The Jewish people have never stopped saying they want Moshiach. In every generation the cry rises. Yet a deep misalignment persists between what we claim to want and what we are actually prepared to receive.
Too often the Moshiach we describe is not the one presented by Torah sources. He is imagined as a superhero — a figure who will arrive from outside our reality to cancel debts, end wars on our terms, restore dignity, and deliver comfort without requiring us to change the deepest patterns of our trust. This is not the Moshiach of the Rambam, for example. It is the Moshiach of a people still shaped by the psychology of exile, longing for effortless external salvation.
A particularly vivid contemporary expression of this misalignment appears in how certain popular rabbinic YouTube voices discuss current events. In video after video, major regional hostilities — especially those involving Iran — are framed as direct fulfillments or dramatic stages of the War of Gog u’Magog, sure harbingers of Moshiach’s imminent arrival.
While drawing on classical sources such as Ezekiel and the Yalkut Shimoni is legitimate and rooted in authentic tradition (as the Lubavitcher Rebbe himself referenced during the Gulf War), the tone and frequency often transform profound Torah concepts into an ongoing soap opera or spectator sport. Viewers become engaged audiences analyzing “signs,” speculating on timelines, and riding emotional highs with each escalation, rather than being urgently called to proactive political teshuvah, personal character refinement, and the hard work of building Torah-aligned national institutions.
(A parallel trap appears among those who elevate contemporary political figures — particularly Trump and Netanyahu — as anointed messengers or near-messianic saviors who will single-handedly deliver Israel from its enemies. In sermons, videos, and public statements, some rabbis portray these leaders as willing divine instruments whose policies intentionally represent the hand of Providence itself, shifting focus from Torah-driven national responsibility to hope in the next election, the next deal, or the next strongman.
Actually, the Abraham Accords and related frameworks pushed by Trump and Netanyahu represent a deceptive architecture of regional integration that disarms the IDF, subordinates Israeli sovereignty to Saudi-led structures, and sets the stage for betrayal far more dangerous than open enmity. Far from anointed redeemers, these initiatives feed the illusion of security through human alliances while eroding the very independence required for authentic redemption. The Jewish people are being maneuvered into the ultimate annihilation trap of the hidden Hamans who come not with swords but with handshakes, economic “booms,” and grand visions of “peace” that demand Jewish concessions as the price of admission.)
This approach has deep historical precedents. From certain interpretations of the Napoleonic wars, through World War I (viewed by some, including the Chofetz Chaim, as the opening stage of a multi-phase process), the messianic fervor surrounding the Six-Day War, and onward through later conflicts, every major crisis in the region has repeatedly been cast in end-times terms. The pattern is understandable in times of fear and longing, and we do not deny being in the midst of the redemptive process.
Yet the repeated insistence that we are experiencing the final contractions risks fostering passivity and false hope. It pins ultimate deliverance on external drama and divine intervention while the Jewish people may still require several more rounds of painful contractions — geopolitical betrayals, hidden Hamans offering “peace” deals that erode Jewish sovereignty (as seen in the architecture of regional integration and loss of independent self-defense) — before the nation as a whole is willing to fully jettison false beliefs, hopes, and loyalties and call out to the Creator with complete teshuvah.
A striking example of the correct redirection appears in a widely shared video of the Lubavitcher Rebbe speaking with a bereaved mother who lost her son. In raw, heartbreaking terms she pleads that for years they had counted on the Rebbe to bring Moshiach. The pain, she says, is too heavy to bear. She demands Moshiach now — specifically so her son can be returned to life.
The Rebbe listens with evident compassion. Then he responds with quiet but unmistakable firmness. He acknowledges the difficulty — “If it is not possible for all of Israel, how can it be possible for me? I’m only one person…” — and immediately redirects the responsibility: the redemption “must be done by you and by you and by you.” If people are counting on him alone, he wants them to receive his answer clearly: it depends on the actions of every individual Jew.
This exchange captures the precise shift the Rambam’s vision requires. Even in the face of unimaginable personal loss and national longing, the Rebbe refuses to let ultimate responsibility rest on any single human figure — no matter how revered. He turns it back to the people themselves.
The Rambam is unambiguous on this point. In Hilchot Melachim uMilchamot 12:1 he states:
Let no one think that in the days of the Messiah any of the laws of nature will be set aside, or any innovation will be introduced into creation. Rather, the world will continue according to its pattern.
The prophetic images of the wolf dwelling with the lamb and the lion eating straw are, for the Rambam, metaphors for former enemies returning to truth and living at peace with Israel. The only essential difference between this world and the Messianic era is emancipation from subjugation to foreign powers. In that time there will be no famine or war, no jealousy or destructive competition. Goodness will be abundant, and the entire world will be occupied with knowing the Creator.
These outcomes are not supernatural interruptions of cause and effect. They are the natural consequences of a nation living under Torah law implemented by a king who “meditates on the Torah and occupies himself with the commandments” and brings the people to walk in its ways.
This is the inner meaning: When judges rule with integrity, genuine justice follows. Genuine justice strengthens families and communities, reduces crime, and raises national morale. A people with internal cohesion and moral clarity becomes more resilient economically and militarily — not by miracle, but because it has ceased squandering its strength on corruption, division, and the perpetual search for external rescuers. The improvement, measured against our current degraded state, will appear miraculous. It simply does not require the laws of nature to be suspended.
The widespread expectation of a superhero Moshiach is not harmless. It stems from the same root that produces repeated national disappointment: the craving for ease and the reluctance to abandon substitutes for G-d. When pressures mount, it feels natural to place ultimate hope in political processes, diplomatic arrangements, charismatic leaders, international guarantees — or in dramatic “signs” and prophetic speculation that turn complex realities into apocalyptic entertainment. The pattern is familiar — initial enthusiasm, gradual letdown, renewed disillusionment.
This is not only a political error. It is a spiritual one. We declare with our lips that only the Creator saves, yet our deepest hopes and repeated actions reveal that we continue to look to human systems, personalities, and dramatic “signs” as though they could deliver what only He can give. This is a modern form of strange worship.
The Rambam’s vision therefore demands active responsibility. It requires that we stop treating politics — or even exalted spiritual leadership and prophetic speculation — as a substitute for divine order and begin treating Torah as the actual blueprint for national life.
It requires that we educate ourselves and our children until this distinction becomes instinctive.
It requires that we build, in whatever spheres we can influence, structures and norms that reflect trust in the Creator rather than dependence on the approval or protection of others.
Only from that posture are we truly qualified to ask Him to send the one who will fully implement Torah law on a national scale.
The distinction carries immediate consequences. Every time leadership or public discourse frames human political arrangements — or prophetic speculation about them — as the ultimate source of security or dignity, it reinforces the very illusion that delays redemption. Every time we allow our hope to rest primarily on the next election, the next diplomatic initiative, the next personality, or the latest escalation interpreted as “the sign,” we demonstrate that we have not yet fully internalized that only the Creator saves.
True sovereignty is sustainable only when it rests on the recognition that our ultimate strength comes from alignment with the divine order, not from clever maneuvering alone. Compromises made in pursuit of short-term relief that erode core Torah values do not advance redemption — they postpone it by deepening the pattern of misplaced trust.
This is not a call to withdraw from responsibility. It is a call to reorient it. The work of education, of building just institutions where possible, of strengthening families and communities according to Torah principles, and of refusing to sacralize any political process, personality, or end-times spectacle — these are not distractions from waiting for Moshiach. They are the very preparation that makes our waiting mature and our petition worthy.
The information war we face is ultimately about the mind. It is about whether we will continue to occupy ourselves with analyzing what this or that human arrangement, leader, or dramatic “fulfillment” might deliver, or whether we will occupy ourselves with clarifying who and what Moshiach actually is and what we must become for him to arrive.
May we merit the clarity to jettison every false savior — political, ideological, personal, or interpretive.
May we find the courage to place our ultimate trust where it belongs.
And may the One who redeems Israel intercede when we have shown, through our actions and our education of the next generation, that we are no longer looking to anyone else.
