Rav Avigdor Miller on the Greatest Title of All

The truth is there is free will in Moshiach’s time.  The Rambam paskens like Shmuel that אין בין עולם הזה לימות המשיח אלא שעבוד מלכויות בלבד. In Moshiach’s time, there is free will. In Olam Haba, there’s no free will, just happiness. But in Moshiach’s time, there’ll be free will.

Only we won’t have the free will to be Jews despite the scorn.  We won’t be able to walk in the street anymore and hear somebody say, “Dirty Jew.”

That’s a privilege you have only now.  You’re lucky today.  If you walk in the street and you’re insulted because you’re a Jew, the Rambam says, תפארת גדולה היא לנו – it’s a great glory for us.  You hear that?  In Iggeres Taiman he says, תפארת גדולה היא לנו – it’s a great glory for us.

So hope it’ll happen.  You walk in the street and a black man is saying, “Jew! Jew!” “Oh!  Boruch Hashem, I’m so happy.”

I always tell this story.  Reb Moshe Montefiore was the mayor of London.  He was a millionaire; the mayor of London.  He once heard that the Jews in Russia were suffering from persecution.  So he traveled to Russia to speak to the Czar and to ask him to help the Jews in his country.

As he was traveling through Warsaw – he was traveling in his own coach: he had a coach with footmen, with livery, with uniforms like an English baron.  So a Polish sheigetz ran after the coach and said, “Zhid! Zhid!”  It means ‘Jew! Jew!’

So Reb Moshe Montefiore stopped the coach and one of the footmen ran after the sheigetz and caught him and brought him back. The sheigetz was shaking hands and feet.

Reb Moshe Montefiore took out a pound note – a pound note was a lot of money in those days – and he gave it to him.  He said, “Back in England they call me Lord Mayor. They call me Baron Rothschild. They call me this and that. I have a lot of titles.  But the biggest title of all is what you called me just now. Zhid! Ahh, the greatest title of all!”

And so Zhid means Jew, Judah, Yehuda – the one who praises Hashem. That’s the greatest title of all.

And the time will come, you won’t get it anymore.  Nobody will call you that.  They’ll hope you call them ‘Zhid’.  Oh no!  We won’t call them that.

You have to wear tzitzis to be called a Zhid.  And only Jews will have tzitzis.  Gentiles won’t be able to wear tzitzis.  You take out your tzitzis; “Ah!  I’m from the royal family!” Psil tcheiles! Tcheiles means royalty. Gentiles will be very jealous of you. But it can’t be helped.

And therefore, in Yemos haMoshiach there is a certain drawback; we’ll lose out on certain things. We’ll lose the privilege of being called ‘Zhid’.

But there are other privileges.  They’ll make up for it; more than make up for it.

TAPE # 854 (December 1991)