Shabbos Hagadol, the Gateway to Geulah 

Anumber of years ago, a colorful and rather irreverent mispallel approached me after a Shabbos davening with the following question: After Mashiach comes, how will rabbanim end their derashos?

I thought for a moment and proceeded to quote the very last Rambam in Yad Hachazakah, which tells us that when Mashiach arrives, there will an endless desire for learning Torah. It must be, I told the mispallel, that when Mashiach comes, the rav’s derashos will never end!

Quips aside, our yearning for the Geulah permeates the entire Pesach season. The recitation of “Ha Lachma Anya,” right at the start of the Seder, concludes with the hope that this will be our last year of celebrating Pesach in galus. The very end of the Haggadah also concludes with L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim. Clearly there is more on our minds than the Pesach story itself.

And the yearning for Mashiach is in fact a theme of Shabbos Hagadol as well. In the yotzros that many congregations recite on Shabbos Hagadol, we find the piyut of Uv’chein vayehi bachatzi halailah, which concludes with a heartfelt plea for the coming of Mashiach, as well as the paragraph of Chasal Siddur Pesach, which ends on a similar note. What are we to make of this?