Moscow, Russia - Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar believes the Earth will soon see the coming a Messiah to reward everyone according to his deserts.
‘We know that he (Messiah - IF) is very near at hand, but he needs not only to be born but also to come. The Messiah may well have been born already, but unless he is ordered by God he cannot reveal himself with God’s help and change the world for the better’, the rabbi said in an interview published by the Gazeta daily on Tuesday.
Lazar explained this assumptions about the imminent coming of a Messiah by the fact that “the world today is in a state described by our sages as ‘hevley mashiah’, that is, labour that precedes the coming of a Messiah’.
‘It is a time’, he explained, ‘when many good things are created in the world and the progress of science and technology has made it possible to solve many human problems, to overcome diseases, famine, etc., on one hand. On the other hand, it is for the first time since God created human beings that humans have taken hold of such means of destruction that the whole of our race and even the globe itself can be destroyed instantly’.
‘We are living on the verge of history; it can be felt everywhere’, Rabbi Lazar is convinced. Recalling the comparison made by philosopher Maimonides who likened the world to scales, Lazar assumed that ‘perhaps God is waiting for only one deed to be put on the good scale to order the Messiah to reveal himself’.
Speaking about it, Russia’s chief rabbi called upon everyone ‘to add this good deed as one’s contribution may prove decisive’.