Last week I explained that the blessing (teka bsehofar gadol ) "Make sound the Shofar... that will announce our redemption...and bring us back to Israel" initiates a series of six blessings by which we express our requests as a nation. In a good sense, one can see in the sequence of these six blessings the ideal order of the steps of our redemption (geula) toward our 'national normalization', which for us means: The people of Israel, in the land of Israel, following the Tora of Israel.
In this blessing 'Bring back our leaders' (hashiba shofetenu) we ask God to help us finding the right political leaders (shofetim/yo'atsim) like those we had in the past (Moshe, David, etc.) . Leaders who should lead us to a very specific goal: to proclaim You as our King, (umlokh alenu mehera ata..). In other words, unlike 'common' political leaders who might seek their own private political agendas, the mission of a true Jewish leaders is to inspire his people to consider HaShem Almighty the real and only Leader, following His commandments, as the subjects obey the King's edicts.
Without the right leaders, this blessing seems to imply, it will be very difficult to find the way of our national normalization. The wrong leaders will bring upon the people just 'sorrow and pain' (yagon vahanacha).
With the help of our right leaders, we will become a Kingdom of "kindness, compassion justice and righteousness". Because as we say at the end of this blessing, our God is a King who is not infatuated with power, rather, He loves justice and righteousness.
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Rabbi Yosef Bitton. YMJC | 130 Steamboat Rd. | Great Neck | NY | 11024
