“In its time will I hurry it” (Isaiah 60). And the Rabbis explain: “If they, (the Jews) merit it, it (the redemption) will come hurriedly. If they do not merit it – it will come (only) in its time.” (Sanhedrin 96)
The question that arises is: If the Jew does not merit it, why should the Almighty bring him redemption at all? What is this “time” that is mentioned in the Scriptures hat is a final point at which, regardless of the lack of merits of the Jew, the final redemption will come? Why should it come and when we expect it to come – what are the signs that presage its arrival? […] The key to the bringing of the final redemption is the descent, so to speak, of the Almighty, the G-d of Israel, into such desecration, contempt and humiliation in the eyes of the nations as to question not only his Omnipotence, but indeed, His basic existence!
And as the Scriptures and the Rabbis again and again emphasize, the power of the G-d of Israel and His very existence are weighed and proven to the nations by the strength and victory of His people, Israel, or “disproven” by their weakness and defeat. This humiliation of the Jew is seen as the weakness and indeed, non-existence of the G-d of the Jew, a thing that is known as Hillul Hashem, the vacuum and void in which the Almighty is simply non-existent. Jewish power and victory, on the other hand, are seen as proof that there is a G-d in Israel, all-powerful, controlling, the world. That is why the Exile, with all its horrors and humiliations and defeats for the Jew, was the very essence of Hillul Hashem, while a return to the Land of Israel, in spite of the enemies of the Jew, is proof of G-d’s Omnipotence and is, the very opposite – Kiddush Hashem, the introduction and inviting of the Almighty into the world – because He exists in all His power and does indeed control it.
That is the reason for redemption “in its time,” despite the unworthiness of the Jew. And clearly we are living in that era today. One who does not understand is partner to one who refuses to understand. The era of the beginning of the redemption is surely at hand and woe unto the deceivers who deliberately refuse to accept this and who raise the specious and fraudulent arguments that many times in the past during our exile did people rise claiming to be the Messiah and Jews believed that they were living in the era of the redemption, only to be bitterly disappointed.
Of course, there were such periods and many were those who, like Shabtai Zvi, proved to be false Messiahs. But can one compare any of the eras of the false Messiahs to that of today? Did any of the false Messiahs produce a mass return to Eretz Yisrael and an independent Jewish state, no matter how barren of Judaism? What do we make of the Almighty when, with the wave of a hand, we dismiss the rise, after 2,000 years of the Exile, of an independent Jewish state and th return of more than a million Jews from the Exile, as nothing Divine? Do we understand what an incredible miracle is this State, again without reference to its religiosity? Is it a game of chance, an ordinary thing, that a Jewish State arises and so many exiles are ingathered, exactly as the Prophets promised?
Is it an accident of “fate” that ‘old men and old women sit in the broad places of Jerusalem’ and ‘the broad places of the city are filled with boys and girls playing,’ exactly as the prophet envisioned (Zecharia 8)? Do we make of the Almighty a non-player in the world, one who is divorced from all these incredible events? Do we do to Him what the nations did to Him during the long Exile – proclaim His irrelevancy or even His non-existence? Have we gone mad?
(Rav Meir Kahane - taken from "Forty Years")
