Marching Orders

By Rabbi Adin Even Yisrael (Steinsaltz)

(From a speech commemorating  the  Rebbe's 100th birthday given at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, March 11, 2002.)

The Rebbe's century was when  astounding things happened. The world changed more during that time  than in the thousand years before. He was a part of all those changes and also engineered and worked within them, he predicted and warned against some of them.

The Rebbe was very aware of the past - his own, that of his people, and of humanity. But he was never a man of the past. In so many ways, he belonged far more to the future than the past. And that will explain what was so very important to the Rebbe.

He watched the world and knew that  the unfolding events were tremors before a big upheaval. All the change and distress throughout the century were seen as labor pains to herald an impending birth. This is what the Rebbe had in mind when he spoke  about Moshiach. As the years passed, he became more emphatic that Moshiach was about to come. He saw it not only as  some heavenly vision but as an impending, imminent event.

The coming of Moshiach is hugely  profound. In the words of the prophets, Moshiach signifies the End of Days - the end of history. It marks the end of ordinary days and the beginning of a completely new era, so new that nothing in the past is parallel to it. Moshiach will change history and existence forever and  permanently and usher in a future that will be very different from the past.

The Rebbe spoke about Moshiach because he understood that the coming of Moshiach is a process in which we are both active participants and passive beneficiaries. 

This synthesis is what the Rebbe referred to when he spoke about Moshiach.  He did not see "Moshiach" as a mantra to repeat  several times a day to  cope with difficulties.  For the Rebbe, Moshiach was something to work on, to deal with, and to fight for.

The Rebbe's  legacy is not just his writings and activities, it's his marching orders. He left a task to be completed and directives that will enable people to carry it out.

Moshiach is  a mega-event, a phenomenon that changes everything. We may not be prepared for it  but we are talking about major changes. One of the consequences is that, if we are expecting things to change in a major way, we will have to make major changes, too. One such change is that we have to cast away a huge number of petty issues that are not just vicious and unprofitable, but ludicrous.

Next to the truly momentous upcoming events, all our disputes are comic, not just painful. The things that people fight about are the sheerest, shallowest nonsense, if we compare them to the establishment of an entirely different order. Who will remember all these foolish people who were fighting about such things?

The coming of Moshiach means, among other things, the casting away of internal fights. We must talk to people about what Moshiach means. We must abandon our quarrels, many of which deal with short-term calculations: What will be better for my organization, my little group, my little thing in the next two or five years? Compared to the big things, all these are nonsensical.

It is even more important to talk about the future, what people are going to do, when the time comes, and the time is coming, whether we want it or not. The status quo will change, and all these petty issues will be wiped away. That means that there are lots of things we must do. So what is it?

In a concrete way, it means being genuinely concerned about  and working for, every segment of society, not just in details, but in major areas of society: addressing the rifts among ethnic groups and the growing gap between the rich and the poor: making education (not just knowledge) a primary and universal ambition and bringing the whole country, not just a segment of it, to an awareness of the Divine. It also means being careful not to use the Almighty to achieve narrow benefits (even praiseworthy ones), but to remember that all of us, right and left, are the people of G-d.

We have to start talking now about changing, not just turning, but returning on a big scale which means not just token gestures but rather reaching people in a meaningful way to change their lives and set their priorities straight because a time is coming when these are the things that will count and most of the rest will not. We have to convey this in a most emphatic way. This does not mean that we must invalidate what we are doing: we must work on a much grander scale and in a much more urgent way. These ideas have to be expressed not only to individuals but also to organizations, groups, to the Jewish community at large. Whatever has been done is not enough. It is never enough. It has to be done ten times as much, if we want to be ready for the time.

Furthemore,  the Rebbe began and we have to continue to say it, not only to our own Jewish brethren but to all of humanity -  We have to talk about the Seven Noahide Commandments, that the Almighty gave after the Flood. These are for all humanity. We should speak about these not just to individuals, as if we were selling merchandise, but to all the peoples and the nations of the world to change the world.

Our goal is not to compliment  the Rebbe. A new and different world will come in a short time and we have to address it. We have to tell people that a different time is coming, a time when different things will count. We must get everyone to keep the basic Noahide laws, the laws of nature and the laws of the Divine, and we must bring the people together. 

We can do it because the Rebbe is with  us, in a sense doing and saying these things. It means recognizing that now is the time to go to others and to ourselves and pay attention to the big things.

Our sages tell us  "Our father Jacob did not die." As long as there are Jews in the world, Jacob is alive. In everything we do in our lives, a small part of him lives within us. We say in our prayers "David, the King of Israel, is alive and enduring," which means the kingship of David never died. Someone could kill the last king but no one can destroy the kingship of the Jewish people. We may be downtrodden, but the kingship of Israel continues. 

The Rebbe implanted his spirit in so many people that his visions and  insights continue. If we sustain his utmost desire to bring about that big change, then we can say that the Rebbe lives on. The Rebbe is here when we are here and we are doing all the things that he left in his marching orders. He said we should not walk, but run, attack, and  advance and we will.