Every Chassid and shliach has an ongoing daily mission: how to get yet another Jew to develop a “feel” for the spiritual, and really want Moshiach now!
The Skulener Rebbe, who went through the horrors of the Holocaust, visited the Rebbe in 5734. During their meeting the Rebbe said: Pasken that Moshiach needs to come, for a tzaddik decrees and Hashem fulfills.
The Skulener Rebbe replied: Moshiach should come already at which time the collective and individual tzaros in Am Yisroel will cease.
The Rebbe said that the Geula need not come from a state of tzaros. He then explained the seeming redundancy in the verse, “satisfy us with Your goodness and cause us to rejoice with Your salvation” as follows. When Jews anticipate the Geula in the midst of tzaros, this is not genuine anticipation. So we ask, even before the Geula, that Hashem satisfy us with His goodness and then it will be possible to truly ask for Moshiach for the reason that the Sh’china is in exile. When Jews are bothered that Hashem is in exile along with them, then the continuation of the verse, “and cause us to rejoice with Your salvation” will be fulfilled, referring to Hashem’s salvation from exile.
This is what the Rebbe was demanding in “the well-known sicha” (as the Rebbe referred to it) of Chaf-Ches Nissan 5751, “Even when you scream ‘ad masai’ it is because you were told to. If you truly meant it and asked for it, then surely Moshiach would have already come.”
The Rebbe is telling us that we should care about Moshiach’s coming, not just because the Rebbe wants it and he tells us to ask for it. Rather, we should want and scream and long for Moshiach for the real reason, for the same reason the Rebbe wants it. We should feel as distraught over the Sh’china being in exile as the Rebbe does.
In order to feel this way ourselves and all the more so, to be able to instill this feeling in our mekuravim, we need to awaken in them a feel for G-dliness. We need to teach them chapter one of Tanya which speaks about the animal soul and follow up with chapter two about the G-dly soul and the fact that there is a Nasi Ha’dor. We need to write to the Rebbe with them and farbreng about this, influence them to start doing mitzvos and refine their souls through Torah and mitzvos in light of Chassidus and hiskashrus to the Rebbe. Then when they learn chapter 37 of Tanya which says, “this ultimate perfection of Yemos HaMoshiach and Resurrection of the Dead which is the revelation of the Infinite Light in this physical world etc.” they will fully understand and feel what galus is about and spiritual matters are important to them, and the question will arise on its own: how is it possible that after so many years, the Sh’china is still in galus?
A shliach needs to remember that yes, fundraising is important and it’s a big deal to “launch projects” and put up buildings, and there is true importance to doing a material favor for a Jew before doing him a spiritual favor. Still, none of these things are as important as what the Rebbe demands of the shluchim, i.e. that the Jew you are involved with in your shlichus needs you to develop in him a new taste, a spiritual/G-dly taste, that G-dliness should matter to him, and the exile of the Sh’china should bother him, to the point that he cries out from the depths of his heart, “ad masai?” And not because of the mortgage and poor health, and not because of individual or collective tzaros, but because “cause us to rejoice in Your salvation,” Hashem’s salvation!
The Rebbe says, rabosai, this is serious business. Beyond the ties, the photo ops, the gatherings, the articles in newspapers and everything that goes along with that, there is an ongoing daily mission for every Chassid and every shliach: how to get yet another Jew to develop a “feel” for the spiritual, and really want Moshiach now!
5000 PEOPLE AT A MOSHIACH SEUDA
On the morning of Acharon shel Pesach four years ago, I met a friend who is involved in the high-tech industry. He came to the Chabad house for yizkor and after the davening I spoke to him and asked him to come to the Moshiach Seuda that evening. He agreed and we got to talking about the technological revolution and how people 25 and younger were leading historical revolutions in the Arab world with the help of social media. Then he suddenly asked me: Tell me, when are you in Chabad planning on overturning the world? Why shouldn’t 5000 people show up tonight to the Seudas Moshiach? And he smiled.
He may have smiled but the Rebbe is very serious about this. The Rebbe wants us to focus all our energies and talents and the enormous powers that every shliach possesses so that every Jew will be receptive to spiritual things, so that every Jew will understand what Tanya is, what Chassidus is, and have the light of Chassidus reach him too.
The thirst among the Jewish people exists now, more than ever. Not a thirst for water, but for the word of G-d. Anyone on shlichus is aware of this thirst. Every mitzva, all Torah study, intensifies the thirst, especially in those parts of Torah connected with Moshiach and Geula which greatly increases the desire for Geula. The thirst itself hastens the coming of Moshiach.