The beginning of the flowering of our redemption

Abstract

Its final stages was meant to follow a certain expected trajectory and this did not fit. The narrative of our nation was a narrative of the alternating realities of exile and redemption, Temple, and destruction. After wandering in the desert, our forefathers arrived in the Promised Land and, after a number of centuries, the Temple was built. A few hundred years later, it was destroyed and the Jews went into exile. Exile ended, albeit after a brief period of time, with the building of the Second Temple. But this too was destroyed and, once again, the Jews went into exile, this time a long and bitter exile. And, for close to two millennia, the expectation was that this exile would end the same way the previous one did, with the building of the Temple, the Third and final Temple.1 But this did not quite happen.