The Trumpet of Redemption

Rav Ashlag, who founded the Kabbalah Centre in 1922, taught that a famous line of scripture speaks of a trumpet sounding just before the Messiah arrives. A shofar, the ram's horn, would be blown as the Final Redemption took place, and the whole world would hear it.

Forget the literal meaning. No person on earth has enough breath to blow a shofar loud enough for the whole world to hear, and Rav Ashlag would be the first to be dismayed by anyone waiting to see it broadcast on the evening news. So what does it actually mean that a trumpet will ignite peace on earth and paradise?

The Zohar Reveals a Great Secret

Before answering, the Zohar offers a striking insight: the Israelites are the heart of the one body of humanity, and the other nations and religions are the organs that make up that same body.

Resisting selfishness, narrow-mindedness, the urge to judge others, and our own doubts, that is how we become an Israelite. Every act of resistance is a transformation, and it lets the extraordinary energy that dwells in the 99 percent reality flow into our world. There is no ego left to clog the spiritual arteries. The same way the heart pumps blood to nourish the other organs, the Israelite pumps that energy into the world, nourishing the other nations. This is why the Zohar calls the Israelites the heart of humanity.

This mission was given at Mount Sinai. Moses brought an energy so bright that all darkness, including death, was banished from the world, and every nation on earth experienced that revelation in its own language.

The Creator did not demand that the non-Israelite nations hear the word of God in Hebrew. Whatever language they spoke, that was the language used to channel the Divine energy into their lives.

The Diabolical Danger of Doubt

If we all experienced immortality at Sinai, what happened? It wasn't the building of the Golden Calf that made Moses shatter the tablets. Something broke before that, inside the Israelites' own consciousness. The calf was only the effect. The real cause was a fall of consciousness.

All that was asked was to hold certainty, even in the face of a doubt planted by a vision as vivid as any reality: all 600,000 Israelites saw with their own eyes that Moses was dead. They had already witnessed the Red Sea part, the ten plagues, their own freedom after 400 years of slavery. All they had to do was remember the miracles. They didn't, and consciousness fell.

Our consciousness creates our reality. Period. It doesn't just influence reality, it fabricates it down to the smallest detail.

When the Israelites lost their consciousness of immortality, they lost immortality, not just for themselves, but for the world. That is where the return of death was born, along with the idea of waiting for some external power to bring Sinai back. That is the code of the Golden Calf: the external world we hand our own consciousness's power over to.

The Sounding of the Trumpet

This brings us back to the original question. Rav Ashlag is clear: there will be no physical air blown through a trumpet that magically brings the Messiah. It is the words of the Zohar and the wisdom of Kabbalah, spoken by the Israelites to their neighbors, that will bring paradise. The air that blows from our lungs forming words of wisdom, and leading to acts of kindness, that is the blowing of the shofar.

We lost immortal existence for the whole world. Now we must share the wisdom with the rest of the world to restore what we lost. Rav Ashlag also makes clear that every religion and spiritual tradition will remain in the world of the Messiah, the same way every nation experienced Sinai in its own language. Kabbalah is merely the blood that nourishes every organ of the body. It belongs to all people.

A heart cell doesn't want to become a kidney cell. We need every organ performing its own function, each one equally important, even while serving a different purpose. Restoring that spiritual flow into humanity's arteries is our role, and we live up to it when we drop our doubts and resist the urge to judge.

There was someone, about 2,000 years ago, who tried to repair this same situation: a Kabbalist who came to bring the soul of the Torah, the Zohar's wisdom, to the nations of the world, while Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Akiva tried to infuse it into the heart of the Israelite nation. People doubted him. And that doubt cost him his life.

After so long a stretch of death and darkness, someone needs to carry forward the torch that the Zohar and Rav Ashlag lit. That someone is us, ready to walk the path of Kabbalah. And our name changes, the same way Jacob's changed, every time we resist the ego's reactions and follow the flame. And it depends on us.

A free reading, inspired by Billy Phillips, "How the Messiah Will Arrive" (kabbalahstudent.com, 2017), also published as "How the Messiah Will Come"