When does redemption really begin?

Rabbi Landau teaches that redemption doesn't begin when the darkness ends. It begins when you discover Hashem within the darkness. “The beginning of redemption is not when your life changes. It's when your interpretation of your life changes.”

Everyone thinks redemption begins when the darkness is over, he explains, but the prophets reveal something very different. And “the worst feeling in life is being convinced that you are stuck when you're actually needed.”

He shows it from Tisha B'Av. Until midday we cry with the verse “Osi nahag vayolach choshech v'lo ohr,” He led me into darkness and not light. But at chatzos, midday, we begin to live with a new verse: “Ki nafalti kamti, ki eishev bachoshech, Hashem ohr li,” though I have fallen, I rise; though I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light.

At midday the Beis Hamikdash is still destroyed, and the fast continues. Yet everything changes. The darkness didn't disappear; the presence of Hashem became visible within it. “Although I'm still sitting in dark, Hashem is my light.”

Also answered in this teaching

What does “though I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light” mean?

Rabbi Landau reads it as light found inside the darkness, not after it. In A Soul at Peace he points out that the verse does not say “later I rose”; the rising happens while the person is still sitting in the dark, at the moment he discovers that Hashem is his light.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Redemption begins not when your life changes but when your interpretation of your life changes.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

The worst feeling is being convinced you are stuck when you are actually needed.

What may be behind it

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that a person who thinks his redemption depends on things outside himself is stuck, while one who understands that Hashem's light is waiting to be revealed here and now has a mission.

Deepest human truth

The darkness doesn't have to disappear first. Hashem's presence becomes visible within it: “Though I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light.”