"
Do You Care if Moshiach Comes" is the title of the shiur given by Rabbi Joey Haber of LearnTorah.com. It is an excellent shiur. The Rabbi tries to answer a series of questions he compiled from his followers in the past how many years ago and brings answers from different sources. The Rabbi quotes the Rambam that Moshiach doesn't have to prove himself by doing miracles, as well as quotes other sources that say otherwise. The Rabbi also covers a little bit of history on Bar Kochba, whom Rabbi Akiva himself was certain he was Moshiach. (In one of my earlier posts, I stated a source that Rabbi Akiva thought that BK was Moshiach ben Yosef, not MBD).
The Rabbi also states that throughout history false messiahs appear before the real Moshiach, so that it would rile up the Jews to think about redemption. The false messiahs include JC, Shabtai Tzvi, Bar Kochba and others. Interestingly, the article that CNN published concerning
Christopher Columbus on his yahrzeit was mentioned as well. This article, probably written by non-Jews, brought proofs that Columbus was a secret Jew (maranos). These proofs were based on his last will and testament as well as his correspondence to his son and his financiers as follows:
Two of his wishes --
tithe one-tenth of his income to the poor and provide an anonymous dowry
for poor girls -- are part of Jewish customs. He also decreed to give
money to a Jew who lived at the entrance of the Lisbon Jewish Quarter.
On those documents,
Columbus used a triangular signature of dots and letters that resembled
inscriptions found on gravestones of Jewish cemeteries in Spain. He
ordered his heirs to use the signature in perpetuity.
At the top left-hand corner of all but one of the 13 letters written by
Columbus to his son Diego contained the handwritten Hebrew letters
bet-hei, meaning b'ezrat Hashem (with God's help). Observant Jews have
for centuries customarily added this blessing to their letters. No
letters to outsiders bear this mark, and the one letter to Diego in
which this was omitted was one meant for King Ferdinand.
Scholars point to the
date on which Columbus set sail as further evidence of his true motives.
He was originally going to sail on August 2, 1492, a day that happened
to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'Av, marking the
destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples of Jerusalem. Columbus
postponed this original sail date by one day to avoid embarking on the
holiday, which would have been considered by Jews to be an unlucky day
to set sail. (Coincidentally or significantly, the day he set forth was
the very day that Jews were, by law, given the choice of converting,
leaving Spain, or being killed.)
Columbus' voyage was
not, as is commonly believed, funded by the deep pockets of Queen
Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos and another prominent Jew.
Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez advanced an interest free loan of
17,000 ducats from their own pockets to help pay for the voyage, as did
Don Isaac Abrabanel, rabbi and Jewish statesman.
Indeed, the first two
letters Columbus sent back from his journey were not to Ferdinand and
Isabella, but to Santangel and Sanchez, thanking them for their support
and telling them what he had found.
The Rabbi does mention the war of Gog uMagog and hopes that it has already occurred as in the 2nd World War, and that we will merit no more wars before Moshiach. The Rabbi also mentions the Internet Asifa and how we are all "lost" to this situation of controlling our access to it. The whole world needs a wakeup call and we need Moshiach desperately to change our way of life and our way of connecting to Hashem.
