The Messiah and the Messianic Age

It’s been my custom for the thirty-six years I’ve been a Rabbi, thirty-one of them here at Temple Beth Sholom, to use one central theme for the High Holyday sermons. The theme this year is: Where do we go from here?

Our world has been radically altered at a breathtaking speed no one thought possible. I’ve asked, you’ve asked, “Where is this all going?” Tonight I want to explore with you not politics or economics, but rather what Judaism has to say to us about where we go from here.

My grandfather died when I was six months old. When I got older I asked my grandma – Mom-mom, we called her, Mom’s mom, and sometimes, when she couldn’t hear us, St. Anna of the Kugel – I asked her, “Are you ever going to get married again?”

“Ven der Mashiach ge-kimmen,” when the Messiah will come, she answered. By which she meant, at some inconceivably distant time in the far, far future, an era when things would drastically change and the impossible would become real.

I’m not interested in exploring, at least not now, why Christianity believes Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. Nor do I want to argue about why traditional Judaism believes that the Messiah will be an actual person while liberal Judaism believes in what we call the Messianic Age, the gradual amelioration of human ills due to the ongoing efforts of people just like us. I do want to explore what some of the Jewish concepts concerning the Messiah have to say to all of us in these unsettled times.

The literal and proper translation of the term “messiah” (Mashiach in Hebrew) is “anointed,” which refers to a ritual of anointing and consecrating someone or something with oil. [I Samuel 10:1-2] It is used throughout the Bible in reference to a wide variety of individuals and objects; for example, a Jewish king [I Kings 1:39], Jewish priests [Leviticus 4:3], prophets [Isaiah 61:], the Temple and its utensils [Exodus 40:9-11], unleavened bread [Numbers 6:15], and (even) a non-Jewish king, Cyrus king of Persia, [Isaiah 45:1].

What is the Messiah (Mashiach) supposed to accomplish? The Bible says he will:

1) Build the Third Temple [Ezekiel 37:26-28];
2) Gather all Jews back to the Land of Israel [Isaiah 43:5-6];
3) Usher in an era of world peace, end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease. [Isaiah 2:4];
4) And spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite humanity as one. [Zechariah 14:9]. [Wikipedia]

He will also be an ordinary human being, born in the usual way from two human parents, and a descendant of King David.

For Judaism, the coming of the Messiah is where we’ve always hoped to go from here. Long before my grandmother and grandfather, over one-hundred-fifty years before the holocaust, the Hassidic Rebbes of Europe oriented themselves and the events around them to the time when the Messiah would come.

Even in the depths of persecution, in the darkest hell of the Holocaust our people sang:

Ani maamin b’emunah shelaima b’vee’at ha-Mashiach. V’af al pi she’yitmamai’ah, im kol zeh ani ma’amim.
I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. Even if he tarries, in spite of this, I still believe.

But there is much material in our tradition that says there are circumstances when we are the ones who are supposed to tarry, when we are not supposed to run out to greet the Messiah, even if we think he has come.

The first century sage Rav 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 to greet the Messiah.”

And,
…when the Messiah comes, everyone will go out to meet him - with the exception of school children who will stay in class to study Torah! [ Rabbi Yehuda Appel, Torah Fax, Sept., 1998.]

What I think this might mean to us is, as it is said in Yiddish, “Chop nit” or “Don’t jump.” Don’t run to follow the latest diet, the latest trend in clothing, language, or child-rearing. Don’t jump at the latest news reports. Don’t accept anything as Messianic, as the ultimate, until you have examined it. Then, make up your own mind. That’s why we don’t, and shouldn’t abandon our hard-won knowledge, even to follow the Messiah.

Nor, our tradition says, should we abandon the world, the world God gave us to have dominion over. Don’t abandon the tree planting, the farming, the water management, the food production, the… Messiah or not, the laws of nature will not be revoked. Plant the trees, sow the seeds, provide for human well-being, then go greet the Messiah.

Our tradition also understands that many of us are not so high on the Messiah’s priority list. The Messiah is first interested in those who need help the most. It is his job to aid those who have been harmed, even killed, by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune:”

A young Hasid of the great Rebbe of Mezeritch married the daughter of a fierce Mitnagged (an opponent of the Hasidic movement). The father-in-law made his son-in-law swear that he would never travel to Mezeritch to be with the Rebbe. After a few months, the son-in-law could not resist the urge to join his fellow Hasidim and their Rebbe. When the son-in-law returned home, his angry father-in-law dragged him to the local rabbi for a judgment for not having kept his oath.

The rabbi consulted the Shulchan Aruch [the major code of Jewish Law] and issued this verdict: Since the son-in-law had broken his promise, the young man was to give his wife a divorce at once. Overnight, the young man found himself on the street. He had no means of support and no relatives to whom to turn. Inconsolable, refusing all nourishment, the young Hasid fell sick. With no one to care for him, he died shortly thereafter.

When the Messiah will come, the young Hasid will file a complaint against his father-in-law and the local rabbi, both guilty of his premature death. The father-in-law will say, “I obeyed the local rabbi” The rabbi will say, “ obeyed the Shulchan Aruch.” And the Messiah will say, “The father-in-law is right. The rabbi is also right.” Then he will kiss the plaintiff and say, “But what have I to do with them? I have come for those who are not right.” [Dov Peretz Elkins, Moments of Transcendence for Yom Kippur (Jason Aronson, Inc., Northvale, NJ - 1992) pp. 203-4.]

So where we go from here, according to our tradition, is to await the coming of the Messiah so he will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity. All we have to do is wait, right? Absolutely not. I want to leave you with a beautiful little tale called “The Rabbi’s Gift.” I hope it can be my gift to you:

There was a monastery that had fallen upon such hard times there were only five monks left in the decaying monastery: the abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot to visit the rabbi and ask if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The rabbi welcomed the abbot to his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the old abbot and the rabbi wept together.

The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here.  Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?”

“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that one of you is the Messiah.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”

“He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving - it was something cryptic – was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks that followed, the old monks wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us? Which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Maybe Brother Elred. Maybe Brother Philip. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah...
As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people occasionally came to visit the monastery. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently. They brought their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order thanks to the rabbi’s gift.[Elkins, World of the High Holy Days, vol. 1, pp. 84-85]

Where do we go from here? Towards the Messianic Age, about which our tradition teaches us:

- Be sure that what you accept as the be-all and end-all is truly that, is truly Messianic before you run off to follow it.
- Help those who are “not right,” those who are in need, for that is truly Messianic.
- Most important of all, receive the Rabbi’s gift: We are all the Messiah, each and every one of us. We all have an important part to play in bringing about the Messianic Age, the betterment, the healing of this troubled world. May this be God’s will, and ours.