Amongst other things, the Torah teaches us the six hundred and thirteen ordinances that God commanded us. Many of the Torah’s laws are dependent on the existence of our Holy Temple. Consequently nearly half of these six hundred and thirteen ordinances have not been applicable for the last two thousand years of exile.
In our prayers three times a day we beseech God to bring Moshiach and rebuild the Temple so that we should again be able to serve God by fulfilling all of the six hundred and thirteen commandments. But all too often the noise of every day life drowns out this vital message contained in our tefillot, and the importance of the coming of Moshiach is lost on us. The coming of Moshiach is too often seen as a distant myth, which does not seem realistically imminent.
Yet Maimonides (1138-1204) in his work the Mishna Torah (Laws of Kings 11:1) writes that it is fundamental to the Jewish faith to believe in the coming of Moshiach and to actively await his arrival on a daily basis. But after so many years and after so many of our great leaders have tried unsuccessfully to achieve this new dawn, how can we maintain the hope that we can bring about the Messianic era?
The answer may be found in the question. Whereas in the past it was our great luminaries who were charged with the responsibility to bring about the redemption, today, in a generation that often seems to lack real leadership, it is up to us. Imagine a pair of scales, equally balanced. Any extra weight on either side tips the balance. This is how one must view the world, writes Maimonides (Laws of Repentance 3:4). God is judging the world and the good and negative deeds are equal. One extra positive action tips the balance and causes redemption for the world.
So we must wake up to the power of the individual. As the butterfly effect has demonstrated, even in this physical world one can never know what a minute action can achieve. All the more so, we cannot gauge the spiritual consequence of one good deed, however small. We must keep on doing good deeds, because who knows? This one action could be the one that will tip the scales and bring about the redemption.
