What Are the Birth Pangs of Moshiach?

The birth pangs of Moshiach (chevlei Moshiach) are the hardships of the last stage of exile, just before the Redemption, as the Talmud describes in Sanhedrin 98b. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, King Moshiach, taught that the stage of stormy wars gives way to a stage of G-d’s open love, and that Torah, kindness and Tehillim spare a person from the birth pangs.

What are chevlei Moshiach?

Chevlei Moshiach are the hardships just before the Redemption, compared to labor pains before a birth (Isaiah 66:8).

The prophets often use the image of labor for the Redemption: “Is a nation born at once, that Zion both travailed and bore her children?” (Isaiah 66:8). The Mishnah describes the same era as “the footsteps of Moshiach” (ikvesa d’Meshicha), a time of insolence, soaring prices and confused leadership (Mishnah Sotah 9:15).

Chassidus takes the image further. If the Redemption is a birth, the exile is a pregnancy. A fetus has every limb, but its eyes do not yet function and its mouth does not eat; it lives through the navel. So too in exile: the Jewish people keep the Torah and its 613 mitzvos, the limbs of the soul, but their spiritual senses are dormant. At the Redemption “what was closed opens, and what was open closes,” and G-dliness is perceived directly (Torah Or, Vaera 55a, as explained in Geulah Weekly).

What did the Rebbe teach about the birth pangs?

The Rebbe taught that Zechariah’s stage of stormy wars gives way to Isaiah’s “great shofar” (Isaiah 27:13).

Two prophets speak of Moshiach’s shofar. Zechariah describes G-d sounding the shofar “with the whirlwinds of the south” (Zechariah 9:14). Isaiah describes “a great shofar” that brings back the lost and the exiled to bow to G-d in Jerusalem (Isaiah 27:13).

The Rebbe explained that these are two stages. Zechariah speaks of an earlier period of wars that overturn the order of the world, with terrible birth pangs for the Jewish people. Isaiah speaks of a later stage, closer to Moshiach’s revelation, when G-d’s great love sets every Jew trembling and stirs even the most distant to teshuvah.

“These events ushered in a new stage in the preparations for Redemption with Moshiach … G-d is calling to the Jewish people, even the ‘lost’ and ‘exiled.’”

The Rebbe said this after the victory of the summer of 1967, calling those events the start of the second stage (Sichah of Parshas Bereishis 5728; Maamar V’Haya Bayom Hahu, Rosh Hashanah 5728, as cited in Geulah Weekly). The main sound of the shofar, he added, is still ahead: a real shofar that gathers every Jew to Jerusalem.

Where does the Talmud speak of the birth pangs?

The Talmud records sages who feared living through the birth pangs before Moshiach’s coming (Sanhedrin 98b).

Ulla and Rabbah each said they wished Moshiach would come, but not in their lifetime, because of the troubles that precede him. Rav Yosef answered the opposite: “Let him come, and may I merit to sit in the shadow of his donkey’s dung” (Sanhedrin 98b).

The Talmud there cites Jeremiah: “Why do I behold every man with his hands on his loins, like a woman in labor?” (Jeremiah 30:6). Rav Yosef’s answer sets the attitude: whatever comes before, the Redemption is worth every longing.

How can a person be spared the birth pangs?

Rabbi Elazar answered: engage in Torah and acts of kindness (Sanhedrin 98b).

The students of Rabbi Elazar asked what a person should do to be spared the birth pangs of Moshiach. He answered: “Let him engage in Torah and in acts of kindness” (gemilus chassadim). The Talmud adds that whoever keeps the three Shabbos meals is saved from the birth pangs, from the judgment of Gehinnom and from the war of Gog and Magog (Shabbos 118a).

The Rebbe added a third protection. In a letter of 25 Marcheshvan 5703, he wrote that the merit of saying Tehillim stands for a person and for his whole Tehillim group, to be saved from chevlei Moshiach and to merit greeting Moshiach very soon (Likkutei Sichos vol. 38, p. 162). The letter closes with the Previous Rebbe’s call: immediate teshuvah, immediate Redemption.

Can the Redemption come without suffering?

Isaiah describes a birth before labor: “Before she travailed, she gave birth” (Isaiah 66:7).

Isaiah continues: “before her pain came, she delivered a male child” (Isaiah 66:7). The Talmud teaches that merit hastens the Redemption beyond its set time (Sanhedrin 98a), and merit can also ease the path.

The Rebbe taught that learning the inner dimension of the Torah brings a gentle Redemption, for Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was told, “With this text of yours, Israel will be redeemed from exile with mercy” (Sichos In English, Shabbos Parshas Vaeschanan 5751). On 28 Nissan 5751 the Rebbe asked that Jews cry out “Ad masai?”, “Until when?”, with sincere intent, and asked that the Redemption come “in a spirit of happiness and with gladness of heart” (Sichos In English, Helping to Bring Mashiach).

What did the Previous Rebbe say about our generation?

The Previous Rebbe taught that only “polishing the buttons” remains before the Redemption (Sichos In English 5751).

The Previous Rebbe, who led Chabad through the Holocaust, called its terrible tribulations the birth pangs of Moshiach and announced that immediate teshuvah would bring immediate Redemption. He compared the generation to a garment complete in every respect, where all that is left is “to polish the buttons.”

The Rebbe added that the decades of Torah activity since then have surely completed that task (Sichos In English, On the Threshold of the Redemption). He called ours “the last generation of the exile and the first generation of the Redemption,” and said: “We are at the threshold of the Redemption.”

How should we relate to hard times now?

The Rebbe asked every Jew to live with the Redemption as an imminent reality, with joy.

Exile, the Rebbe explained, makes it hard to imagine any other reality, just as the Jews in Egypt “did not listen to Moshe, because of broken spirits and hard labor.” That is why he asked men, women and children to learn about Moshiach until the subject shapes their feelings and daily conduct, which is the meaning of living with Moshiach (Sichos In English, On the Threshold of the Redemption).

The Rebbe also taught that awareness of the Redemption’s closeness should bring joy, and joy brings more effort to hasten it (Sichos In English, The Message of the Year 5752). Practical steps are simple: daily Torah study, giving tzedakah and every added mitzvah, the ways the Rebbe taught to hasten Moshiach’s coming. The Mishnah ends its list of the signs of the era with the answer to every hardship: “On whom can we rely? Only on our Father in Heaven” (Mishnah Sotah 9:15). Those signs are gathered among the signs that Moshiach is coming.