In the week the Torah foretold Ishmael’s fall, America handed Congress to the Democrats. “If you know how to read it,” Rabbi Mendel Kessin says, the Torah portion explains what happened.
Americans woke up on November 4 to a political map they barely recognized. Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections, breaking through in Republican strongholds. The Democrats’ victories extended into “red” states with surprising wins in Texas and South Carolina.
On Wednesday, Rabbi Mendel Kessin posted a lecture to YouTube titled “The Midterm Results According to the Divine Agenda.” He opened by speaking to the shock his listeners felt.
“Many, many people are walking around confused,” Rabbi Kessin said. “We have witnessed last week a tremendous shift change in the climate of this entire country, and I don’t mean the weather. I mean the governance, the direction certainly for the next two years of the United States of America, and potentially we are looking at severe repercussions in terms of the future.”
“Everybody knows that my perspective is not the perspective of the newspapers, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times,” he said. “It’s from the perspective of the divine plan. It is the divine plan that orders exactly what the events of man are, and that’s how I look at things. That’s really the correct way to perceive current events.”
Watch the full lecture here: The Midterm Results According to the Divine Agenda
What does a Democratic sweep in Washington have to do with Iran, Israel’s coalition crisis and the coming of the Messiah?
“A Democratic Slaughter”
“What happened last week was called a Democratic slaughter of the Republican Party,” Rabbi Kessin said. “And it’s not just the Democrats, it’s also the progressives, the leftists, the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, all the real leftists, and in many ways almost lunatics. That’s what I would call them. They won both houses, the House and also the Senate, which is incredible. And they won also many governorships.”
“What’s even more disconcerting is that there were many states that were really all Republican, and all of a sudden they switched to be Democratic,” he continued. “And that can affect the vote for many years. I’m not going to go into the politics of what they want to do, but suffice it to say it’s crazy.”
He warned of a greater danger. “One of the most dangerous parts is that this country is now officially divided, split down the middle,” he said. “And when the country is split down the middle, there is always a potential of civil war. This is, of course, what happened in 1860, when the country was divided with slavery issues, and it led to a civil war.”
Even so, he told his audience not to be dismayed. “It’s going to be very strange, how could this be good, but this too is for the good,” he said. “It says in the Gemara that everything God does is always for the good. That is the absolute behavior of God.”
“As we come to the end of time, there are certain necessities that God has to do,” he explained. “The end of time means the end of galut, exile. It means the coming of Messiah, the supremacy of the Jewish people throughout the world, the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple), and the return of the Shechina, the Divine Presence.”
Ishmael Falls, Then Messiah
Rabbi Kessin pointed to the calendar. The election fell in the week Jews read the Torah portion of Chayei Sarah. “That’s why it’s amazing,” he said. “The parasha of the week itself tells you what’s going on.”
The portion ends with the death of Abraham’s son Ishmael and the lands where his descendants lived:
“And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur that is before Egypt, as thou goest toward Asshur: over against all his brethren he did settle” (Genesis 25:18).
The Hebrew word translated “settle” is nafal, which literally means “fell.” The medieval commentator Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher, known as the Ba’al HaTurim, noted that the next verse opens with “these are the generations of Isaac.”
“Who is the ultimate descendant of Isaac? The Messiah,” Rabbi Kessin said. “So the Ba’al HaTurim says the reason the descendants of Isaac are mentioned right after the last verse of Chayei Sarah is that the Messiah will come after the fall of Ishmael. And we know Ishmael is the Muslims. So the Torah actually alludes that the fall of the Muslims will precede the coming of the Messiah. It’s almost prophecy.”
He connected it to a Midrash in the Yalkut Shimoni on Isaiah. “It says Paras, which is Persia, will break open into a war with the entire world,” Rabbi Kessin said. “The entire world will be shaken up because of the outbreak of war by Persia. And then all of a sudden there will be a bat kol, a divine voice, and God says: don’t worry, the time of your redemption has come.”
“That’s Persia today,” he said. “The real Persia, the hostile Persia. In other words, we read the parasha that explains, if you know how to read it, what happened in the midterm elections.”
A Law as Fixed as Gravity
To explain the election, Rabbi Kessin began with what he called a fundamental law of the universe.
“There are many absolute laws that govern the universe. It’s like gravity,” he said. “No matter where you are, you are subject to the force of gravity. Well, there’s a certain force, and the creation itself is governed by a certain law, and that is called din, justice.”
He traced that law to God’s love. “All religions basically emphasize to obey God. Even the word Islam means to surrender, to serve God,” Rabbi Kessin said. “They don’t talk about loving God. In Judaism, you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your might. That’s extraordinary. That’s an entire different dimension of relationship between you and God.”
“God loves us,” he continued, “and He wants to give us an infinite pleasure eternally. Why does He do that? Because He loves us. And He wants to give us in the best way.”
The best way, he said, is for man to earn it. “He wants us to be godlike,” Rabbi Kessin said. “And what does it mean to be godlike? The greatest way of being godlike is to be able to cause. God can cause anything. He wants us to cause something. And if we truly cause, where He’s not the cause but we are, then we get a reward for that cause. Therefore He’s going to give us free will.”
“Therefore God is in the business, so to speak, of judging us,” he said. “Did we do the mitzvah? Did we do it, or did He make us do it? He could have given us whatever pleasure in the World to Come without doing any task. But that would have enormously diminished the pleasure that we get for eternity. And God said, ‘No, I want them to be able to access the top level.’ And for that, they must cause it. And our reward is off the charts.”
That principle carries a price. “If we sin, we have to cause the undoing of the sin,” Rabbi Kessin said. “And that is done by suffering. Suffering will undo the power of what we caused.”
The Forty-Ninth Level
The Talmud teaches that the son of David will come only in a generation that is entirely meritorious or entirely guilty (Sanhedrin 98a). Rabbi Kessin explained the second half.
“If a generation is completely sinning, then they have a level of evil, the forty-ninth level of tumah (impurity). And there are only fifty levels,” he said. “At that point, the Messiah comes. Why? Because if the generation is so evil and so immoral, then anybody born into this generation really doesn’t have a chance to choose freely, because evil is so pervasive. And the whole point is to freely choose your task. So God says: I will end it.”
The first time this happened was the generation of the Flood. “Besides that they broke civil laws, tremendous violence and theft, it says in the Midrash that if a guy would want to marry a man or marry an animal, he would legally give him a ketubah (marriage contract), which is incredible,” Rabbi Kessin said. “That means they legalized immorality, tremendous immorality, and they legalized criminality. So God said to Himself, ‘Man is evil. This cannot go on.’ The only one that was righteous was Noah.”
The second time was Egypt, and there God sent a redeemer, Moses. “And the incredible thing is that as soon as he came, what happened? It got much worse. Not better, worse,” Rabbi Kessin said. Pharaoh ordered the slaves to gather their own straw while still meeting their quota of bricks. “If they’re making bricks during the day, when do they gather straw? At night. They have to go in the fields and glean the straw at night. It must have been terrible. And there’s no flashlights. Could you imagine how much suffering the Jews went through? And this was after Moshe Rabbeinu came.”
Moses himself protested:
“And Moses returned unto the LORD, and said: ‘Lord, wherefore hast Thou dealt ill with this people? why is it that Thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath dealt ill with this people; neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all'” (Exodus 5:22–23).
“Could you imagine Moshe saying that?” Rabbi Kessin asked. “Because he didn’t understand. How could things get worse if You commanded me to take them out of Egypt? And the answer to that is the answer of what you witnessed on November 3.”
He described the accuser arguing before the heavenly court. “The Satan addressed God and said: I understand that You want to end the terrible evil in the world. But the Messianic era is an unbelievable time of joy and simcha. They don’t deserve this,” Rabbi Kessin said. “You created the world where they have to earn their reward. That’s against judgment.”
“So God said, ‘You’re right. I have to get them not just to do the mitzvah, but I have to get them to undo the sins that caused this,'” he said. “That is why at the end of time you see a great deal of suffering, because you need to satisfy justice.”
He said today’s world has reached that level. “The world is an incredibly immoral place,” he said. “You can change somebody’s gender, you can marry whoever you want. There’s so much theft, so much injustice. What happens when you need a lawyer? It costs a fortune. This is not a way to have justice in America. And if it’s wrong with America, I guarantee you it’s much worse in the other countries of the world. The world is a very hostile place where people hate each other. Just take a look at how many wars there are.”
Trump’s Mission
Rabbi Kessin has long taught that President Donald Trump plays a role in the redemption. He has described Trump as the reincarnation of a biblical patriarch returning to complete unfinished spiritual business.
“He’s really a reincarnation of Esav, who comes back to do teshuva (repentance),” Rabbi Kessin said. “His mission, believe it or not, is to promote righteousness. But his main mission is to remove Ishmael. God has sent him to assist Israel, to annex all the territories, to restore Israel to its property, which is the Land of Israel. And Trump did that in many ways. He restored the Golan to Israel. He did tremendous things for Israel. Fought the UN.”
“Israel can never have peace while Iran exists,” he said. “They are a threat to who knows how many nations, and they have their proxies. They have Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas. They are a force of incredible evil throughout the world. The Messiah cannot come while Ishmael is doing this incredible evil to the Jewish people.”
He pointed to the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “God never does that,” Rabbi Kessin said. “Even if He does a miracle, it’s quiet. He doesn’t want to advertise that He exists, because then He alters everybody’s free will. He wants you to figure out that He exists. But He did this in front of the entire world. He moved that bullet, or I should say He moved Trump’s head, because he has a job.”
The Biden Interruption
According to Rabbi Kessin, the 2020 election followed the same pattern. “The Satan comes up and says, ‘Wait a minute. You want to bring the Messiah? They don’t deserve the Messiah,'” he said. “Not only the United States and the whole world, but Israel. Nobody deserves the Messiah really.”
“So God says, ‘You’re right. I will remove Trump from his mission, and I will put somebody else in his place temporarily, and they will make the United States and Israel suffer,'” Rabbi Kessin said. “So God takes this guy, his name is Joe Biden, and makes sure that he won’t campaign, so nobody sees that he’s really mentally incapacitated. Biden campaigns from his basement in Delaware. And all of a sudden, lo and behold, Biden wins. This shows you the power of God.”
“He’s probably either the worst or one of the worst presidents in US history,” he said. “Nine percent inflation. Fifteen million people coming into the United States, many of them criminals. Fentanyl coming in and killing hundreds of thousands of kids. God accomplished what He wanted. He made America suffer, and all the Jews in America suffer in terms of economics. Eventually they suffered enough. So He had to restore Trump back to his position.”
“God Grants Victory, Not Your Weapons”
Rabbi Kessin cited the opening of the war on Iran as proof of Heaven’s backing. The United States and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against multiple targets in the Islamic Republic of Iran early on February 28. Waves of airstrikes killed an entire echelon of the Islamic republic’s political and military elite, starting with supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
“If you go to war with somebody and all of a sudden you find yourself being incredibly successful, why? Because God is giving you victory. That is a sign of the will of God,” Rabbi Kessin said. “He destroyed the IRGC, two tiers, including Khamenei and the people with him, within I think a week or two, which is incredible. But these people don’t understand. I don’t care what weapons of war you have, it is God that grants victory, not your weapons. They all of a sudden thought it’s the strength and power of my hand. No, it’s not.”
Rabbi Kessin was echoing Moses’ warning to Israel: “and thou say in thy heart: ‘My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth'” (Deuteronomy 8:17).
“Trump Is Not the Same Guy”
Then, Rabbi Kessin said, Trump turned away. “Trump is not the same guy who started. He doesn’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “The problem with Trump is he now is motivated because he wants a legacy. He wants to go down in history as the man who made the most peace, the greatest president of all time.”
“Does he understand the magnitude of the miracle that happened to him?” he asked. “He himself knows that he was saved by a miracle, because he said he never moves his head that way at the beginning of a speech. And the bullet missed him by a quarter of an inch. Why does he think God did that publicly, throughout the entire world?”
In the weeks before the election, the administration pursued a deal. U.S. and Iranian negotiators reached a tentative agreement to extend the ceasefire in the 3-month-old war by 60 days and launch talks on Iran’s nuclear program, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
“How could you have ceasefires?” Rabbi Kessin said. “That’s all they do, make a ceasefire, negotiate with Iran. They never keep their end of the bargain. Everybody knows that. Any 10-year-old kid knows that. So what in the world are you doing by negotiating with them?”
“You’re not fighting Iran. You’re fighting Islam,” he said. “And Islam is a religion. And they will never give in. They would rather die than give in. And Trump somehow doesn’t get it.”
“You don’t negotiate with Hitler. That’s what Iran is,” he continued. “Any country that kills 60,000 of their people for what? Because they want to have a normal life, they want to be able to support their family and have a normal currency? That’s what the IRGC has done, and they continue to do so every day.” Rabbi Kessin’s figure is higher than the documented counts. Casualty estimates from Iran’s protest crackdown range from 3,100 to over 30,000, with verification hampered by an internet shutdown.
“Everybody knows Iran will never agree to give up nuclear, because their whole sense of kavod, of pride, comes from the fact that they have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “It’s an identity issue.”
He also called out Washington’s stance on Judea and Samaria. Trump has said that he would “not allow” Israel to annex Judea and Samaria.
“He has become an enemy of the Jewish people in a certain sense,” Rabbi Kessin said. “He stopped them from annexing the territories. How could you stop them? God promised them that they will get those territories. He says it how many times, that the Land of Israel belongs to Israel. So why are you stopping them from annexing? Not only that, why are you stopping them from going into Iran and killing the IRGC? This is an existential enemy to the Land of Israel. What are you doing?”
“Iran has been an enemy of America for 47 years,” he added. “Do you know how many Americans they’ve killed over the years? You are constitutionally obligated to protect Americans.”
“So I can hear God saying, ‘Legacy? You won’t have anything after I get through with you,'” Rabbi Kessin said. “‘Because you have no concept of what I can do.'”
“It’s the Economy, Stupid”
Rabbi Kessin explained how Heaven carried out the verdict. “Bill Clinton said it best in 1992, when he won over George Bush,” he said. “Bush had won against Saddam Hussein. How in the world did he lose? Because Clinton realized: it’s the economy, stupid. People are always concerned with their pocketbook. If a guy cannot meet paycheck to paycheck, he couldn’t care less what you’re doing.”
“A guy doesn’t know that unemployment is now lower. That’s an abstract,” he continued. “He knows when he goes into his supermarket, he’s paying a fortune for eggs or everything else. Gas is over $4, and he’s filling up his tank for $100. He’s experiencing the fact that he cannot afford to live. And they look at Trump and they say to themselves, ‘This guy’s a fraud. I can’t make it.'”
The exit polls agree. Nearly 9 in 10 voters said the cost of living was a crucial or major factor in their vote, according to exit polls conducted by SSRS for a consortium of U.S. news organizations. According to exit polls, 74 percent of voters said the Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their vote. 62 percent of those voters sided with Democrats.
“Trump did not see that, because God blinded him in terms of the repercussions of the economy,” Rabbi Kessin said. “It’s not a problem for Him to blind Trump, to blind his whole cabinet, which He did. I can’t believe the cabinet never saw this. Angry people do angry things. So not only do they lose the House, they lose the Senate. And not only do they lose, they get slaughtered.”
Edom’s Decree Reaches America
According to Rabbi Kessin, America has now joined Europe under the judgment of Edom. Two weeks ago he taught that Europe’s riots fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy of God treading the winepress of Edom.
“God is destroying Edom because it’s their time to be destroyed for what they did to the Jews for 2,000 years,” he said. “The only reason why so far God has not allowed America to do what they’re doing in Europe is because America has done tremendous with the Jews. They allow the Jews to learn Torah, to do the mitzvot. They’re very good to the Jewish people. But the immorality, the antisemitism, the DSA, the Democratic Party with the craziness of what they’re doing, has surpassed that merit. So God says: I’m now going to bring the decree of Edom to America.”
He described the antisemitism as irrational. “Why do they hate Jews? What do Jews do to them? It doesn’t make any sense,” Rabbi Kessin said. “Genocide? What genocide? Israel doesn’t kill for nothing. They’re trying to get rid of Hamas because of what Hamas did on October 7th. You’re not fighting Hamas. You’re fighting a radical violent element of Islam.”
He also said evil is broader than violent crime. “People don’t understand what evil is,” he said. “They make that classic mistake. They think it has to be a violent crime. It doesn’t. If a person lives a sinful life in the eyes of God, that’s evil, and that’s what generates the levels of evil.”
He predicted two years of paralysis in Washington. “It’s going to be impeachment galore. Nothing is going to get done,” Rabbi Kessin said. “All the associates of Trump, all his cabinet ministers, they’re going to get impeached. Even his family.”
“Why do you think there are so many weather extremes, things happening that almost make no sense?” he asked. “It’s all the concept of punishments.”
Israel Without a Government
Rabbi Kessin said the same judgment explains Israel’s deadlock. The parliamentary elections held on 27 October 2026 were inconclusive, and coalition talks face Liberman’s refusal to rely on Arab parties, which poses a major obstacle to forming a coalition.
“We see Israel is suffering because they cannot even put a government together,” Rabbi Kessin said. “God is stopping them from having a government. Just like they suffered at the time of Biden. I think they had four different attempts at elections. Well, they are now suffering in the same way. Who knows how many governments they’re going to have to try to elect this time.”
“Enough Is Enough”
Rabbi Kessin said the process is moving toward its end. “Mankind in general has reached a very bad level. Not economically or technologically, but in terms of spirituality,” he said. “And God, after 5,787 years, says enough is enough.”
He explained why God is in a hurry. “The Messianic era itself is a long era, believe it or not,” he said. “It takes a long time for mankind to change and to imbibe spirituality. This is not going to take five days. Even if you have a Beit HaMikdash, nobody knows how to operate a Beit HaMikdash, nobody’s familiar with that level of kedusha (holiness). And it takes time for people to realize who the Jews are and what they accomplished, to survive an exile of 2,000 years.”
He returned to the Torah portion. “It was all in Chayei Sarah. The Ba’al HaTurim said it: Messiah can come only after Ishmael falls. In the actual week of the midterm elections,” Rabbi Kessin said. “It’s almost like God is talking to Trump and saying: Listen to Me. You want a legacy? I’ll give you a legacy. Not only won’t you have a legacy, more people will hate you. They won’t give you the credit you deserve. And they’re going to haunt you for two years and go after you in courts, because you defied My will.”
The Way Out
Rabbi Kessin said the setback is temporary. “It’s all temporary, just like Biden was temporary,” he said. “And when the Democrats do their mission, which is to make the US suffer, God will also destroy the Democratic Party, because they are guilty of an enormous amount of evil. It’s in the hands of the proper manager, God. He knows exactly what He’s doing. And He brings retribution to everybody, including the president of the United States.”
He ended with a direct message to the President. “I hope Trump wakes up,” Rabbi Kessin said. “If Trump does teshuva, repents, and he takes out Iran and clears one of the greatest murderers in the Middle East, then all of a sudden that part of the world changes. Then God will severely minimize the obstacle that the Democratic Party will do to Trump and his family and the United States. That’s called the sweetening of justice. God can stop anything He wants, even if they have the majority of the Senate and the House. That’s nothing to God.”
“I give that advice to Trump if he hears what I’m saying,” he said. “Be smart. Repent. Get rid of Iran. Allow the world some form of peace and shalom. If he really loves this country and he doesn’t want this country to suffer, and they will terribly, then let him do what I’m saying.”
Rabbi Kessin closed with the reason for it all. “Thank God that there is an attribute of justice,” he said. “Because whoever experiences the World to Come will be able to say, ‘I caused my beautiful vacation, which goes on for eternity.'”
“I hope I’ve allayed some of your fears,” he told his listeners, “and you can go home and sleep better.”