Do you dream? About a loving relationship? About your family’s future? About financial success?
If you’ve entered adult life, pounded the pavement and inevitably encountered your share of disappointments, please ask yourself: Do you still dream?
Yes, we need to embrace life’s [sometimes] hard and cold reality. At the same time, we can never stop dreaming.
The Torah recognizes a world fraught with difficulties and pain. The Torah also depicts an eventual perfected existence, the world of Moshiach (the Messiah); a world of peace, harmony and goodness is our vision, our goal, our dream. And – through the millennia - it hasn’t been easy to maintain this dream.
Here’s a story I heard as a child:
Poor Yankel was the village failure. He couldn’t earn a living and his family suffered terribly. Finally, some friends chipped in to create a job for him: He would be paid two rubles a week to sit in a hut at the edge of town and await the Moshiach.
Offered the job, Yankel was grateful, but he knew that two rubles a week was barely minimum wage.
"The pay is lousy," he said.
"Yes", was the reply, "but the job security is excellent."
That little story reflects two realities in much of the Jewish world:
A. Judaism maintains a belief in the advent of Moshiach. We’ll even pay someone to do be his greeter!
B. Our long and painful road has sometimes sucked that dream of its substance and vitality. Deep inside, we suspect that Yankel will keep waiting and waiting….
Belief in Moshiach’s coming is one of Judaism’s Thirteen Principles of Faith. Our anticipation is built into the prayers, thrice daily. But is the dream really alive?
The Rebbe taught us that we need to keep dreaming.
Yes, the Rebbe challenged our painful existence, and cried with humanity’s suffering. But the Rebbe so obviously believed in the dream of Moshiach.
To the Rebbe, the faith and trust in a perfected world, a Moshiach existence, was more than a dream; it was a vision that animated his life, guided his plans and served as his ‘North Star’.
Because the Rebbe knew that G-d can deliver. The world will change for [the] good. And if it takes a while, we need to keep dreaming, because the dream breathes soul into our lives, keeping it fresh, hopeful and cynicism-free.
We live in a world fraught with difficulties and fracture. Look around and there’s a lot that can disappoint you.
Face it, because it’s reality.
But never stop dreaming.