. It was still quite difficult, VERY time consuming but, extremely rewarding. It took me 10 years to make my first “Siyum HaShas.”
I do not recall at what point my mandate changed, but it did. It also turned out that our first child was a daughter, which bought me more learning time. It took a while, but eventually “learning Shas” became an integral part of my daily life, and still is.
Perhaps one of the best and most important advantages of learning ALL of Shas was that it exposed me to areas of Talmud I might not otherwise have ever seen. The yeshivah world tends to focus only on those “masechtos” that hone a person’s learning ability, and which provide the most relevant halachic knowledge. The rest is treated as if it is irrelevant.
This has been especially so since the Holocaust. In a few short years, the Nazis, ysv’z, were able to eliminate an entire generation of talmidei chachamim, and future Torah leaders. When the war ended and the Torah world took stock of what had been lost, the emphasis became to replace it, and as QUICKLY as possible.
The yeshivah learning program was streamlined to meet the IMMEDIATE needs of the Torah world. Much of Shas deals with matters that do not apply at this time, and became less of a learning priority. Their hashkofah could be learned, when there was time, elsewhere. It was a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain.
Looking back, the genius is clear because the success is evident. Torah not only survived the Holocaust, it has since thrived. There are yeshivos all over the world, and learning programs available even over the Internet. There has even been a “Ba’al Teshuvah Movement,” which has seen the return of many Jews to Torah Judaism from families which had strayed from Torah for generations.
Not without a cost, though. Aggadata may not be halachic, or require much skill to learn, but it is still highly informative. In fact, though the more technical and halachic parts of Talmud teach the “how” of Torah, it is often the aggadata that teaches the “why.” The same rabbis who taught the halachos also taught the aggados as well.
In fact, the more aggadata I learned, the more amazed I became. Even though they were in plain sight, it seemed as if I was learning secrets of Torah and life. They widened my hashkofic perspective, especially with respect to the idea of redemption and the centrality of Eretz Yisroel to it.
Let me preface this by pointing out that redemption had not been on my radar at that point—at all. In fact, just mentioning the word “Messiah” or “Moshiach” made me bristle. Teaching about such ideas, at that time, was not even a consideration for me.
Even once I began to write books it was only to share the knowledge of the Talmud with others who might never learn it. I felt an obligation to share Talmudic wisdom, and to help bring Jews back to Torah as someone had done for me. I knew scant little about the Final Redemption and felt no need to know more. If anything, IT pursued me, not the other way around.
That changed because of the Leshem.
I did not even know who the “Leshem” had been. But a friend of mine had, and introduced me to his work. Within a short time I had a difficult time NOT learning what he taught. Considered to be the last great Kabbalist by Torah leaders of his time, I found his writing mesmerizing.
While scanning the Table of Contents, I was drawn to chapters about Yemos HaMoshiach, Te-chiyas HaMeisim, and Olam HaBa. It was like looking at the end of the book to see how the story plays while still in the middle. I had already seen what the Talmud has to say about the topics. What was Kabbalah’s understanding?
It turns out that we know a lot more about these mysterious topics than most people think. It was such a gold mine of ideas that I often lost my breath learning them. When I “discovered” Torah Judaism for myself, I thought it was the world’s best kept secret. Once I discovered the Leshem, I thought he was Torah’s best kept secret.
Bear in mind that I had already spent considerable time learning the Ramchal’s seforim: Der-ech Hashem, Mesillas Yesharim, and Da’as Tevunah. They also discuss many of these concepts addressed by the Leshem, but not on THIS level. They certainly don’t provide a time frame for Techiyas HaMeisim.
Until the Leshem, I had understood that the resurrection of the dead will not occur until the World-to-Come, at year 7000. As the Ramchal explains, at 6000, the “Soul World” begins during which souls undergo rectification. At 7000, the body is resurrected and rejoined by the soul to begin the next stages of the World-to-Come.
According to the Leshem, however, Techiyas HaMeisim takes place BEFORE 6000, on OUR side of history. All the references to resurrection in the Talmud, therefore, describe what is meant to occur before history comes to an end. That was the BIGGEST game changer of all for me.
I must have read the section about 25 times before actually using it. The Leshem quoted the Zohar, which apparently held that the period of Techiyas HaMeisim is destined to last either 210 or 214 years. There are two opinions on the matter in the Zohar, but they BOTH agree that the period of resurrection will be AT LEAST 210 years.
This was not a prediction for the arrival of Moshiach. It was a prediction for when he will no longer be necessary. Techiyas HaMeisim, the Leshem explains, is the rebuilding of man in preparation for the next stage of history. Evil will be long gone. There will be nothing to save then. The resurrected will be more like angels than people. Who will need Moshiach then?
Incredible. REALLY incredible. It did not tell me when Moshiach would come, but it did tell me when he would “leave.” While the rest of the religious world lived with the belief that Moshiach could come any time until 6000, the Leshem, based upon the Zohar, said that he HAD to have come by at least 5790, or 2030!
That was not something that you just read and leave. You either believe what the Leshem is saying or you don’t. You either accept the Zohar or you reject it. If the former, which was the case for me, then the implications were, are, staggering. They have to be thought about. They have to be appreciated.
The more I did, the more a sense of urgency welled up inside of me. The Temple had been destroyed almost 2,000 years ago. Since then, the Jewish people have wandered through history AND the world, suffering persecution, exile, and poverty. Redemption for countless generations had been only a distant dream, if that.
Yet, according to the Zohar, we were close to the end. THE end. The End. It wasn’t 200 years away. It wasn’t 100 years away. It wasn’t even 50 years away. If the END of the Messianic Era is supposed to be within our lifetime, then its BEGINNING certainly is.
Amazing.
IT WAS AMAZING for another reason. I had already worked out the “Tenth Hour” of history. The Vilna Gaon explained that the six millennia of history correspond to the six days of Creation. The first millennium corresponds to the first day of Creation, the second millennium to the second day of Creation, and so forth. We now live in the sixth millennium, and it corresponds to Day Six.
The GR”A further revealed that all the events of each millennia are “rooted” in events that occurred on their corresponding days. If something happens in a particular millennium, it can be traced back to some thematically similar event that occurred on its corresponding day. In this reSPect, history LITERALLY repeats itself.
It did not take long for me to realize the implication of this. The single most important event in the history of mankind was the sin of eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Had it not been for that we’d still be in Gan Aiden, and the rest of history would not have been necessary, INCLUDING Mt. Sinai.
I had previously thought that the sin of the Aitz HaDa’as was over for good, even though its impact will linger until Yemos HaMoshiach. This however predicted its reprisal, in some form or another, during the sixth millennium. The only question was, when?
The answer requires knowledge of when Adam HaRishon actually ate the forbidden fruit, and then what that time corresponds to in millennium-years. Surely such a cataclysmic event that sent mankind into exile must have something to say about his redemption.
Calculating a millennium hour was easy. One thousand years divided by 24 equals 41.66 years, or 41 years and eight months. That is one millennium-hour. Now, it was just a question of knowing in which hour of Day Six man sinned, and THAT, unfortunately, the Torah does not reveal.
THAT, fortunately, the Talmud does. It says that Adam HaRishon ate from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra in the TENTH daylight hour of Day Six. So, multiplying nine by 41.66 equals 374.94. Added to 5500, the total is 5874.94, or 2114 CE, well into the future. Not much insight there.
The Leshem helps with this too. He mentions the midrash that says that God did not create anything at night, only during the day. Events of history however have occurred during the ENTIRE 1,000 years of each millennium, not just the last half of it.
This means that a millennium, at least for this calculation, only corresponds to the 12 DAYLIGHT hours of each day of Creation. If so, 1,000 is not divided by 24, but by 12, and that makes a millennium-hour 83.33 years instead, not 41.66 years.
It changes the calculation. Nine times 83.33 equals 749.97, basically 750. Added to 5000 it becomes 5750, or 1990. Thus, the 83.33-period of the sixth millennium that corresponds to the 10th hour of Day Six began in 1990, and will end three months into 2073.
Dramatic.
The Persian Gulf War began in 1990.
The USSR suddenly imploded around 1989.
And, 5750 was the year the GR”A had predicted for the Final Redemption. But, did anything around 1990 seem to have anything to do with the sin of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
As a matter of fact, yes. It was at that time that the Internet entered the public domain, and there has not been a better example of an Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra since the original one. It is certainly a preoccupation of the Torah world, which constantly tries to save people who have failed the test and protect those who have yet to be tried.
BUT EVEN THOSE who buy the idea of a spiritual connection between the Internet and the original Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra still have difficulty appreciating what it might mean in terms of current history and the Final Redemption. They find it interesting, not motivating.
Sha’ar HaGilgulim makes it even more interesting. It says the souls of the final generation of Jews will be the reincarnated souls of the first generation of Jews. The latter was called “Dor HaDayah,” the “Generation of Knowledge.” Ironically, when the Internet went public, the media referred to this generation as the “Generation of Knowledge” as well.
Sha’ar HaGilgulim introduces another crucial concept that happens to be far too little known. It is called “mirmah u’tachboles,” or “scheming and calculating.” It is important because it explains a lot about the mysterious ways of God, specifically when it comes to redemption.
In short, it is a backdoor approach to redemption, to throw off the negative spiritual forces that stand to interfere with it. Since the Final Redemption means the end of evil, evil wants to stop redemption from ever happening. It has been VERY successful on MANY occasions.
This is particularly a problem when the Jewish people do not merit redemption, but history requires it, what the Talmud calls a “Keitz,” an “End-Time.” That is when God is “compelled” to employ mirmah u’tachboles, which has the affect of making something redemption-like look like just the opposite.
It’s a long story, and Kabbalistic, but it helps to put into perspective questionable historical events such as the sale of Yosef, the initial rejection of Dovid HaMelech, and even the Vilna Gaon’s aborted trip to Eretz Yisroel. Perhaps it even explains how a secular Jewish state can very much be an integral part of the Final Redemption.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT PIECE of the redemption puzzle is the sefer, “Kol HaTor.” Never meant for publication, it remained in manuscript form and “hidden” for generations. Therefore, when it WAS published, it became controversial.
It’s really quite simple. Kol HaTor is a work about Moshiach Ben Yosef, and a handbook for proactivity to expedite the geulah process. The source of the material is said to have been the Vilna Gaon himself who, as of 5500 and based upon the Zohar, took it upon himself to begin the process of Kibbutz Golios and the rebuilding of the yishuv in Eretz Yisroel.
Therefore, Religious Zionists immediately saw the work as vindication for their approach to the modern State and aliyah. The GR”A belongs to the mainstream Torah world, and yet he had actively promoted the return of ALL Jews to Eretz Yisroel, LONG before modern-day Zionism was even a topic of conversation.
The other side vehemently disagreed, claiming that the work was at best inaccurate, and at worst, a forgery. They refused to believe that the GR”A could have been the source of its ideas, and it didn’t make a difference that some had authenticated the work, or that many of the ideas are found in other known works of the GR”A.
From a Kabbalistic point of view, the controversy makes sense. The work promotes redemption and, more importantly, it provides actual steps to carry it out. It is redemption activism and therefore poses a threat to the anti-redemption forces in Creation of which the average person is either unaware of takes for granted.
They are real, VERY real.
We are guilty of the same thing of which we accuse others. People do not believe in God because they can’t SEE Him. We tell them, “Just because you can’t SEE God doesn’t mean He isn’t there, or actively involved in your life. You have to learn to see Him with your MIND’S eye.”
We don’t actually SEE anti-redemption forces. We just see the obstacles in its way. It might be a anti-Israel group, or a Palestinian uprising, or our own infighting. It can be a number of things, as long as the net result is a slowing down of the redemption process.
The GR”A’s plan for resettling Eretz Yisroel also met with much resistance, and he chalked it up to such spiritual anti-redemption forces as well. But that’s not the way those who opposed him saw themselves. Controversy is a GREAT way to interfere with redemption.
Regardless, the students of the GR”A were some of the first to re-inhabit Eretz Yisroel in their time, and to build up Jerusalem and surrounding areas. They did it with an incredible sense of mission, which is the only reason why they survived the tremendous adversity they had to live with.
They were followed over the years by waves of aliyah, which increased the Jewish presence there. It continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries until today, leading to this momentous time in which the Israeli population is now more than half of the world Jewish population.
This itself is remarkable. For the population of Israeli Jews to surpass the amount of Jews worldwide is VERY Messianic. Again, it is not something that stands up on a table and says, “Hey! I am PROOF that Moshiach is here and redemption is nigh!” But, it is not something that can simply be brushed aside.
There are halachic ramifications of reaching such a milestone. It certainly represents a MAJOR return of Jewish exiles to Eretz Yisroel after thousands of years of wandering.
From the four corners of the earth, no less.
Just as the Torah promised.
“Wait! You mean THIS is THAT? Really?”
Well, what else CAN it be?
You see, that’s the thing. When people think redemption, they think the Ten Plagues. They think, splitting of the sea. They think spectacular miracles that make it irrefutable that redemption has arrived.
They’re only partially wrong. The Final Redemption WILL be that, and more. But redemption never starts off that way. It starts quietly, slowly, and often BEHIND the scenes. It occurs right under the noses of most people, who only RETROACTIVELY realize, if they get the chance, what they overlooked and mistakenly took for granted back then.
That’s how four-fifths of the Jews died in Egypt, during the Plague of Darkness. Apparently the miracles they had witnessed that time just didn’t convince them that redemption was imminent. Therefore, they chose to stay in Egypt, which they did, just not on THEIR terms.
Ominously, the Talmud says this will happen all over again, at the End-of-Days.
Hmm. Was the Talmud then referring to OUR generation?
THE TENTH HOUR of the sixth millennium beginning in 1990 is redemption-significant. Te-chiyas HaMeisim beginning in 2030, perhaps even as early as 2026, is redemption-significant. The fact that Eretz Yisroel has miraculously survived AND thrived until this very day is redemption-significant.
There are MANY events that have occurred over the last 30 years that are redemption-significant. Each taken on its own might not seem all that remarkable. But together? Together they create a bigger picture, a seemingly inescapable geulah-context. Well, at least if you believe in that sort of thing.
For some it is obvious: the Messianic Era has begun. They may not be sure at which stage it is holding, but begun it has. What concerns them is HOW the end will come, dangerously, or mercifully. Let’s not forget that the State of Israel was built upon the ashes of the Holocaust.
Then there are the prophecies about the War of Gog and Magog, the war to end ALL wars. Given the direction of mankind in general, and the Jewish people in particular, such a war seems less avoidable each year. We want redemption, but not through suffering of any kind.
But do we even have a say in the matter? Is there any chance for a merciful redemption? These are not questions that the average Jew, even those who are religious, asks right now. They don’t consider them relevant. If history is any indication, by the time they do, it will be too late to do anything about the situation.
I never imagined myself involved in this kind of role. What can I say? It’s the information. It obligates you. If Divine Providence shows you something like this, you can’t very well just turn your back on it.
IT IS THE mitzvah of today. The sources say it. History confirms it. Intuition demands it. Yet, you will not get much of a consensus on it. We never have. Moshe Rabbeinu tried to warn the Jews in Egypt and STILL four-fifths died in Egypt. Koresh tried to inspire the Jews to return to Eretz Yisroel, but the vast majority remained behind in Bavel.
Many sounded the alarm bells in pre-Holocaust Europe as well, but were either ridiculed or just ignored. Why should today be any different? We’re a people that likes to learn, yet we rarely learn from our past. Ever.
We are, after all, first and foremost a Torah nation. It is what makes the Jewish people unique among the nations, and it is the basis of our spiritual relationship with God. Ancestral merit can only help so much to save a generation. The rest is in the merit of Torah learned and mitzvos performed.
True, but, only until we hit a “keitz.”
Not only does God have a master plan for Creation, it has a timeline. It has “keitzin”—end-times. History is not open-ended. There is time for us to partner with God and make things happen, but it is also possible to run out of time if we don’t. History just moves on, and as we have seen countless times, steamrolling the Jewish people if necessary.
If we think our learning is great, Europe’s was greater. If we think that our Torah institutions are amazing, Europe’s were more amazing. Their Torah learning was more sincere. Their mitzvah performance involved greater self-sacrifice. But, when the keitz of the European exile came, so did European Jewry, and in the most unfathomable way.
As the prophet has told us, God’s ways are different than ours. We are told that God is just and merciful, and yet we have seen things that would make us think otherwise. For some, it has increased their faith. For others, it has destroyed it. It is nice when Divine Providence is straightforward, but it rarely is.
The Talmud called it as it is. It says that the handing over of Achashveros’s ring to Haman accomplished more than the 48 Jewish prophets ever did. The ring gave royal permission to Haman to destroy the Jews, and that led to their teshuvah. The 48 prophets only warned about such things, and their words were not taken seriously.
That’s what they say: Actions speak louder than words. The handing over of the ring was an act. The prophets only gave over words. It is the rare individual who uses such words to avoid such actions in the future. It is the wise man, the Talmud says, who can see the potential dangers of the future from the present.
Here we are, once again.
We have words.
We have evidence.
We have the threat of action.
Do we finally learn from the past and respond in advance? Or, do we wait for the next Haman to rise and force the Jewish people, once again, to do teshuvah? We still have some time. We still have an opportunity. Will we use them THIS time?
Pinchas Winston
Thirtysix.org
