The Cubs Win the World Series & the Coming of the Messiah

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Cubs fans waited 108 years to experience this elation. Jews have been waiting 5777 years.

The Chicago Cubs actually won the World Series! The Lovable Losers beat their 108-year-long losing streak and killed the goat’s silly curse. They did it!

I bet even the Chicago White Sox fans deep down feel a twinge of satisfaction that the Cubs won. That they feel like, Hey, even though I was not waiting and hoping and wishing that they would win, I’m kind of glad they did. Even the folks from Chicago who don’t care that much about baseball, many of them started watching the World Series and at the last moment joined in on the feeling of hope, to see how it would play out.

And then there are the true Cubs fans, the ones like my great-grandfather who went to game after game and held onto that hope. The ones alive today that had the chance to actually see their team make it and win it. They are elated. This is what they’ve been hoping for.

They bought the gear, they told their children about that stupid goat, and tonight they experienced something unusual, something grand. They experienced the actualization of hope. The answers to their prayers. The joy that comes from wanting something so badly and being let down again and again and again, until finally, 108 years later, they got what they’ve been asking for. Actualization of hope is finding your life partner. It’s getting the cure for illness. It’s the splitting of the Red Sea. It’s the Messiah (Mashiach) coming.

The Cubs give us a taste of this. The waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting… and then, The Win.

And in the end the win happened so fast, in the blink of an eye. Watching the game, I did not even realize that Bryant was the one who caught the ground ball and that Rizzo was the one who tagged first base. Jumping up and down screaming and experiencing the fullness of that moment lasted less than a minute. I’m still on a high from it an hour later writing this, but the intensity of that feeling is fleeting, partly because the present is so hard to hold onto. But life is fleeting. Who knows how long it will be?

The mystical sources say that Mashiach will come by the Hebrew year 6000. It is now year 5777. We are in the bottom of the ninth. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want an extra inning. I’m ready. I want to be like a true fan, the one who has been waiting and praying and hoping and yearning, really yearning for The Win. For Mashiach, for world peace, for closeness to God, for the actualization of hope and the fulfillment of Jewish destiny. I want to be experiencing the elation of that closeness now, today. Cubs fans have been waiting 108 years; we Jews have been waiting 5777 years for our Win.

The good news is that we’re not the fans; we are the players. It’s in our hands. We make the change. It is in our power whether we hit a homerun, a grand slam, or strike out. It is in our power whether we catch the ball and tag first. It is in our power whether we help give someone what they need, pray for a neighbor or gossip about them. We are the spiritual Bryants and Rizzos, Russells, and Heywards. We can break this 5777-year-long streak.

We can make the world forget what it was like to live in a reality where losing was ever-present and where humanity forgot that it was an option for us to win.

And the fleetingness of the moment? It doesn’t exist in eternity, the Next World, Olam Haba. In the Next World, the intensity of experiencing the actualization of hope lasts forever. Every time you stop yourself from gossiping, every time you do an act of kindness, every time you work on yourself, every time you love the Jewish people, every time work on loving a specific Jew, every minute you spend learning Torah, you are getting on base, hitting home runs, blasting grand slams and tagging first base for the win.

You’re getting us closer. We’re doing it together. And God sees it. He’s coming closer and closer, because of you, because of me, because of us. Keep up the good work, team. We got this.

(I am not related to Jason Kipnis of the Cleveland Indians, but nice homerun in Game 6.)

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