My friend tells me it’s not enough to pray that the current epidemic end. We must pray that it be supplanted by the advent of Moshiach.
But if we call upon Hashem to redeem us, He might decide to look at how warmly we have greeted His interventions in the past. For thousands of years, we had to walk from place to place in all weather conditions, at best riding a horse or aboard a horse-drawn carriage. Even Eliezer – working for a rich man with a sturdy squad of camels – needed a miracle to get from Hebron in Israel to Syria in one day.
Now Hashem has redeemed humanity from that burden. An automobile can make that same drive in a few hours without difficulty.
So Avraham didn’t have a car, Yitzchok didn’t have a car, Moshe didn’t have a car, David HaMelech didn’t have a car, Rabbi Akiva didn’t have a car, and the Rambam didn’t have a car, but you – an ordinary So-and-So – have at least one car, if not two or three.
You are capable of working 50 miles from home every day with a one-hour commute each way. That represents a historic redemption of humanity. But how often do you thank Hashem the redeemer for that privilege and pleasure?
For thousands of years, people had to wash their own clothes by hand. It was part of the ordinary burden of life. Now that onus has been removed. A machine washes and a machine dries, freeing our time and labor for more substantive endeavors.
Yet, how often – how fervently – do you thank Hashem for this redemption?
Most of history featured constraints on human communication by physical distance. If the Great Court in Jerusalem determined that Rosh Chodesh would be on the earlier of two possible days, it took couriers 14 days to inform every Jew in Eretz Yisrael. A faster method using fire signals from hilltops had to be scrubbed because it was vulnerable to sabotage – hacking, as it were.
Even a superpower monarch like Achashverosh couldn’t spread messages faster than the horsepower… of actual horses. And if something in the message needed clarification, too bad. You had to figure it out as well as you could and hope for the best.
Today, we are redeemed from barriers of time and space in communication. Letters can dart back and forth across the globe in as little time as it takes to write and read. You can even project your own voice over the high seas and it arrives instantly with all its intonations and inflections, squeaks and shrieks, gasps and rasps, lilts and lulls, cadences and emphases. This can be done at no great cost or inconvenience.
If you live in Eretz Yisrael while your parents reside in the U.S. or UK, you can perform the mitzvah of honoring them without leaving your bedroom. All you need to do is talk into a piece of plastic in your hand.
This magical miracle is not merely an episode in the shifting fortunes of humankind. It represents a redemption, another chapter in the grand restoration of humanity to the status of Adam, who could reach from one end of the world to the other.
What I have described – cars, trains, washing machines, telephones, and airplanes – was already mostly in place in my father’s youth. Yet, I have lived 60 years without once hearing a rabbi exhorting Jews to thank Hashem for these advantages.
So ask yourself this. If you were the Redeemer and had already redeemed the human condition in these and innumerable other ways without so much as a thank-you from your children in response, what would motivate you to take redemption to its ultimate stage?
If they are bored with all you have done while snapping up all the benefits as entitlements, what exactly is the point of throwing good redemption after… well, let’s not finish that sentence out loud.
Isn’t this deleterious attitude what the Gemara (Sanhedrin 94a) had in mind when it stated that Chizkiah could have been Moshiach after he was miraculously redeemed from Sancherev but missed the opportunity because he failed to say thank-you – publicly and loudly?