Facilitating Our Transition to Redemption

On the 3rd of Tammuz 3,285 years ago Joshua rendered the sun and moon immobile to give his Jewish soldiers more daylight time to defeat the enemy in war.

This raises a practical and obvious question: If Joshua could work miracles, why didn't he resort to a "finishing-blow" miracle that would have won the war right then and there? Instead, the war ensued and only many hours later the foe succumbed.

For example, large hailstones could have struck each of the opponents' heads delivering a mortal wound, or, as happened by Lot in Sodom, the other side could have been swept with blindness.

So why a miracle that did not quite accomplish the end goal on its own?

A similar miracle occurred when the staff of Aaron, Moses' brother, placed a day earlier in the sanctuary in the middle of a pack of staffs belonging to the leaders of the tribes, the following morning grew almonds. The entire Jewish people watched as his staff, and only his, first grew buds, then blossomed into the flower stage and finally grew the almond fruit.

The same question arises: If Aaron's staff was meant to show that God selected Aaron and his descendants for Priesthood, why not just grow the almonds immediately; Why unnecessarily perform 2 of 3 miracles that do not accomplish the final, intended result? Why the miracles of growing buds and then growing flowers?

The Rebbe asks these questions to enlighten us. In both cases we note that God did not want to completely abrogate the laws of Nature. By Joshua, the Jews still had to go through the motions of fighting and defeating the enemy in battle. With Aaron, the sequential stages of almond growth were given expression, on his wooden staff, to mimic the Natural process.

Why have Nature participate in the Miracle? Why must Natural expression be given space when a miracle itself can achieve the end result?

Because Nature requires that it be PRIMED FOR A BOOST. Nature is, so to speak, drawn in or sucked into where it gets a significant elevation to a state that later can accommodate a higher spirituality.

The first conqueror of the Holy Land, Joshua, had to raise the Natural status of the land and imbue it with more holiness, render it more of a miracle state, thereby priming its Nature to accept its much loftier status, now that the Jewish people took possession of it, and one primed for even higher states that will manifest during the Era of Redemption.

Similarly the holy Priesthood of Aaron and his descendants needed priming so that it be conditioned to accept or transform itself into an unquestioningly higher level of spirituality.

The 3rd of Tammuz is no coincidental date. It is the date by which Nature gains metaphysical sublimity to where it can experience a loftier state of being.

On that date the Previous Rebbe received a stay of execution by the powerful Soviet authority. On the 12 and 13th of that month, in Natural sequence of events, a complete pardon had been secured. The 3rd of Tammuz, therefore, is the beginning of a chain of events driven by an undercurrent of Supernatural force towards a miraculous and loftier outcome.

This same date also thrust this generation of Jews, by an event of Nature, into a process meant to metamorphose the world into its ultimate purpose. It is made to appear as a dead-end for the leader of this generation, the Moses of this generation, as if he were removed from the arena of daily living affairs. Appearances of Nature aside, we are riding a Supernatural current that will wrought a mighty, sublime change, for we've crossed the threshold of the Era of Redemption, which cannot but this way be finally achieved.