From the desk of Rabbi Alex Greenbaum

Dear Friends,

There is no mention of the messiah in our Hebrew bible. In Leviticus, Moses anoints Aaron by pouring oil on his head to consecrate him as high priest. The Hebrew word for anoint is mashach. The noun form is moshiaich, meaning the anointed one. Thus, the term was first related to the priesthood. The concept of kingship only comes later from the prophets. According to the prophets, our most famous king, King David's, reign would last forever. And so, David was an anointed king. When David's empire fell, there continued to be a hope that he will reign again. This is where we get the idea that the messiah is a descendant of the eternal king David.

According to the prophets, the messiah will be a good and benevolent king, but not a superhuman redeemer. There will be a new world reborn in the days to come. And on that day all people will know God and there will be no more war. The messianic age will be an age of justice and equity. As it is written, And the wolves will dwell with the lambs. This future world will be ruled by an ideal king of Davidic dynasty. The king is human, but with charisma, political savvy, and religion. The messianic age will be within history, not the end of history. It will be in our days to come, not at the end of all days.

So, the Tanach, our Hebrew bible, develops a picture of the world to come, an ideal society, with the messiah ushering it in. But since we have developed both the person and the time, our Talmud, our 2000 year old book of law, also has both. The bible focuses on the time, the world to come at the end of days, a time of a king and world peace. The Talmud focuses on the person, following a time of persecution. The bible, the end of days. Rabbinic thought, the king of the end of days, the man.

But some rabbis of old questioned the legitimacy of any messiah. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai once said, if you should happen to be holding a sapling in your hand when they tell you that the messiah has arrived, first plant the sapling and then go out and greet the messiah. Some outright denied him. Hillel, one of our greatest rabbis, denies the coming of messiah, he believes that redemption comes through God, not a messiah. But most focused on the person. In tractate Sotah, the messiah will come at the end of a time of captivity.

There is nothing we can do to predict the messiah, we just have to live our lives. I used to say, the reason that we don’t talk about the messiah is because it doesn’t matter. If the messiah is coming today or tomorrow or 100 years from now or never, it doesn’t matter, I still have my job to do until then and whenever or if ever it happens, then God will take care of me then. According to Sanhedrin 97b, all deadlines for the coming of the Moshiach have come and gone, the thing depends solely on our returning to God. Maimonides, our greatest philosopher, summarizes the matter, he brings together the age and the person. As he says, All these matters concerning the coming of the messiah will not be known to anyone until they happen. In the messianic days there will be no hunger or war, no jealousy or strife, prosperity will be universal, and the world’s preoccupation will be to know the lord.

Christianity, in their bible, ran with the messiah as king in the form of Jesus. Although in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find three different messianic figures: the priest, the king, and the prophet, the Jewish Christian sect united Jesus into all three. At the time, Jews were under Roman rule in Palestine and it wasn't so good to be a Jew. In 30 CE, not a soldier, but a rabbi arose that gave our people hope, a Rabbi Joshua of the town of Nazareth. He taught that the end is near, that God will judge all, that the good will go to heaven, and the bad, hell. We were being persecuted by Rome 2000 years ago and we prayed for a savior, a messiah, an anointed king to bring us peace. His followers, Jews, came up with a new concept of the messiah. They renamed him, Joshua the Messiah or Jesus Christ in Greek. He died and the world remained the same.

Saadia Gaon of Sura, in 933 CE, wrote that the messiah cannot yet have come, since we see the nations actually warring and fighting as violently as possible. Saadia knew this and so did the Jews who followed Jesus, therefore they had to recreate their Jewish view to fit their world reality. And so their kingdom of messiah was no longer on this earth, but rather in heaven. And his job was no longer peace on earth, but rather peace in heaven. And he no longer freed the world, but rather freed the world from sin. The original Jews for Jesus claimed that we are living in the messianic age, but it was only redemption from sin through Jesus, not redemption of humanity. And this was no longer Judaism, for in Judaism, messianic redemption was not redemption from sin, but rather redemption from exile, oppression, and evil.

In the end there were five ideas Jews believed about the messiah and the messianic age: 1) that he will be a descendant of King David, 2) that he will gain sovereignty over Israel, 3) that he will gather Jews from the four corners of the earth, 4) that he will restore us to full Torah observance, and 5) that he will bring about world peace. In modern Jewish thought, there are many who no longer require a return to Israel, rather messianism is the perfection of the entire world. Jews carry a universalistic message. We have a task, along with all people, to establish a kingdom of God, universal brotherhood, justice, truth, and peace on earth. As Milton Steinberg put it, The messiah's not one man, but all men working together. American Rabbi Samuel Schulman in 1924 wrote, "Israel must always await the messiah. It must never acknowledge any person or event as the complete fruition of its hopes. Indeed, the essence of Jewish messianism is the hope in an infinite ideal." I used to think and claim that the messiah does not exist, rather it's an unattainable goal. That what makes life so precious is the journey not the destination. That we continually strive for the unreachable.

That was then and this is now. Today, I no longer doubt the coming of the messiah. I believe that he, or better yet, it will arrive one day. Not the person, but the age, the messianic age. I now see the world with different eyes. I believe that everything we need to make this world a better place, a perfect place, is already here. I believe that God has put it all right in front of us, it's only up to us, whether or not we use the tools that God has given us. If the messianic age is an age of world peace, a perfect world, then the only thing in our way is us. If each and every one of us did our job perfectly, then we will have created a heaven on earth, a messianic age, you may say. I feel that the messianic idea can prompt Jews to work for tikkun olam, to work for bettering the world. If the messiah is going to come when times are at their worst and he hasn't, perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps the messiah's coming is a bad thing. I look at the messiah not coming yet, as if God has not given up on us yet. God still believes that we can do it ourselves. God still has hope for us. You see, God has given us all the tools we need to perfect the world. If every single person in the world would want peace, there would be peace. Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps our movement’s most famous teacher in 1950 said, "Every pious Jew is, partly, the messiah." I don't want the Moshiach! Now or ever, because I don't want God giving up on us yet.

I constantly refer to God as our ultimate parent, that through God's teaching, the Torah, God has taught us how to live on our own. For the messiah to come, it would be as if we grew up, moved out on our own, and then after a while, God saying, "Enough, you can't do it, move back home, I’ll take care of everything for you." I don't want to move back into my parents’ home, I'd rather visit. I'd rather make them proud and I'd rather make God proud. No messiah, fine with me, gives us a chance to prove our worth. Austrian novelist Franz Kafka wrote, The messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary, he will come only on the day after his arrival.

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Shana tova!

Happy New Year!

Rabbi Alex Greenbaum

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it