This Shabbat, Parshat Vayechi Yaakov Avinu’s last words before he dies is all about Hebron, Maarat HaMachpela, ensuring that his children carry him up and bring him to his final resting place not in Egypt but rather here in Eretz Yisrael. Yaakov understands he has to go back to his ancestral homeland has to go back together and reunite with his father and mother Yitzchak and Rivka together with his grandparents Avraham and Sarah.
But Yaakov has another last word this Shabbat. And those words are when he blesses his children. The last shevet to be blessed is the shevet of Dan. And Yaakov Avinu says the words לִֽישׁוּעָֽתְךָ֖ קִוִּ֥יתִי יְהֹוָֽה – For your salvation I long and I yearn, Hashem. And Yaakov is teaching us the secrets, is telling us that there’s different ways to bring the geula.
There’s different ways to bring that great day. One is the set time, a fixed time called beita,, that God designated and designed already from the creation of the world. And that’s the last possible time moshiach could come. There’s another way to bring redemption and that’s achishena. We could hasten it through good deeds, Torah, mitzvot, kindness. But then there’s a third way, and that is called I called hakol b’kivui, all in the merit of longing, of yearning, of desiring and imagining that great, great day.
When we long for the great day, we make that a reality.
And we can do our longing and yearning, hastening that great day and make that our current reality. לִֽישׁוּעָֽתְךָ֖ קִוִּ֥יתִי יְהֹוָֽה is said to the shevet of Dan which the great leader Shimshon came out from who fought the Philistines in Aza. We should be able to bring just like Shimshon brought so much victory and honor to the Jewish people in Aza. We should be able to see Shimshon’s last prayer zochreini na ve’chazkeini na – God should remember us and strengthen us and bring freedom to all the captives, bring victory to the IDF.
We should be privileged this Shabbat לִֽישׁוּעָֽתְךָ֖ קִוִּ֥יתִי יְהֹוָֽה – to long, to yearn, to see the ultimate victory for Am Yisroel and in that merit to hasten the great day.
Shabbat shalom. Amen.
