What is a generation?

supermom

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 3:01 am

What is considered a generation? It says that we are the last generation of galus and the first generation of geula. What does this mean?

mali

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 5:33 am

Generally speaking, a generation is 30 years.

To answer your question specifically, our generation is the seventh generation (starting from the first Chabad Rebbe, the Ba'al Hatanya) of the revelation of Chabad Chassidus. The Rebbe says that it is our generation who will once again bring the Shechinah down - in the Bais Hamikdosh with the ultimate Geulah. As long as a new Rebbe isn't selected (and no Chassid is thinking of doing that), we are still in the seventh generation.

loveit

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 5:40 am

I learned that a generation is 100 years because that's how long it takes have all new people, every 100 years it's new people.

mali

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 5:49 am

The term "generation" has several meanings, but the one that's most commonly used is a single step in natural descent, as of human beings, animals, or plants or the term of years, roughly 30 among human beings, accepted as the average period between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring.

When talking about the seventh generation, however, the definition of generation would be the entire body of individuals born and living at about the same time (ex. the postwar generation).

supermom

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 9:17 am

So accordingly moshiach should have been here then.

What does it mean that moshiach can't come if there isn't a rise of a new Rebbe. That doesn't make sense.

gryp

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 9:31 am

Quote:

What does it mean that moshiach can't come if there isn't a rise of a new Rebbe. That doesn't make sense.

Mali didn't write that, that's why it doesn't make any sense. Wink

The generation would be over if there would be another Rebbe, and since that can never happen, this is still the seventh generation.

Yes, Moshiach should have been here by now. IYH Moshiach will come now.

greenfire

Sun, Oct 28 2007, 9:36 am

it's like have one foot in each door ... we have the capacity to keep moving into the next era ... the Moshiach generation ...

supermom

Mon, Oct 29 2007, 6:45 am

GR wrote:

Quote:

What does it mean that moshiach can't come if there isn't a rise of a new Rebbe. That doesn't make sense.

Mali didn't write that, that's why it doesn't make any sense. Wink

Now that I reread it it now makes much more sense thanks!! Very Happy

How can that be?!? Only thirty years? That means from the start of the world till avraham was only six hundred years? If it was twenty generations from adam something doesn't click.

And the Rebbeim were a Rebbe for more than thirty years no?

louche

Fri, Dec 28 2007, 7:46 am

supermom, if you read all the "begats" in Bereshit you'll see that the first generations were way longer than ours. The average man in the list begat his firstborn son at the age of anywhere from 65 to 187, lived another 5-8 centuries during which he begat more sons and daughters, and died at the ripe old age of 700-900 or so. Adam Harishon was supposed to live 1000 years but donated 70 of them to David HaMelech.

After the Flood people started living a drastically reduced lifespan of 120 give or take a dozen years.