When the two messiahs come!

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal

SAN DIEGO — When Moses did approach Pharaoh he was not alone. His brother, Aaron, accompanied him. The Torah tells us that Moses had a speech impediment and did not believe himself sufficiently articulate to convince Pharaoh without some assistance.

Several excellent questions were raised by the disciples of Rabbi Shmuel Mohliver: Why did Moses need help? Couldn’t God have made Pharaoh understand Moses despite his speech impediment? Why didn’t God make it possible for Moses to go to Pharaoh on his own? Why did there have to be two redeemers of Israel in Egypt?

Rabbi Mohliver responded that it was not only in the past, in Egypt, that the Israelites needed two redeemers. In the “End of Days” there would also be two. First a Messiah who is a descendant of Joseph will come and lead the righteous in a cataclysmic war against the evildoers. Then second, a Messiah who is a descendant of King David will come to establish the Olam Habah, the Age to Come. Just as there will be two redeemers in the future, so there were two redeemers in the past.

But this answer did not appease those who questioned Rabbi Mohliver. “That’s no answer,” they said. “We can ask the same question about the future that we asked about the past: why does Israel need two redeemers? Shouldn’t one Messiah be enough?”

Rabbi Mohliver replied. There needs to be two because each will have a different task. The first Messiah will take Israel out of the galut, the exile. The second Messiah will take the galut out of the Jews.”

The Israelites were not only physically enslaved in Egypt; they were psychologically and spiritually enslaved as well. Even if the Egyptians had not been around to guard them, the Israelites would not have tried to flee or even stop working. Knowing nothing other than servitude, they could not fathom any other way to think, act, or live.

God needed not only to deliver them physically but spiritually, as well. Even though today most people are not physically enslaved, many are still emotionally and psychologically enslaved. They are paralyzed with ideas of how life must be lived, rules of their own making and self-imposed limits on their own abilities, ambitions, and goals. They are prisoners of their own perceptions, of how things ought, must, and should not be.

Rabbi Mohliver is suggesting that this is not a healthy way to live. To enjoy life to its fullest and to live up to our potential, we must be willing to challenge what we would otherwise accept as the status quo, and dare to try things different and new. We must never take “no” for an answer, and always strive to exceed our own expectations and abilities.

We would do well to remember the words of the late Robert Kennedy who said, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

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Rabbi Rosenthal is spiritual leader of Tifereth Israely Synagogue in San Diego. He may be contacted via leonard.rosenthal@sdjewishworld.com

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