When We Have a Majority of Jews in the Land Prophecy May Be Restored!

So claims Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in his Handbook of Jewish Thought Part Two p. 367 (24:21) from the verse of “נביא מקרבך מאחיך”.

The relevant excerpt (courtesy of Aish.com):

There is another important reason why the ingathering of the exile must precede the coming of the Messiah. One of our traditions regarding the advent of the Messianic Era is that it will mark the return of prophecy among the Jewish people. Furthermore, according to the final words ever spoken by a prophet, Elijah will return as a prophet and announce the coming of the Messiah, as it is written, “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of God” (Malachi 3:23). This is necessary because the Messiah will be a king, and a king can be anointed only by a prophet. Besides this, the Messiah himself will be a prophet, the greatest of them all, second only to Moses.

Thus, the restoration of prophecy is very important in the unfolding of the Messianic drama. This, however, requires a number of conditions. First of all, prophecy can usually take place only in the Land of Israel, and not in any other land. The Land of Israel, however, is not conducive to prophecy at all times. Before prophecy can exist in the Land of Israel, it must be inhabited by the majority of Jews in the world. Thus, unless we assume that this rule is to be broken, more than half of the Jewish people will have to live in the Land of Israel before the Messianic Era commences.

I failed to track down the source in Chazal by the references but didn’t work too hard. (Yoma 9b אם עשיתם עצמכם כחומה ועליתם כולכם בימי עזרא נמשלתם ככסף שאין רקב שולט בו is not a perfect proof.)

קול החינוך גליון 155#

יו”ל ע”י ‘ועד הורים’ – בהכוונת גדולי התורה שליט”א

[קול החינוך עוסק במלחמת מדינת ישראל בחינוך יהודי עצמאי.]

* למסירת מידע ומשלוח מסמכים בס”ד 03-691-5752, טלפקס: 6915752@okmail.co.il

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Reprinted with permission.

Hashem Improving the World for Mashiach

My Ordinary Life: Improvements Since the 1990s

A list of unheralded improvements to ordinary quality-of-life since the 1990s going beyond computers.

2018-04-28–⁠2021-08-12 finished ⁠

It can be hard to see the gradual improvement of most goods over time, but I think one way to get a handle on them is to look at their downstream effects: all the small ordinary everyday things which nevertheless depend on obscure innovations and improving cost-performance ratios and gradually dropping costs and new material and… etc. All of these gradually drop the cost, drop the price, improve the quality at the same price, remove irritations or limits not explicitly noticed, or so on.

It all adds up.

So here is a personal list of small ways in which my ordinary everyday daily life has been getting better since the late ’80s/​early ’90s (as far back as I can clearly remember these things—I am sure the list of someone growing up in the 1940s would include many hassles I’ve never known at all).

Progress is usually debated in terms of the big things like lifting the Third World out of poverty, eliminating child mortality⁠⁠1⁠, or science & tech: discovering gravitational waves, creating world champion AIs, turning AIDS into a treatable rather than terminal disease, conquering hepatitis C, or curing deadly cancers with genetically-engineered T-cells. But as cool as those big things are, and matters of life-and-death for many, such achievements tend to be remote from ordinary people, and not your everyday sort of thing (or so one hopes). Small stuff matters too. What about the little things in an ordinary life?

The seen and the unseen. When I think back, so many hassles have simply disappeared from my life, and nice new things appeared. I remember my desk used to be crowded with things like dictionaries and pencil sharpeners, but between smartphones & computers, most of my desk space is now dedicated to cats⁠. Ordinary life had a lot of hassles too, I remembered once I started thinking about it. (“The past is a third world country”, but America in the 1990s could also have used some improvement.)

Continue reading…

From Gwern.net, here.