The final words of this week's Haftorah (Isaiah 60:1-22) contain one of the most intriguing contradictions in the prophecies of redemption.
Isaiah declares: "The smallest shall become a thousand, and the least a mighty nation; I am the Lord; in its time I will hasten it" (Isaiah 60:22).
Be'itah achishenah - "In its time - I will hasten it."
But how can both be true?
If redemption will come be'itah, at its appointed time, then how can G-d hasten it, achishena? And if He hastens it, then it would seem that it is no longer coming at its appointed time.
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 98a) addresses the contradiction directly. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi explains: zachu - achishenah; lo zachu - be'itah. If the Jewish people merit it, G-d will hasten the redemption. If not, it will still come at its appointed time.
We see from here that there is an ultimate ketz, an appointed end to exile. G-d has promised redemption, and that promise will be fulfilled.
But be'itah is the deadline. It is not necessarily the date.
Achishenah means redemption can come earlier, and that our merits can help hasten its arrival.
The Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, 1838-1933) lived with that possibility in a remarkable way.
He is said to have kept a bag packed at all times so that he would be ready to go out and greet Mashiach as soon as he arrived.
He did not know when Mashiach would come. He simply believed that Mashiach could come at any moment.
Not someday.
Today.
A person can believe completely that Mashiach will come yet still think of his arrival as something belonging to the distant future.
The Chofetz Chaim did not.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, 1902-1994), citing a teaching of the Sages, expressed a similar idea. Throughout the long centuries of exile, Jews yearned for redemption and prayed for it. Waiting for Mashiach was never meant to be passive.
Kol HaTor, a mystical volume by Rabbi Hillel Rivlin (1757-1838) which records teachings of the Vilna Gaon, offers a different way of reading Isaiah's words.
It suggests that achishenah can occur even within be'itah.
A process of redemption may advance me'at me'at, kim'a kim'a, little by little, over years or even generations, and then suddenly accelerate.
Modern Jewish history has given us glimpses of just how quickly that can happen.
- In 1967, in the space of six extraordinary days, Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights were liberated by the IDF.
- A little more than two decades later, the gates of the Soviet Union opened, leading eventually to the Aliyah of more than one million Jews.
- Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews also returned to the Jewish state in a daring mission.
That is worth remembering when we consider an exile that has lasted for nearly two thousand years. Its very length can dull our sense of expectation. After so many centuries, redemption can begin to seem less like something that could happen now and more like something belonging to a distant age.
But the past tells us only how long we have already waited. It cannot tell us how quickly things may change.
Be'itah assures us that there is an appointed end to exile. Achishenah tells us that we may not have to wait until then.
The Chofetz Chaim understood that. He was ready to greet Mashiach at a moment's notice.
Are we?