It’s been almost a year now since I returned to Chutz La’aretz from two years in Israel, and be’ezrat HaShem soon I’ll be returning to Israel for the summer. Recently, one thing that has struck me the most about my time in Chutz La’aretz is a problem that a lot of Am Yisrael here in Chutz La’aretz seem to have. This problem is not knowing when to be patient and when not to be patient.
The old saying goes ‘Patience is a virtue…’ and we know often in life it is important to be patient - especially as an Englishman I can reliably tell you that sometimes, its just polite. You may think its strange that on a blog that is meant to be to do with tzipiyah - anticipating the coming of the Geulah, I should be talking about patience - surely I should be writing about how restless we are for the geulah and how we shouldn’t think about the word patience. But, one of the lines that I think Shlomo HaMelech didn’t put in Kohelet was that there is a time to be patient and a time not to be.
Let me give you an example of a time when patience isn’t necessary that really grinds my gears - often in Chutz La’aretz, I seem to find myself in minyanim on Shabbat and on weekdays where we are quickly coming close to the final time for tefillah, usually shkiah in the evening - do we get a move on to daven at the right time? Nope, in fact its always at these times when someone decides to drag out tefillah even longer and mean we don’t daven at the correct time. Same case but other extreme is days, for example Rosh Chodesh or Chol HaMoed where noone is in any rush to get home from shul and yet Hallel is still rushed through at 100 miles an hour - whats the point of Hallel if its not sung with the right kavanah? Theres a time to rush and theres a time to sit back and daven properly!
In the grand scheme of things, these rantings are very prati - very specific, however, on a klali level - as Am Yisrael - how are we affected by cases such as these? Well I think, as a Dati Leumi Jew writing on Yom Yerushalayim, you may be suprised at first to hear me say that we are in a zman of patience. Everyone in this day and age wants everything immediately, our internet, our food, everything has to be done in an instant and we are not used to being told to wait. It may sound silly but this is exactly where we stand with our tahalich - the process of Geulah which we are in the midst of today. If you went into a restaurant and ordered a meal and you were told you would get it piece by piece and maybe you had to cook some of the food yourself - you’d think it was crazy. Today, we sit in that restaurant, much of the food has been brought to us, our land, Am Yisrael has been brought together like never before and Torah is being learned like never before. In this restaurant though, the cooking isn’t done all for us, it isnt served up on a plate ready made, and like we are familar with - some of the work comes to us, and in the long run, the geulah which with Be’ezrat HaShem soon come fully will be a sweeter one with the taste of our work in it.
Some people walk in to a restaurant and want there meal on a plate hot before theyve even ordered their meal - they want Geulah on a plate NOW, why? They don’t even know, it just sounds good. They don’t consider that things take time and work to achieve - they want it now, but as we are only too familiar with - Chazal tell us that Geulah is not like this and was never going to be. It was never going to be something which would appear with the snap of someones fingers but rather something that rose gently and in a process like the rising of the sun.
A man is tired, he has been up all night, he travels to the top of a high mountain, on his way he encounters nettles, hard rocks and even the threat of poisonous insects but he his desperate to climb to the peak and see the sun rise. The journey is a long one and even when he reaches the point at the top, he still has to watch the sun rise slowly but in the end it shines brightly.
Am Yisrael has been through a lot in exile, it has stumbled at times and it has grown stronger at times, it has succeeded and grown with the help of HaShem, we now stand at the top of the mountain and whilst we should not be patient to do what we can to bring the sun rise, we also must be patient and realise that it won’t happen in a blink of an eye, but it takes time, we must be patient and realise that whilst Geulah is here, it is far from complete and only with our work will it be any closer.
