Recognizing What Our Galus (Exile) Is

  The Gemara says that one of the questions a person will be asked in the Heavenly Court is, “Tzipisa l’yeshuah?” (“Did you await the salvation (the Redemption)?” Meaning, were you waiting to go out of Galus (the exile)?

  Yet there is also a deeper understanding of this question of Tzipisa L’yeshuah: A person awaits the Geulah (the Redemption) to the degree that he understands how much of a Galus he is in. The greater one feels like he is in Galus, the more he is looking forward to going out from it, and the less he feels the Galus, the less he is awaiting the Geulah.

  It’s possible that although there is a big Galus on us, we only see it as small, and though we may by awaiting the Geulah and looking forward to it, we are only awaiting the Geulah on a very vague level, since we do not recognize what the Galus is.

  This is because the Galus has both a chitzoniyus (external level) and pnimiyus (inner layer) to it. The outer level of the Galus is the Galus that each of us can see in front of our eyes, but the pnimiyus of the Galus is felt differently with each person.

  A true Talmid Chochom, who has the ability of eina pekicha, “keen eyesight”, does not see the same Galus that an am ha’aretz (person ignorant of Torah) sees. Not only does a Talmid Chochom await the Geulah more because he is on a higher level than the am ha’aretz, but he sees the Galus on a much sharper level than the am ha’aretz does. He is much more pained by the Galus than the am ha’aretz is because he sees what the Galus is with greater precision, so the pain of the Galus penetrates his mind and heart. As a result, he is much more clearly awaiting the Geulah.

  Thus, the first step is not even to await the Geulah and to wish to go out of Galus. That is the second step – the step before it is to first understand what the Galus is, to feel the true pain of being in the Galus, and from that a person can await the Geulah – it can only be a result of the deep pain that one can feel what he considers the depth of what the Galus is.

Galus Then & Now

  We will reflect here a little about what the depth of the Galus is, and thereby understand what exactly  Tzipisa L’Yeshuah is – what it means to look forward to go out of the Galus we are in.

  There are well-known words of the Gra, which explains the order of the different exiles. The first was Galus Mitzrayim (Egypt), which was the root of every Galus, and therefore the Geulah from Mitzrayim was also the root of every Geulah. “As in the days when you went out from Egypt, I will show you wonders.” Later we had the 4 exiles of Bavel (Babylonia), Madai-Peras (Media-Persia), Yavan (Greece) and Edom. Later we entered Galus Yishmael – and finally, the Galus of the “Eirev Rav.” That is a brief description of the order of every Galus of our history.

  Upon deeper analysis we can see that there are really two kinds of Galus. In Mitzrayim, the Galus was that we were in Mitzrayim, and the same with Bavel and Madai-Peras. Each Galus was an exile to the particular place we were exiled to. But in addition to that, we find that from the Galus of Yavan (Greek exile) and onward, each Galus was a continuation of the Galus before it, where each of them merged into the other.  

  Galus Edom, for example, was also a continuation of Galus Yavan which preceded it (and therefore it has dominating aspects of both the natures of Galus Edom and Galus Yavan). Raboseinu taught that we didn’t really leave Galus Yavan, rather we simply “crosser over” from Galus Yavan to Galus Edom - we never had an actual Geulah from Galus Yavan. We were redeemed from Mitzrayim but afterwards we had another Galus we descended into, and so too we were redeemed from Bavel and later we had another Galus of Madai-Paras; we were redeemed, largely, from Galus Madai-Paras, though not completely because “We are still the slaves of Achashveirosh”], and later we had another exile, Yavan. From Galus Yavan we weren’t redeemed, and instead we merely “crossed over” from it into Galus Edom, from which we crossed over into Galus Yishmael, and then into it last stage - Galus Eirev Rav.

The Uniqueness of The Galus Eirev Rav We Are Amidst

  Until the Galus Eirev Rav, every Galus was singular to the nation we were exiled to, but the last exile, “Eirev Rav”, is from the word taaruvos, a mixture, of many nations who were in Egypt and who went out with us. In Mitzrayim the Eirev Rav were those who came out with us, but now in the Galus Eirev Rav we are mixed together with many nations, so it is not any particular nation we are exiled to, rather it is an exile amidst a giant mixture of all the nations of the world all at once. The Galus Eirev Rav is therefore wherever we go.

  In Bavel we were exiled to Bavel, in Madai-Paras we were exiles to Madai-Paras, but in the Galus Eirev Rav we are amidst, we are exiled to a mixture of all the nations of the world no matter what place we are in. That means that the Galus Eirev Rav really contains all 4 exiles in it, and since it contains every nation, it is a Galus wherever we are in the world. The Galus always involved a departure from Eretz Yisrael (except for Galus Yavan) but the Galus Eirev Rav is a novel kind of Galus which is unlike any of the previous periods of Galus - for this is a Galus that is found everywhere in the world.

  Not only is the Galus Eirev Rav a mixture of all exiles at once, but it also includes within it a mixture of all the different exiles. It is not merely containing all 4 exiles, it is a mixture that creates something else entirely. That is the Galus Eirev Rav.

  In the exiles preceding Galus Eirev Rav, which were the exiles of Yavan, Edom, and Yishmael, these were not separate exiles from each other but rather they were all rooted in [the climax of this last exile which is] Eirev Rav, and that is why each of those exiles became mixed with the one after it - until we finally came to the Galus Eirev Rav itself, the very finality of the final exile, which includes within it a mixture of every Galus – many foreign aspects mixed with each other all at once. That is why it is called Eirev Rav – a ‘great mixture’ of nations of the world mixed together. (There is also the Erev Zeir, a small mixture of nations that were in Egypt, but that is a separate topic.) When the Jewish people is found within that mixture, that is the depth of the Galus. This situation of being mixed with them is the opposite of the ideal state in which we will all be gathered together by Hashem – the Klal Yisrael that was amidst the mixture of all the exiles will return and be gathered together again, from all the exiles, to Eretz Yisrael.

  The Galus Eirev Rav is more clearly seen in Eretz Yisrael today, but all over the world we can see the Galus Yishmael.

  Chazal said that the purpose of why we went into Galus was to collect geirim (converts) to return to Klal Yisrael. Through gaining the converts that come from every nation in the world – except from those who we may not accept converts from (which are the Eirev Rav) – from that we can come to the Geulah. In the Geulah, it will be revealed that we were exiled to the nations only to collect more and more geirim - another ger and then another, and which will be revealed in the Geulah – but before that revelation comes, we are in the Galus Eirev Rav, which is very the opposite situation of the coming Geulah. We are found in a Galus that contains within it all kinds of exiles.

  That is the great depth revealed in the Galus Eirev Rav in relation to other exiles. In other exiles there was one exile at a time, but in the Galus Erev Rav all of the exiles of our history are all mixed together at once.

All-Inclusive Galus

Any sensible person understands what that means – every Galus is here with us at once, meaning that this is a Galus that gathers together all the nations and their influences.

  The Geulah will gather everyone together at once, but if that is the Geulah, the Galus that precedes it is a Galus where all evil is unleashed. During all other exiles, each nation has its particular nature which we had to deal with, and only a part of us was in Galus, but in Galus Eirev Rav which is everywhere, there is no part of us that isn’t in Galus. In Mitzrayim there was a pull towards arayos, the ervas ha’aretz (a land filled with immorality), but in the Galus Eirev Rav which includes all evil at once, every evil part from the nations is awakened. The Ramchal in Daas Tevunos explains that that in the final days, Hashem will allow all evil to be released, and that will be the final Galus. Those words of the Ramchal depict more in more detail what the Gra described as the Galus Eirev Rav – where every part of kedushah (holiness) has been taken captive into exile.

 The deep understanding of this leads us to the following. Each Galus required us to strengthen ourselves in a certain area in order to counter the nature of that Galus. In this generation when we are in the Galus of the Eirev Rav, we are at war on all fronts, in every single area. “Lavan sought to uproot everything” – whereas Pharoah only wanted to kill the Jewish boys and leave alive the girls, Lavan wanted to destroy everything, every last trace of us, and this was because he was an evil that was trying to counter Yaakov Avinu, the “choicest of the Avos”, the one who personified everything, every single aspect of kedushah. Lavan therefore represents the intensity of the Galus in the final generation which is the Galus Eirev Rav, a Galus where every single area of kedushah has been exiled.

  The next step, then, is to understand the following. In all the other exiles of our history, we could console ourselves from an area which wasn’t in exile. A part of us was in Galus, but another part of us wasn’t in Galus, so we had what to comfort ourselves with and draw solace from. But when every single part of our holiness is exiled, when “the war is from in front and behind us”, as the Ramchal describes in Mesilas Yesharim, there is nowhere where we can be truly serene, since every part of us is in Galus.

  For example, in Mitzrayim the root of all exiles, our bodies were in exile, there was immorality, and we were slaves to Pharoah, but Shevet Levi wasn’t part of the Galus. And the Rambam famously says that Shevet Levi includes anyone who dedicates himself to Torah, so any Talmid Chochom who were on the level of Shevet Levi weren’t part of the Galus Mitzrayim. But the Gra says that in the final exile, the Talmidei Chachomim will be found amidst the Galus Eirev Rav. It is a Galus that is all-inclusive. It is like someone who is “sick all over his body”, as the Gemara says. This is a Galus that takes up every space and leaves no part of us out of it.

  Even more so, all parts of our soul are found in this Galus, and therefore the pain that comes from this final Galus – to anyone who recognizes and feels the depth of Galus – is a pain in which one can feel that he is found in a Galus from all directions. That is the novelty of the final Galus.

A Galus Of Pain Everywhere

The pain of the final Galus is therefore different than the pain of any other Galus before it. A person can be sick in his head of heart, or in one part of the body, but then there is a category of one who is sick all over his body, and of him the Gemara says, “Learn Torah, which heals all of one’s flesh.” The final exile is found everywhere in every place in the world, and therefore, when we understand the depth of this Galus, we can see how the pain of it can be felt in every area of life, in every place, from all directions, with nowhere to run to from it.

Taking Refuge In The Depths of The Torah

  Only when one disconnects himself entirely from all that’s going on in the world, by being separated in his soul from all that’s happening, because “If not for Your Torah my delight, I would go insane in my suffering”  one is then found in the Torah’s light. This deep part of the Torah is not in exile, for the deep part of the Torah is always found with Hashem. Only the revelations of the Torah - its outer layer - is found in Galus, but the Torah’s depth, its inner layer, is with Hashem and it is not found in Galus. [And when one places himself within the light of the Torah’s depth, he is not found on this world amidst the Galus, but with Hashem.]

The External and Internal Reasons To Want The Geulah

  Now we can understand with greater depth what the question of Tzipisa L’Yeshuah is. Now that it has been explained how the Galus envelopes everything, we can understand that we aren’t simply awaiting a partial yeshuah, but a total and complete yeshuah. When we were in Mitzrayim we cried out to Hashem, we wanted to get out of Mitzrayim and that was the yeshuah we were awaiting. But this wasn’t the complete Geulah. Hashem already told Moshe that He will be with Klal Yisrael in every suffering afterwards, meaning that the Geulah from Mitzrayim will not be the last Geulah and therefore it couldn’t be a complete simchah yet, for they knew that more suffering and Galus was going to come later. Anyone in Mitzrayim then had the avodah only to wish to go out of Mitzrayim and wish to receive the Torah, but to await Mashiach. It wasn’t merely about wishing to go out of Mitzrayim, it was all for the purpose which was Mashiach’s arrival.

  So when we are found now in Galus, what is it that we should be waiting for? Some are awaiting that the wicked governments of the world should fall, some are awaiting the destruction of the Eirev Rav for once and for all, but all of this is still not grasping what the depth of our Galus is! The Galus we are in now is not just about one particular aspect, it is a Galus that’s all-inclusive and therefore it’s affecting every single aspect. So what is it that we should be awaiting to come out of Galus? To have a Geulah from everything that’s in Galus. And that will be the coming of Mashiach.

  There is a big, fundamental difference between the Galus of the past and the Galus of today, and therefore the Geulah we await today is on a whole different level than any of the Geulah that we needed in the past exiles. The Galus today includes everything, and therefore the Geulah from it will also include everything, and that can only be with the coming of Mashiach.

  So when a person davens for a Geulah for Klal Yisrael and only davens for certain aspects of Geulah to happen - such as davening for the end of the wicked people in the world (and as we daven on Rosh HaShanah,  וכל הרשעה כעשן תכלה “And all of the wicked should cease like smoke”), that means he doesn’t truly feel the depth of the Galus yet - because he isn’t davening for the complete Geulah, only for one particular aspect of Geulah. (At the lowest level of davening for the Geulah, one davens only for himself and to go free from his own tzaros…) He’s only davening about certain parts, so he is only awaiting a partial Geulah and not a complete Geulah.

  It is from amidst this last Galus we are in, where we are going only to one place – to the arrival of Mashiach. The Gra’s words organized all of our history until the final part of the last exile, the Galus Eirev Rav - and the Gemara says about the very last Galus that it will be the most difficult – but the Gemara also says, “From there, they are destined to be redeemed.”

Awaiting Hashem’s Fully Revealed Presence To The World

  Now we can understand what the deep wish of our soul must be when we await the Geulah, the yeshuah thatwe await.   We are not merely awaiting that a certain world power or dominant evil or wicked people in control should all fall, though that is certainly is included in the all-inclusive yeshuah that will come to the world. Rather, what we await for is that Hashem’s Presence should be completely revealed on the world – the giluy Yichudo Yisbarach Shmo, the revelation of the acknowledgement of Hashem’s Complete Oneness (Yichudo) which is also the revelation of Ain Od Milvado, there is nothing besides Hashem. It is the revelation of “On that day, Hashem will be One and His Name will be One.”  

  That is what our soul needs to wish for, in this final Galus. If one cannot identify such a desire in his soul, that means he isn’t clear of what the Galus is, for if he would be clear about it – not just knowing it but sensing it – then of course he would wish and daven for a Geulah in which he wants the revelation of Shmo Yisbarach, that Hashem should reveal His Name on the world, that everyone will know and sense the reality of Ain Od Milvado. There can be no greater wish than this, because it is a wish that includes everything in it – a wish that Hashem should reveal His Yichud upon the world, which is the reality of Aid Od Milvado, that no power is in control other than He alone.

Yearning To Know and Understand All of The Torah

  What about the wish to know all of the Torah? That has to be part of awaiting the complete revelation of Hashem. The Gra says that every day we ask Hashem to rebuild the Beis HaMikdash and give us a portion in the Torah, because as the long as the Beis HaMikdash is destroyed we are missing the true revelation of Torah, but when the Beis HaMikdash is rebuilt we will then hear the “word of Hashem” that goes out from Yerushalayim and then we will know all of the Torah.

  Thus our wish and tefillah for the Geulah has to be, on one hand, to await the revelation of Shmo Yisbarach (His Name) in the world, when all will sense Hashem completely, at the coming of Mashiach – and as a result of this, we will completely know the Torah, each person on his own level.

  If one is only davening to know all of the Torah, the Galus to him just means that the Torah is in Galus and he only understands the Galus on a partial level and he’s only davening for a partial Geulah. But if he understands that the Galus we are in is all-inclusive, in all its intensity, his yearning to know all of the Torah is coming from a whole different place.

  This seems to be so far away from the level we are on, but when Hashem will fulfill the prophecy of “I will pour My spirit upon all man” at the coming of Mashiach, it will become our level. If we never awaken a wish to know all of the Torah which comes from wanting the complete Geulah, we do not understand what the Galus is and therefore we are not really davening for the complete Geulah.

  Being clear of what the Galus and Geulah should be as clear to us any other sugya in Shas we try to be clear about, in which we analyze the words of Chazal and become clear about them and organizing for ourselves a complete picture of their words, and the sugya of Galus and Geulah is no smaller or less important than any other sugya of Shas. We can’t say if it’s bigger or smaller than other sugyos of Shas but it’s certainly not smaller [less important] than other sugyos of Shas. It is a sugya which every ben Torah must be clear about, in his Hilchos De’os.

  The depth of awaiting the clear recognition of Hashem and awaiting to know all of the Torah – this is all included in Tzipisa L’Yeshuah – this is not just another detail to know. The Rambam lists belief in Mashiach’s arrival and in Techiyas HaMeisim as two of the 13 Principles of Emunah, and the Rishonim discuss why these details are from the fundamentals of emunah. It is because Hashem will be revealed completely by the Geulah, which will reveal how He is Perfect, and awaiting the Geulah is therefore to await the recognition of Hashem’s Perfection. So when one awaits it, he is not merely awaiting a certain detail to happen, but he is awaiting something that’s complete and perfect. That revelation of course will be to the degree that Hashem reveals Himself to the creations, but to whom will He reveal it to? Only to those who awaited the revelation of His Perfection.

  This is how a person finds the place in his soul where he can await the revelation of Hashem and to know and understand all of the Torah, which will be unlike anything we recognize today. It will happen through the revelations that will come in Mashiach’s time, as the Rambam writes, that the entire desire for the days of Mashiach is so that we can be free to learn Torah undisturbed. The Rambam clearly doesn’t mean something external that we will just be sitting and learning Torah, he is referring to the special daas that we will have then, in which Hashem will pour a special daas, “My Spirit”, upon us, in which He will reveal to us the revelations that come from His Hidden, Truthful Existence: “For Hashem gives wisdom from His Mouth, intellect and understanding.” The souls of Klal Yisrael will then completely recognize Hashem and His Torah. That is the Tzipisa L’Yeshuah which we await.

The Unique Avodah Of The “Final Generation”

  This is the deep wish that is expected of the final generation (Dor Acharon) to awaken and daven for. The clearer we are with Hashem’s help on what the depth of our Galus is, and the more we wish to go out of this Galus, our tefillos for the Geulah will take on much deeper meaning: “For it is Your salvation that we awaited, every day.”

  This is also the meaning of “Write this for the final generation”, the avodah of the final generation is that while in all other generations our aspiration to leave Galus was only partial and although we awaited the complete Geulah our yearning was smaller, but in the Galus of the final generation this is the main thing that is being expected of every soul who seeks Hashem.

  May we be zocheh with Hashem’s help to feel just a moment of pain of the deep Galus we are in, and from that, we can await the yeshuah, and may we see this wish be answered, with the complete Geulah in the actual sense, quickly in our times. Amen.

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL HEBREW SHIUR: דרשות 141 ציפית לישועה תשפ”ג