אִם יִרְצֶה הַשֵּׁם
י״ז חֶשְׁוָן תשפ״ז
The sugya is the generation in which Ben David comes.
Seven years
Ve-himtarti matar al ir achat ve-al ir achat lo amtir.
Rain on one city and not another: spotty famine. Second year the arrows of famine are sent, famine everywhere but not total. Third year a great famine. Men and women and children die, chassidim and anshei ma'aseh perish, and Torah is forgotten from its learners. The scholars die, so there is less Torah in the world.
Fourth year: sova ve-lo sova, satiation but not complete. Fifth year great satiation, the words Malachi uses for the days of Shlomo, and Torah returns to its learners. Sixth year: kolot, great noises, or reports from all sides that Mashiach is about to appear. Seventh year: milchamot, wars of the nations against Am Yisrael. After the seventh, Ben David comes.
Abaye says many seven-year periods already occurred and he did not come. You did not have the sixth year of kolot and the seventh of milchamot together, and you did not have the earlier years in the exact order.
Asher herfu ikvotei meshichecha.
They mocked the footsteps of Your anointed. Plain pshat is the enemies of David who belittled whatever he did. The Gemara does not explain why it is brought here. Some erase the line entirely.
One reading: people who see the signs and still do not see Mashiach will begin to blaspheme the footsteps. They will say the conditions were fulfilled and he still did not come. The signs are not all unanimous. They may be mashalim. Do not mock when they fail to bring him.
The face of a dog
In the generation in which Ben David comes, the beis va'ad will become a place of zenut. Rav Miller zt"l: a round synagogue in which wherever a Jew sits he must look at the women. In older days such a building was unthinkable. The mechitzah does not reach the ceiling.
The Galil will be laid waste, and the Gavlan as well. Anshei gevul will go from city to city and will not be shown grace: the people of Eretz Yisrael, or the sages who go out to raise for their yeshivos.
Chochmat sofrim tisrach: the wisdom of the scribes will turn rotten. Yir'ei chet yima'asu: those who fear sin will be abominated.
U-fnei ha-dor ke-fnei ha-kelev.
The face of the generation like the face of a dog. A dog is az panim: it barks and attacks. The leaders will be low-character people, bold and shameless. A dog also runs ahead and seems to lead, yet at the corner it stops and waits to see which way the master turns. Then it hurries ahead again, only in the direction the master already wants. Rav Miller zt"l: the leaders of that generation lead the people only where the people want to be led.
Once there was one truth from the Sanhedrin, and the whole nation subscribed to it. In that generation the truth becomes edarim edarim, separate flocks. Each group claims we alone have the truth. They fight. The truth is lost because it has been divided into flocks. The public will not know it. They will be misled by false leaders and by a press that teaches lies.
Ha-sor me-ra yishtalel: the one who turns from evil will be considered crazy. Rav Miller zt"l: like the boy who received a medical discharge from the army because the examiner asked if he went with girls and he said no.
Kushda
A sage met a man who said: if they gave me the whole space of the world I would never change my words. He told how he came to that state.
He visited a town named Kushda, truth. The people never changed their words. They spoke absolute truth even if it hurt. No one from that place died before his time.
He settled there, married, and had two sons. One day his wife was washing her hair. A neighbor knocked and asked for her. He thought: if I say she is washing her hair the neighbor will ask to come in. He said she is not here.
Afterwards his two sons died. The people of the town came and asked why this happened in their place. He told them the truth. They said: we beg of you, leave our town, and do not incite death against us.
The story is brought only because the Baraisa spoke of the loss of truth.
When the hand is gone
Youths will put to shame the face of the elders. Zekenim are those who earned the crown of wisdom with their years. The youths, not by age but those as empty as youths, will disregard their opinions. And the elders will rise to honor the youths: a separate blemish, the elders so broken that they give deference to the empty.
A daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A son will not be ashamed before his father. Chutzpah will increase. Shame is one of the foundations of a society, especially a Torah society. When it subsides, anything becomes possible.
Yekar ya'avveh: that which is honorable will be twisted and made to appear wicked. What is dishonorable will be called beautiful. Those to whom everyone looks for guidance will do wicked things. The vine will give its fruit yet wine will still be expensive: a mashal that the people will be intent on pleasures.
The entire malchut will be turned to minus, atheism or idolatry. Nobody to give rebuke, and nobody who will take it. When the whole government of the nations turns rotten in its theology, that is one of the signs.
A remes from nega: when the entire body turns white, kulo hofach lavan tahor. Leprosy is localized. When the whole body is white it is not leprosy. So when the entire malchut turns to minus, the time of purity is coming.
Ki yadin Hashem amo, ki yireh ki azlat yad ve-efes atzur ve-azuv.
HaKadosh Baruch Hu will take up for His people when He sees that their power is gone and there is no one left to help.
Until the moserim increase. Azlat yad as the secret hand: they write letters in secret and denounce Jews to the goyim. Jews always worked for each other. To denounce a fellow Jew was abhorred. When that solidarity is lost, the end is near. Rav Miller zt"l: the Yevsektsia in Russia after the Bolsheviks seized power, Jewish communists who stamped out Yiddishkeit worse than the Russian atheists.
Or until the talmidim decrease. In earlier times a great part of the nation studied Torah. Even those with professions spent much time in it and could help their fellows. When the disciples become few, there is nobody to help.
Or until the prutah disappears from the purse. People will spend so much that nothing remains. In older days it was a virtue to save and hand an estate to posterity. They were too busy with avodat Hashem to waste money.
Or until they despair of the ge'ulah. As long as people still hope for Mashiach they receive reward for the hope. When they stop thinking of him and give up all faith, that is when Ben David comes.
Kavayachol: as if it were possible to say it, there is nobody to support Yisrael. When people think we are lost, then "I, I am the one." HaKadosh Baruch Hu comes to show that He is able to help.
The vision still stands
Rav Katina: six thousand years the world will be, and one thousand it will be desolate. Ve-nisgav Hashem levado ba-yom ha-hu: Hashem alone will be exalted on that day. In that thousand years the tzaddikim in Gan Eden will look at the world and see that there is nothing but Hashem.
Abaye: two thousand years desolate. Yechayenu mi-yomayim, ba-yom ha-shelishi yekimeinu: after two days He will raise us on the third. Techiyas ha-mesim after the two thousand-year periods.
Like the shemitah: the seventh year gives rest to the land, so the world will rest one thousand years out of seven thousand. Our Shabbos is only a remez for that great Shabbos. At the end of the six thousand years, parallel to the six days of creation, everything stops so that it is clear that only He made the world and kept it in motion.
Eliyahu appeared and taught: two thousand tohu, two thousand Torah, two thousand yemot ha-Mashiach. The tohu runs until Avraham was fifty-two and began to acquire souls in Charan. Then two thousand years of Torah, ending about one hundred and seventy-two years after the destruction of the second Beis HaMikdash, about the end of the Tannaim. It does not mean Torah ended. A third period begins on top of the Torah period: the two thousand years in which Mashiach can come. Because of our many sins, some of those years have already gone. Had we been worthy, Mashiach could have come when the Tannaim were ending.
A Megillah found among the treasures of Rome: after four thousand two hundred and ninety-one years the world as we know it will come to an end. Among those years, wars of great serpents, a mashal for the great nations fighting one another.
Mikrozet: neikev yered ad-avaddon. It pierces and goes down to the abyss. No matter what buildings of ideas people erect, this pasuk tunnels through them.
Ki od chazon la-mo'ed.
There is still a vision for the appointed time. It will speak at the end. If it tarries, wait for it. It will surely come and will not come later than its time.
Not like those who darshu Daniel: ad iddan iddanin u-flag iddan, a time, two times and half a time. They said iddan is the four hundred years from the birth of Yitzchak until the Exodus, two times eight hundred, half two hundred, total fourteen hundred years, then Mashiach. The pasuk of Habakkuk pierces down and breaks all such estimates. You are not going to know precisely anything.
The Baraisa of the seven years remains schematic. Which reading of azlat yad the Gemara intends, and whether any fragment of that sequence has already begun, is left open.
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