While Passover is the festival of redemption, the Exodus from Egypt is commemorated on each of the Biblical festivals and all through the year.  Even events in Jewish history as important as the re-establishment of sovereignty in Israel during the Second Temple era are not considered to be equal to the Exodus.  Our Sages teach that only the Final Redemption will be able to overshadow its significance.  

The Exodus has also become a prototype of redemption for all nations of the world, a model against which other redemptions are measured and assessed.  The coming of the Messiah is a momentous event – not only for the Jewish people, but for the entire world.  It is not simply a matter of national deliverance, nor even of a Jewish renaissance, but of an intrinsic change in world history. In a certain way, the Final Redemption, as its name implies, marks the "end of history,” or, at least, the end of history as it has been for the last several millennia.

We know from Biblical prophecies and from the Talmud that there are two possible scenarios for the Final Redemption.  The difference between them lies in a fundamental question: will it be a revolutionary event, or an evolutionary one?  The first redemption, the Exodus from Egypt, was a whirlwind of supernatural events, a total revolution.  Indeed, many descriptions of the Final Redemption – in Jewish and non-Jewish sources alike – depict the final redemption in a similar way.  For example, in this approach, "the great and terrible day of the Lord"¹ is a universal earthquake which begins with "darkness, not light"² and involves colossal wars between "the children of light and the children of darkness."  Like the Exodus, the Final Redemption is, so to speak, a Divine tour de force vis-à-vis the world. When God wills it, all of reality will be torn to shreds, and the new day will shine, as was the case in the Exodus from Egypt – out of "blood and fire and pillars of smoke."³

The alternative scenario of redemption is an evolutionary one and is based on human progress – whether slow or fast – toward a higher state of existence: "For you shall not go out in haste, neither shall you go by flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will follow you behind;"⁴ or, in other words, "in sitting still and rest will you be saved."⁵ While the Exodus from Egypt contained an element of flight, this redemption will be a slow, smooth process and, despite the enormous differences between the present and the future, it will still be possible to discern the steps that paved the way for the redemption. Even the Biblical metaphor that likens redemption to birth – a dramatic event with a clearly defined "before" and "after" – presupposes the long pregnancy that came before it.

The Exodus is a comma in the manuscript of world history, whereas the final redemption is a full stop

The Exodus, then, is a comma in the manuscript of world history, whereas the final redemption is a full stop. But what shape the final redemption will assume depends, to a great extent, on us as human beings.  Through the totality of our actions, we will determine whether we are an "altogether wicked" or "altogether righteous" generation and, consequently, if we can expect "blood and fire and pillars of smoke" or salvation through "sitting still and rest."

Republished from Steinsaltz.org with permission of the author.