[Avodah] shoa

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Jun 03, 2023 at 11:56:57PM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
>> I can see only two options: Either the Shoa was Chevlei
>> Mashiach, ... Or, chas vechalila, it wasn't Chevlei Mashiach. ...
> 
> I see a third option. Note that the word "chevlei" is plural. Perhaps the
> Shoa was one event in a series of events, which collectively constitute
> "Chevlei Mashiach". I have always been taught that all of the pogroms etc
> of the past 19.5 centuries are all tafel to Churban Bayis Sheni.

This explains this differing minhagim about commemorating the other
tragedies on Tish'ah beAv or Asarah beTeiveis. (The Gush sends out
one of R Amital's thoughts on the Shoah every 10 beTeiveis. I find it
particularly meaningful, since a survivor who is also a gadol beTorah
has a perspective on it I cannot otherwise get.)

But...

Sanhedrin 97a discusses the 7 years before mashiach comes. It's not
actually titled "chevlei mashiach" or even iqvisa demeshicha, but I
have to admit I usually assumed that's what the idiom referred to.

The Maharal ad loc
https://beta.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14192&st=&pgnum=208
takes this as a shemittah cycle, and waxes poetic about how the
*eighth* year is the appropriate year for mashiach. So he held the
seven years was quite literally 7 consecutive years.

A blatt later (98b) we hear of a Edom (Rome? Western?) conquest of Israel
for at leat 9 months, and Ulla and Rabba each wish that the mashiach
come, but after his death so he wouldn't have to live through it.
(R Yosef is more brave.)

Abayei calls this "chevlo shel mashiach". So, this seems to pretty
clearly put it (note the singular conjugation) at the end of history,
not as a feature of the whole duration of galus.

The Gra (Yahel Or, on the Zohar 2:119b) says the 70 words of Tehillim 20
("LaMnatzeiach") correspond to the 70 years of chevlei mashiach at the end
of Galus Edom. "Heimah kar'u venafalu, va'anachnu qamnu vanis'odad. H'
Hoshia, haMelekh ya'aneinu beyom qor'einu." Not 7, but also a specific
time period at the end of galus.

> R' Micha Berger also wrote:
> > Not "only" numerically, but theologically also, it left us
> > bereft in a way no other tragedy did before.

> Do you have data on this? I'm not disagreeing with you, I just have no idea
> what the actual numbers are. For example, how many Jews were murdered in
> the Crusades? ..

Estimates vary widely from "thousands" to "tens of thousands". I took this
to mean that even the top of the range is below 50,000.

Mainz was about 900 casualties.

(Chabad.org went with "Estimates of the toll taken on the Jewish
communities range from 3,000 to 10,000 deaths.")

Estimates for the Inquisition (which trapped some 300,000 Jews) are between
2,000 and 5,000 murdered.

Percentagewise, Khmelnytsky (Tach beTat) was worse -- Shaul Shtampfer
estimates 18,000 - 20,000 Jews were killed of a total population of
40,000.

Notice none of these numbers come remotely close.

The real candidate is the fall of Yerushalayim. The problem is that qinos
are poetry, Josephus exagerates and we don't have any sober estimates at
all about how many died fighting or were civilians murdered when the Romans
suppressed our rebellion.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 A person must be very patient
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   even with himself.
Author: Widen Your Tent            - attributed to R' Nachman of Breslov
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF