A dear friend asked me if I really meant it, every time I wrote an article saying that something in the news showed that the Messiah was imminent. This is how I answered him:

First of all, there is a mitzvah (Torah commandment) to anticipate the Moshiach at every moment. The commandment does not say to act as if I believed, or to prepare for believing, or to believe that it might happen one day in the future. The mitzvah is to anticipate the Messiah at every single moment. That level of belief is beyond a suspicion or a hope. It is even stronger than knowledge. It is knowing that the existence of the Messiah at this moment is even more real than the reality I see in front of me that does not include the Messiah. I know the sun rose today and will rise tomorrow. But my knowledge that the Messiah must exist right now even though I don’t see it transcends that knowledge because nothing else could exist without the Messiah being here. 

It is told the Chofetz Chaim used to jump at every sudden sound and exclaim, “The Messiah is here.” Many holy men used to set aside special clothes that they never wore, saving them to wear in order to greet the Messiah. 

Second, as an old guy, I can tell you how silly people are when they pretend to know what will and won’t happen in five minutes. I remember after the sub-prime mortgage crisis, I was watching a “businessman” give a seminar on how to make money in the new market. He began by asking how many people in the room, all small-time (or wannabe) real-estate investors, did NOT see the mortgage crisis in advance. They all laughed smugly because they all knew it was going to happen. But they lied. The only people who saw it before it happened were the few guys who became billionaires. And they weren’t talking or laughing and they certainly were not at that seminar. If the people in that room had really seen the sub-prime mortgage crisis coming, if their belief was not simply a fear or a suspicion, they would have invested every penny they could beg, borrow, or steal to bet against the sub-prime bonds. And they would be rich, with no need to run after second-rate investments after-the-fact. 

In retrospect, we all now that Kristallnacht was the beginning of the end. We all tell ourselves that if we had been in pre-war Germany, we would have seen it coming and left before the Holocaust. But Germany was full of very intelligent Jews who got caught standing without a chair when the music stopped, looking around bewildered. 

There have been four mass attacks targeting Jewish institutions in the US in the past 14 months and daily attacks against Jews in the streets. And Jews in the US get very angry at the suggestion that maybe the exile is no longer safe for them. Even worse, the left-wing Jews are complicit in their own destruction, blaming the anti-Semitism on the far-right white supremacists. Like the very worst lies, it is true. But it ignores the rising tide of left-wing Jew-hatred.

There are a whole bunch of religious Jews living outside of Israel who think that they will have plenty of lead time to come to Israel when the Moshiach comes, that they will know when the music stops and it is time to come home. Yet when I write about signs, unfolding prophecies, messages telling us that now is the time, not only don’t they listen but they say that making such a big deal about the Messiah is “not Jewish”. 

My dear friend Joshua Wander (it pleases me to be able to write that) started an amazing project called “Bring them Home-Aliyah Now”. As part of the project, he created videos in which several major rabbis say that now is the time that the Jews have been waiting for. They declared that excuses that used to be valid (financial and security considerations) are no longer applicable. These are rabbis who most religious Jews turn to for the most serious religious matters. If just one these rabbis claimed a certain restaurant was not kosher, no religious Jew would ever set foot in that restaurant again. Yet when all these Torah giants unite in a call for the Jews to return from exile, their call is (for the most part) ignored. 

Jews do not have to wander the desert for 40 years. For most Jews, making aliyah is a matter of a plane ticket. Of course, it is the beginning of a big struggle, a change in lifestyle. But religious Jews who keep kosher and the Shabbat will find those aspects of their religious observance to be much easier in Israel. So what is keeping them in the exile?

We have an amazing modern successful country, a real miracle unfolding in front of our eyes. You would have to work really hard to NOT see God telling us that it is just a few moments until Moshiach. Did you ever ask yourself what happened to the Jews who ignored the call to leave Egypt? Nothing happened to them. They simply disappeared. 

Sure, I sound stupid writing articles every single day about how the Moshiach is about to happen RIGHT NOW. But I sincerely know I am right. Every. Single. Time.