Messianism – Rabbi Michael Abraham – Lesson 4

Table of Contents

• Belief in the coming of the Messiah, calculations of the end, and the question of responsibility
• Two kinds of messianism: original and borrowed, and false messianism in modernity
• Maimonides, Laws of Kings: “presumed Messiah,” “definite Messiah,” and “to test many through him”
• Jesus, Muhammad, and the censored passage: false messianism as a tool in the hands of Heaven
• What is false messianism and what is a messianic movement: three proposals
• Three problems in conduct: prohibition, deviation from tradition, and lack of realism
• Stories of selling property and rabbis’ oaths: diagnosing a messianic movement through unreality
• Applying this to Zionism and Religious Zionism: Jewish law, tradition, and realpolitik
• The difficulty of diagnosis, Rabbi Akiva, and historical retrospect
• Hamburger’s book: “The False Messiahs and Their Opponents” and tendentiousness
• Christianity as an early messianic phenomenon: rabbinic conceptions and Maimonides’ outcome-based criterion
• Miracles and the Messiah: Maimonides’ position and its implications

Summary

General Overview

The text presents belief in the coming of the Messiah alongside caution about calculating the end and about the tendency to turn redemption into an unchecked practical project, through the question of upon whom the messianic task rests and whether the Temple will “descend from Heaven” or be built by human beings. It distinguishes between messianism in the original religious-eschatological sense and messianism in a borrowed sense, as in modern movements for repairing the world such as communism, and argues that it is hard to call the desire to repair the world “false messianism,” even though it can deteriorate into fanaticism, violence, and oppression out of a sense of absolute truth and an unwillingness to accept criticism. It brings Maimonides in the Laws of Kings on “presumed Messiah” as opposed to “definite Messiah,” and from there develops the notion of a test for Israel and the distinction between a false messiah and a messianic movement. It then proposes various criteria for identifying a problematic messianic movement and applies them cautiously to Zionism and Religious Zionism. It concludes with a historical look at Christianity as an early model of a messianic phenomenon, and with Maimonides’ emphasis that the Messiah is not to be judged by miracles and signs.

Belief in the Coming of the Messiah, Calculations of the End, and the Question of Responsibility

The text assumes belief in the coming of the Messiah, but raises a problem with calculations of the end and with the question whether there is a task incumbent upon us to bring redemption, or whether we are supposed to wait for it. In the background it places Urbener and Rashi, and the possibility that the Temple will “descend from Heaven,” with the Temple serving also as a symbol of the broader question: upon whom does the messianic task rest? It ties this question to the tension between human action and caution regarding messianic activism.

Two Kinds of Messianism: Original and Borrowed, and False Messianism in Modernity

The text defines messianism in its original sense as religious, eschatological messianism, and messianism in a borrowed sense as modern movements for repairing the world, such as communism. It says it is not reasonable to call the desire to repair the world “false messianism,” because that desire seems legitimate and even called for. It identifies the problem when the aspiration to repair the world becomes fanatical and clings to an absolute model of a repaired world, to the point of violence, suppression of other ideas, and even killing in extreme cases. It says the direct connection between this and “false messianism” is not what people usually meant, but it sees a common root in religious messianic movements and in secular-ideological messianism: an unwillingness to accept criticism, a sense of absolute truth, refusal to hear anything else, and denial of legitimacy to the other side.

Maimonides, Laws of Kings: “Presumed Messiah,” “Definite Messiah,” and “To Test Many Through Him”

Maimonides in Laws of Kings chapter 11, law 4, describes a king from the house of David, immersed in Torah and occupied with the commandments, who compels Israel to walk in it and fights the wars of God, of whom one says, “behold, he has the presumption of being the Messiah.” If he succeeds and is victorious, and builds the Temple and gathers the dispersed of Israel, “behold, he is definitely the Messiah.” But if he does not succeed or is killed, “it is known that this is not the one the Torah promised,” and “the Holy One, blessed be He, raised him up only to test many through him,” with the verse: “And some of the wise shall stumble, to refine among them and to clarify and whiten, until the time of the end, for it is yet for the appointed time.” The text notes that Chabad made “a big tsimmes” out of the distinction between “there is a Messiah” and “presumed Messiah,” and raises the familiar explanation, “the generation was not worthy” and “the generation was not fit,” as a way to preserve the messianic image of a figure who did not succeed. It emphasizes that Maimonides himself offers a different reason: “to test,” and asks what such a test means when the candidate meets all the criteria of lineage, commandments, and leadership. It presents two possible understandings: a test in the sense that it depends on Israel to repent, keep the commandments, and seize the opportunity; or a test in the sense that the status of presumed Messiah still requires doubt and a critical perspective until full success, and the caution is not to take unrealistic or premature steps before things become fully clear.

Jesus, Muhammad, and the Censored Passage: False Messianism as a Tool in the Hands of Heaven

The text brings the continuation of that same law in Maimonides, a censored passage that appears in the Frankel edition, where Maimonides writes: “But the thoughts of the Creator of the world are beyond man’s power to grasp… and all these matters concerning Jesus the Christian and that Ishmaelite who arose after him are only to straighten the way for the King Messiah and to repair the whole world to serve God together.” He explains that through Christianity and Islam, “the whole world has become filled with talk of the Messiah, and of Torah, and of the commandments,” reaching even “distant islands.” Maimonides describes how “uncircumcised of heart” peoples discuss the commandments of the Torah: some say the commandments “have already been nullified,” others say these matters are “hidden things” and allegory, and in the end, when the King Messiah arises, “immediately they all return and know that their fathers inherited falsehood.” The text emphasizes that according to Maimonides, even Jesus and Muhammad, though they are false prophets and false messiahs, are included within a divine process whose purpose is long-term preparation of ripe ground, and not merely an initiative of the human evil inclination. It compares this to the opening discussion of “presumed Messiah” and argues that there is here a model in which the Holy One, blessed be He, generates messianic phenomena in order to achieve goals, whether as a test for Israel or as historical preparation.

What Is False Messianism and What Is a Messianic Movement: Three Proposals

The text offers three possible definitions for characterizing “false messianism” or a “messianic movement,” and presents them as a spectrum. In the name of Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion it cites an extreme line according to which a messiah, by definition, is a false messiah, because the messiah is supposed to be a motivating idea rather than a concrete realization; but it rejects this as unreasonable in a traditional context. It suggests a second possibility, according to which the very act of taking practical steps to bring the Messiah, whether political or mystical, is itself a problematic messianic movement, because the task is not placed on us, but rather on waiting—and it connects this to the question whether one should act or wait. It proposes a third possibility, in which acting to bring the Messiah is permitted and perhaps even desirable, but the negative criterion is the form of action and conduct; the problem is not the goal itself, but the manner.

Three Problems in Conduct: Prohibition, Deviation from Tradition, and Lack of Realism

The third possibility breaks down into three kinds of problem. First, it points to actions involving halakhic prohibition, and cites the Rabbi of Brisk, who infers from Eruvin 43 that the Messiah will not come on the Sabbath or on a Jewish holiday because of travel limits, and concludes from this that redemption does not come even through a rabbinic prohibition, because repairing the world cannot come “through a flawed path” but only in a “glatt,” not merely “after the fact,” manner—using the image of the Hanukkah lamp and the search for “a cruse of pure oil,” even though “impurity is permitted in the case of the community.” Included here are also extreme examples such as Shabbetai Tzvi, who converted to Islam and left the framework of Jewish law. Second, it points to actions not accepted in the tradition even without an explicit prohibition, such as the argument against cooperation with heretics and secular Jews, or claims of “it just isn’t done” in relation to the “three oaths” in Ketubot and “forcing the end” and rebelling against the nations, along with the debate whether this is really a prohibition and what the significance is of an oath not counted among the commandments. Third, it points to actions that have no realistic justification and are coercive or dangerous in an unreasonable way, such as entering into security or economic risks on the assumption that “the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us,” and therefore reality will have to yield.

Stories of Selling Property and Rabbis’ Oaths: Diagnosing a Messianic Movement Through Unreality

The text describes phenomena in which messianic rumors caused people to sell property, sometimes at low prices, on the assumption that money would soon no longer be needed. It gives examples of stories about rabbis who swore that the Messiah would not arrive in the near future in order to stop the drift, including Rabbi Yaakov Gesundheit of Warsaw, a story he heard about Rabbi Shmuel Salant in Jerusalem, a mention of Shulamit Lapid in Like Broken Clay about mass conversion to Christianity in the old yishuv following a messianic collapse, and things he heard about Rabbi Aharon Kotler and the Tzemach Tzedek. From this it formulates a criterion according to which a “messianic movement” is identified when people make irrational and unrealistic decisions, even without rebellion against the nations and even without a direct prohibition. It distinguishes between a “false messiah” as a person who falsely claims to be such, and a “messianic movement” as a mode of conduct that can prevent realization even if there was genuine potential. It also raises the discussion whether such an oath is a false oath intended to save the public from getting entangled, and whether this is a case of “sin so that your fellow may benefit.”

Applying This to Zionism and Religious Zionism: Jewish Law, Tradition, and Realpolitik

The text argues that these criteria directly affect the question of Zionism and Religious Zionism, because they involve concrete activity to bring redemption and “the first flowering of our redemption,” and at times metaphysical considerations enter into security and policy decisions. It presents the claim that one could even argue there are halakhic problems through a state that enforces Sabbath desecration, immodesty, recognition of Christianity, and a legal system not based on Torah and involving the prohibition of gentile courts; and it says one cannot simply dismiss the argument about halakhic deviations altogether, even though he himself is inclined not to accept it. It develops a discussion of gentile courts, the king’s law, and the idea of “courts in Syria” in a reality where worthy judges are not accepted by the majority of the public, and mentions as a historically rejected option the separatist communities of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Ketav Sofer, as against opponents such as the Netziv. It formulates a tension between a Haredi conception that emphasizes practical effort and realistic considerations, and a Religious Zionist conception that sometimes relies on “why do you need to get involved in the secrets of the Merciful One?” and on confidence that the Holy One, blessed be He, will help because this is redemption. He explains that in practice the Haredim act with intense ground-level practical effort, even if in language they say “with God’s help.” He tells the story of the electronics lecturer and the “Persian” who did not win the lottery because he never bought a ticket, and of the investor and the nobleman, which illustrate the idea that “that’s how the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to help me—through your way,” in order to explain that success is understood as mediated by human action, not as an excuse to cancel realistic responsibility.

The Difficulty of Diagnosis, Rabbi Akiva, and Historical Retrospect

The text emphasizes that these diagnoses are not simple, and that therefore even great figures of Israel like Rabbi Akiva followed movements that turned out in retrospect to be mistaken, because in real time it is hard to know whether one is dealing with genuine redemption or with a dangerous messianic movement. It argues that one cannot rule out in advance the possibility that even in the present, a movement that seems positive may historically prove false. In the name of Rabbi Kalner it cites the statement that “if the state is destroyed, he’ll take off his kippah,” as a position that places the claim under empirical test. As an example it presents the story of Rabbi Herzog and the Rabbi of Brisk during the War of Independence: Rabbi Herzog says, “we have a tradition from our rabbis that the Third House will not be destroyed,” and the Rabbi of Brisk replies, “and I have a tradition from my father that when they shoot, you run,” as a confrontation between bringing a redemption-tradition into practical judgment and insisting on realistic decision-making even in the face of a general belief in redemption. It compares this to the discussion of Nachmanides on Joseph and his dreams, and to the wonder, “what do you need the ways of the Merciful One for?” and formulates a principle that one should not mix metaphysical considerations into moral, halakhic, or realpolitik decisions even if those considerations are true.

Hamburger’s Book: “The False Messiahs and Their Opponents” and Tendentiousness

The text presents Hamburger of Bnei Brak as a researcher of Ashkenazic customs and as the author of the comprehensive book The False Messiahs and Their Opponents, and notes that the book is tendentious and intended, among other things, to show that Herzl was a false messiah and that Zionism is false messianism. It says that this tendentiousness does not cancel the fact that systematic work was done there, which makes it possible to see that certain comparisons between historical messianic movements and Zionism are not necessarily absurd. It adds an anecdote about Hamburger’s position on tekhelet as “an invention of the Mizrachi people,” to illustrate how an agenda can truncate discussion even in someone who has real historical abilities.

Christianity as an Early Messianic Phenomenon: Rabbinic Conceptions and Maimonides’ Outcome-Based Criterion

The text presents Christianity as a prominent early case of a false messiah phenomenon, and brings a scholarly-historical approach according to which Jesus was a Pharisee and committed to Jewish law, and may not even have seen himself as the Messiah, with a messianic myth having been built around him only after the fact. It quotes Shield and Sword by Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena, who describes how Jesus acknowledged both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah “in what he accepted according to his own understanding,” and said, “I did not come to change the Torah but to fulfill the Torah,” and “Heaven and earth may pass away, but not one word of the Torah shall pass away.” From this he concludes that the sages did not formulate a firm position against him for some time, because had he preached changing “even a minor thing from the Torah,” no one would have listened to him. It brings the wording of Maimonides: “Even Jesus the Christian, who imagined that he would be the Messiah and was executed by a religious court,” together with Daniel’s prophecy, and emphasizes that Maimonides formulates here a great stumbling block in outcome-based terms: Christianity caused “Israel to be destroyed by the sword,” to be scattered, humiliated, the Torah to be replaced, and the world to be misled into serving a god other than the Lord. It argues that this outcome-based criterion explains why, in real time, it is difficult to identify the direction, because Maimonides is writing with the wisdom of hindsight about what the movement ultimately produced in history.

Miracles and the Messiah: Maimonides’ Position and Its Implications

Maimonides is presented in the text as emphasizing: “Do not imagine that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders… or revive the dead,” and the text explains that he writes this against movements that claimed the messianic crown through miracles. It connects this to Maimonides’ position in the Laws of Idolatry and in the Guide of the Perplexed, that all magic and divination are “sleight of hand,” and that “you shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God” is a prohibition against being foolish. From this it follows that miracles are not a criterion, and may even serve as an indication of fraud or transgression. It notes that this is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), because there is a view that recognizes the powers of the “other side,” even though it is forbidden to resort to them; so according to other approaches, miracles do not necessarily disqualify. It adds a story about Dr. Ephraim Shach during the dollar-distribution line at the Lubavitcher Rebbe, in which the Rebbe says, “it’s not me, it’s my Hasidim,” and Rabbi Shach replies that “next time, tell that to your Hasidim, not to me,” in order to show that passive leadership in the face of followers’ messianic interpretation is seen as meaningful.

We talked a bit about belief in the coming of the Messiah, about the problem with calculating the end, about the question whether this is a task imposed on us according to the Or HaChaim and Rashi, or whether the Temple will descend from heaven. And I think the Temple here is some kind of symbol and not necessarily a discussion about it itself, but rather the question of on whom the messianic task is imposed in general. In the end I concluded with two types of messianism: one is the original meaning and the other is a borrowed term, a figurative meaning. Messianism in the original sense is messianism in the religious, eschatological sense, as it’s called, and messianism in the borrowed sense refers to movements for repairing the world, which are part mainly of the modern, modernist world—movements that want to change the world, like communism. And I said that I don’t think one can speak about false messianism in the sense of the desire to repair the world. That is, nobody would see the desire to repair the world as something illegitimate or as a task not imposed on us; that sounds unreasonable. Even though there are certain aspects of the desire to repair the world that can perhaps lead to problematic things—whether we call it false messianism or not—we saw communism and certain movements that believe with excessive fanaticism in a model of the perfected world toward which they are striving, and then of course that can lead to problematic conduct, to violence, to suppression of other ideas or other activities. But that’s already a somewhat distant connection to the question of false messianism; I don’t think that’s usually what people meant. That is, not this type of problem, although it may reflect a common point shared by false messianism and those problems of messianism in quotation marks. It’s some kind of unwillingness to criticize the process, to relate to it critically, and that does characterize both messianic movements and secular messianism, ideological messianism—say communism—where in both cases there develops a feeling that we possess some absolute truth, and therefore we are unwilling, first, to hear anything else, and second, to grant legitimacy to anything else. And of course if you go one step further, then you also suppress all the others or kill them in extreme cases. So the phenomena are not identical, but they do have common roots or similar roots. In other words, there’s something in the unwillingness to engage in intellectual criticism that I think is also part of the problem of false messianism. So we’ll see that further on. Another comment before I just summarize the introduction: Maimonides, in Laws of Kings, writes as follows in chapter 11, halakhah 4: “If a king arises from the House of David, learned in Torah and occupied with commandments like David his father, according to the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and he compels all Israel to walk in it, in Torah, and to strengthen its observance, and he fights the wars of God, then he is presumed to be the Messiah.” Chabad made a big fuss out of this—there is a Messiah and there is someone presumed to be the Messiah; there are all kinds of inferences in Maimonides. “If he acted and succeeded, and defeated all the nations around him, and built the Temple in its place, and gathered the dispersed of Israel, then he is definitely the Messiah. But if he did not succeed to this point, or was killed, then it is known that he is not the one the Torah promised; rather he is like all the worthy, complete kings of the House of David who died. And the Holy One, blessed be He, only set him up in order to test many through him, as it is said: ‘And some of the wise shall stumble, to refine among them, and to purge and whiten, until the time of the end, for it is yet for the appointed time.’” In other words, in Maimonides here it seems that there really is a mechanism of a potential Messiah—what he calls someone presumed to be the Messiah—even if in the end he does not succeed. Why did he not succeed in the end? So I said, I already mentioned the explanation that the generation was not worthy, right? A standard explanation in many contexts, including the Chabad context—that the generation was not worthy. That saves the messianic image of that Messiah who did not succeed; the generation was not fit. Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s the same idea—the generation was not worthy enough. Yes. But here Maimonides says something a bit different. He says, “And the Holy One, blessed be He, only set him up in order to test many through him.” So that’s a little interesting. What, so now the Holy One, blessed be He, created this false messianism—or not false messianism, I don’t know what to call this phenomenon—for what purpose? Maimonides does not say here that it’s because the generation was not worthy; on the contrary. No, he says to test, to test. He does give a reason. So what does it mean to test? There is a king from the House of David, right? He gathers the dispersed of Israel, he keeps the commandments, he does everything he’s supposed to, he has lineage all the way back to King David—like in my family, as I told you. Soon I’ll go out and reveal myself, but for now I’m just telling you. In his family it’s Shlomo Deutsch, Shlomo Deutsch; every time my grandmother would say it comes from King David, she said it comes from King David. Okay. In any case, what am I supposed to do with such a person? Fine, so he’s the Messiah, I join him—what’s the test I’m supposed to pass or fail? It’s a bit strange, this thing. I mean, what, I’m supposed not to join him after all? Why not? He’s from the House of David, he keeps the commandments, he does what he’s supposed to. So what’s the problem? He is presumed to be the Messiah; even Maimonides himself calls him presumed to be the Messiah even before he succeeded. If he succeeds, then it turns out indeed that he is the Messiah; and if not, then not. But he is presumed to be the Messiah. So what is this test? What does it mean to test Israel? I don’t know, I don’t understand what Maimonides is writing here. Why? To test Israel whether they are worthy. If they are worthy—if the generation… after all, what does it mean that the generation was not fit? It’s not to test Israel. What? It’s not to test Israel; it’s to redeem Israel, only if they are not worthy it won’t succeed. To test—God tested Abraham with ten tests—and “test” means like a false prophet who is sent to test us. That is, if we believe him then we are sinners, and if not—if we do what we’re supposed to—then we won’t believe him. Why? To test—suppose someone worthy comes, say, and Israel keeps two Sabbaths, as people say, okay. But if such a one comes and Israel does not keep two Sabbaths, then we tested you, and you failed to keep two Sabbaths. The Messiah was the Messiah, the king was worthy, you were not worthy, I tested you and you failed. That’s not the plain meaning of the word “test.” Maybe you’re right, because I don’t have a better interpretation in Maimonides. Not “experiment,” “test.” I think he’s right. To test Israel—I understand the intention. The Holy One, blessed be He, brings you someone who has the potential to be the Messiah, okay, and now it depends only on you. A test meaning whether you repent. Yes. It now depends on you, and if you fail then you did not withstand the test. You did not withstand the test. But in fact, passing the test here is not joining the Messiah but keeping the commandments, just keeping the commandments. In fact, we’re supposed to keep commandments and observe the Sabbaths even without the Messiah coming. I mean, it’s not… Yes, but now it only sharpens the point. You have a Messiah—here, now you see there’s an opportunity and you don’t take advantage of it. Maybe, maybe, I don’t know. I have no other interpretation. Sounds reasonable. But if we go with the idea that this king succeeds and things work out—notice, you always need to look at it that way, preserving some doubt. A critical perspective. What, yes, you need a critical perspective on him too until he succeeds in this and this and this. Preserve the critical perspective. So in fact you need to wait for success before declaring him the Messiah. He says the opposite. He says “to test.” If he says that he is presumed to be the King Messiah and does not save and accomplish everything—then even when he is presumed, it should still be in the category of doubt. Yes. I’m saying these are two interpretations and both are possible. Yes, but he brings the verse about the wise, as if—okay, so he was alright according to the verse that Maimonides… No, he was alright, but that still doesn’t mean he is the Messiah. Once you already decide that he is the Messiah and you take steps—say potential ones—after all, everyone is potentially like King Hezekiah. Yes, he was worthy to be the Messiah. Not “worthy” in the sense that someone said to Hezekiah, wait, Hezekiah, if you had done this or done that, then yes. I mean—I don’t know, again, none of this is written explicitly in Maimonides, so I don’t know. I don’t have a clear interpretation of Maimonides here. But maybe the meaning is: he is presumed to be the Messiah, but still keep some kind of critical perspective. In other words, as long as you don’t see that the whole thing is really being realized, you can’t actually decide that he is the Messiah—I don’t know—and do all kinds of steps that we’ll see later, meaning unrealistic steps, I already mentioned that, unrealistic steps, or do things that you should do only when you really know that he is the Messiah. But the term “to test”—why is it relevant in this context? To test what? The Holy One, blessed be He, uses it. To test whether you go after him or don’t go after him? The people of Israel, not the King Messiah. The people of Israel, yes. You are forbidden to go after him even though he is presumed to be the Messiah. Until it is clear that he is the Messiah, being presumed to be the Messiah is not enough. He is a potential Messiah, but keep critical thinking; look, maybe it isn’t so simple. In other words, I hear both directions. I have no explanation of my own, so two were proposed and I’m willing to hear both. Take Hezekiah for example. Okay. Someone who held until the day of his death that Hezekiah was fit to be the Messiah. Yes, he was fit—and what did he do with that belief? Did he sell his property and start flying through the air to get to the Land of Israel? He was a believing Jew. No, I mean, what are you saying, that he was mistaken? He was mistaken? After all, the Talmud says he wasn’t mistaken, that Hezekiah was worthy to be King Messiah but the generation was not fit. Fine, so what does that prove? No, what it proves is that there is a possibility that there can be a King Messiah. The King Messiah is not only one person; there may be several potentials throughout the generations who never come to realization. And why don’t they come to realization? Two possibilities. Either the generation was not worthy, or because at the moment that is not God’s plan. He does it to test Israel; it is not His plan. What does it mean to test? To test means: don’t make a messianic movement. That is what is called testing. In other words, a messianic movement means going after someone who seems to you to be the Messiah without really checking to the end that he is the Messiah, but it’s enough for you that he is presumed to be the Messiah. That is what Yossi suggests. I’m not rejecting your interpretation; I’m only saying this too is an interpretation. And didn’t Rabbi Akiva fail that test? Well, this continues, because Maimonides writes in the same halakhah, later in that same halakhah—there is a censored passage, which appears in Frankel. He says: “But human beings have no power to grasp the thoughts of the Creator of the world, for our ways are not His ways, and our thoughts are not His thoughts. And all these things concerning Jesus the Christian and that Ishmaelite who arose after him are only to straighten the way for the King Messiah and to repair the whole world to serve God together, as it is said: ‘For then I will turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one shoulder.’ How so? The whole world has already become filled with talk of the Messiah and talk of the Torah and talk of the commandments, and these matters have spread to distant islands”—here the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), in fact, spread through Islam and Christianity—“and among many uncircumcised-hearted nations. They discuss these matters and the commandments of the Torah. These say: these commandments were true, but they have already been annulled in this time and were not meant for future generations. And these say: there are hidden matters in them and they are not to be understood literally, and this is already some allegory; they didn’t really mean that we should do this. And the Messiah has already come and revealed their hidden meaning. But when the true King Messiah will arise and succeed and be exalted and lifted up, immediately all of them will return and know that their fathers inherited falsehood, and that their prophets and fathers led them astray.” In the continuation of the same halakhah, Maimonides links Islam and Christianity to the phenomenon of false messianism as well. He is basically saying that this too is in fact the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, just as he said above—it is the work of the Holy One, blessed be He. It is not some evil inclination of some person. You might have thought that this is a sinful person with some evil inclination, and he generates this problematic movement. Maimonides writes: no, this is the work of the Holy One, blessed be He. Above he writes that this is in order to test us, according to one of the two interpretations you proposed. And here he speaks about Jesus and Muhammad, and he is basically saying that they too are really the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to pave the way for the King Messiah. What does that mean? They spread the Torah and the idea that there are commandments and that there is God, and the fact is that this really spread all over the world—something the Jews did not succeed in doing by themselves except through Jesus and Muhammad. And then he says: true, they distorted it and in the end said that it’s actually not relevant, or that it’s an allegory, or that it’s not for future generations, or all kinds of things like that. But they prepared the ground in such a way that when the true Messiah comes and everyone understands that this is really the true thing, it will fall on ripe soil. That is, they will understand that in fact their fathers inherited falsehood and they will join this process. Now, what is this? This is a continuation of the previous description. If it is a continuation of the previous description, then what we have here is some act of God’s own hands—God causes this in order to achieve certain aims that He wants to achieve through Jesus and Muhammad. How does that connect to what we saw above in that same halakhah, with that king from the House of David who in the end did not succeed or was killed or something like that? There too it comes to achieve something—that is the point. If it comes to achieve something, then it is somewhat similar to what you said: it comes to achieve our repentance. It didn’t work, fine, but it is some kind of test that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself generates in order to advance this process. In this case it did not work. With Jesus and Muhammad it is a longer-term preparation so that it will work, and there is a longer-term goal that it will work in the future. Maybe that somewhat supports the interpretation you proposed earlier. I don’t know. In any case, here already in this halakhah Maimonides is touching on the issue of false messianism, or at least brushing up against it. I don’t know if the first one is called a false messiah or not, because he is presumed to be the Messiah and in the end did not succeed for one reason or another. According to Yossi’s interpretation, that is a false messiah; according to your interpretation, it is not a false messiah—on the contrary, we were not worthy. Yes, an unrealized messiah exactly, a potential messiah. Jesus and Muhammad are indeed false prophets, false messiahs, but still with some positive purpose. In other words, this is not just some evil inclination and that’s all. Regarding a false prophet, for example, there’s some room for hesitation. I don’t recall at the moment a statement by Maimonides—maybe there is one, I don’t remember—whether the Holy One, blessed be He, also sets them up, the false prophets, in order to test us. Or not. Maybe a false prophet is an initiative of the person himself, who sins and has an evil inclination, and presents himself as a false prophet. True, it is a test for us, but it is not necessarily the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He. I don’t know; one would have to look if Maimonides has some statement regarding a false prophet. Okay, in any case, what Maimonides speaks about at the beginning of the halakhah is a king from the House of David who does not deviate from Torah and commandments. On the contrary, he strengthens the Written Torah and the Oral Torah and fights the wars of God and things of that sort. These are not the classic false messiahs. The classic false messiahs, as we’ll see later, are people who deviated somewhat from the path, to some degree or another—I’ll sketch the possibilities in a moment—but still deviated from the path. Here Maimonides describes someone who is completely fine in terms of his conduct. On the contrary, he even has some presumption of being the Messiah. So what about someone who is simply a false messiah? Maimonides does not address that phenomenon—someone who is completely a false messiah and really goes in a different direction. Really, I mean, it is obvious from his words that there is nothing to discuss there. That is, he is speaking here about someone who strengthens the repair of the Torah and fights the wars of God and is from the House of David; in other words, he fulfills all the conditions. And even he—fine, then the question is which of the two interpretations we adopt here. But someone who doesn’t even do that—then clearly that is false messianism; there’s nothing to discuss. But it doesn’t appear here except for Jesus and Muhammad. Alright, now this basically brings us to the question: what exactly is false messianism? It seems to me one can propose three possibilities, with the third also breaking down further, in order to characterize this phenomenon of false messianism. The first possibility is Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion: a messiah, by definition, is a false messiah. A messiah who arrives, a messiah who acts, is a false messiah. In other words, the messiah must always remain some kind of idea that is supposed to motivate us, but not something concrete. But as we said, that does not sound like a reasonable interpretation in the traditional context. A less extreme but still fairly far-reaching approach says that anyone who takes practical steps to bring the Messiah is some kind of false messianism, or a messianic movement. Again, “false messianism” is too strong a term. False messianism means that there is some messiah presenting himself and it isn’t true. At the moment I’m talking about a messianic movement in quotation marks. That too, over the generations, took on some kind of negative connotation—“messianic movement”—and I’m trying to characterize what gives rise to that negative connotation. So I’m saying it could be that taking practical actions to bring the Messiah is itself called a messianic movement. And that is something we are not supposed to do, and of course that brings us back to the Or HaChaim and Rashi there, the question whether bringing the Messiah is a task imposed on us, or whether we are supposed to wait for him but are not supposed to be involved in the process. Again, that is an extreme position; I’m presenting it as a possibility because I don’t know. I don’t know how to decide which definition is correct, so I’m presenting the different possibilities and later we’ll try to see what can be extracted from history or from historical attitudes. So again, activities to bring the Messiah can mean political activities to bring the Messiah—that is, concrete activities, not prayers. Or even, I don’t know, acts of practical Kabbalah—there were things like that too; even some Hasidic rebbes did such things. At one period there was some union of, I think, four rebbes who tried to do some activities to bring the Messiah. So it could also be mystical activities of one sort or another; that too might perhaps fall under the heading of a messianic movement. That is the second possibility. The third possibility is that it is permissible to act—obviously the Messiah is supposed to come, and the messiah is not only an idea. It is also permissible to take action, or maybe even desirable to take action, to bring him. The question is: what kind of actions? And here the criterion for a messianic movement lies in the fact that the actions, or the mode of conduct we choose in order to bring the Messiah, are the problem. Now what can be the problem according to this third model? One of three possibilities. First possibility: actions involving a halakhic prohibition. That is, you are actually taking actions that are against Jewish law. It’s known about the Rabbi of Brisk; it’s well known that he infers from the Talmud in Eruvin 43. The Talmud says there that the Messiah will not come on the Sabbath or a Jewish holiday because he needs to come from above, and there are boundaries, there are boundaries above ten handbreadths, and he will not come by violating the boundary prohibition. So the Rabbi of Brisk asks: what boundary prohibition? All the people of Israel are waiting for redemption, with all our suffering and all these things—fine, so a boundary prohibition? There’s a question whether the boundary prohibition is Torah-level or rabbinic, but the Rabbi of Brisk infers from here that the Messiah will not come even if there is only a rabbinic prohibition involved. In short, bringing the Messiah cannot involve any prohibition whatsoever. Even though at the purely halakhic level one might have said that it is possible to violate prohibitions in order to save the Jewish people. I mean, there is no greater emergency than this; with a rabbinic prohibition in pressing circumstances, or where there is a great need, or great financial loss, one allows transgressing a rabbinic prohibition in certain cases. That’s the point. There seems to be some principled point here: redemption cannot come in a way that contradicts Jewish law. And it’s not just a question of contradiction—it’s not just a question of a halakhic problem or of priorities. Yes, I mean, it’s not—but I’m saying this is not a question of halakhic override, whether a rabbinic prohibition is overridden or not. That’s not the point. It’s probably some conception that says messianism cannot exist—that is, the repair of the world cannot come by a corrupted route. In other words, messianism has to… It’s like, for example, with the miracle of Hanukkah: if impurity is permitted in communal service, then what was the point of seeking specifically a pure cruse of oil? What? Again? In the Hanukkah miracle, if impurity is permitted in communal service, then what was the point of seeking specifically a pure cruse of oil? So people say that as if the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted redemption to come in a completely clean way, not merely after the fact. Okay, excellent. But then there are all kinds of definitions. Are there laws of the Messiah, something orderly that says what his functions are, how we can identify him, what actions he needs to do? So that is the halakhah I cited earlier from Maimonides. But that’s a general treatment. Yes, true. He repairs the Torah, fights the wars of God, keeps, unites Israel to observe Torah and commandments. That is only the presumption. Yes, it is the presumption that he is the Messiah, and then you need to wait and see, because according to your view, Yossi, you have to wait and see that it actually comes to realization. Okay? With today’s factionalism I don’t really see how that… Fine, that’s another discussion. Look, there has always been factionalism. Don’t say that the former days were better than these; it’s already written in the verse. Huh? And even then he didn’t come. I understand—he also didn’t come then, when there was factionalism. Yes. No, I’m saying, fine, there’s always factionalism. If you wait until there is no factionalism and only then the Messiah will come, I don’t see how he’s going to arrive. Fine. So the first possibility is that we are dealing with halakhic prohibitions. And halakhic prohibitions can of course reach an extreme level, like Shabbetai Tzvi—we’ll soon see the examples—where he actually converted to Islam; he leaves the Jewish and halakhic framework altogether. But I’m saying even without that, there can be local halakhic prohibitions. Desecrating the Sabbath, or I don’t know, all kinds of more local things. That is the first possibility within the first shade of the third option—yes—that the mode of conduct determines the “messianic movement” in quotation marks. Yes, I am now distinguishing between a messianic movement without quotation marks—which according to this possibility is legitimate; one may act, and perhaps it is even desirable to act, to advance the coming of the Messiah—and a messianic movement in quotation marks, which is what we usually see as something negative. Okay, so that’s the first possibility: why is it negative? Because it involves transgressions, halakhic prohibitions. A second possibility is that we are dealing with actions not accepted within tradition. That is, some kind of departure from accepted modes of conduct. These are not outright prohibitions, but something… it is out of line. For example, there are often references to the Zionist movement, where Religious Zionism is accused of cooperating with heretics and secular people, and it is impossible that redemption should come through such people. There were such claims; even Rabbi Shach wrote this somewhere. There are all kinds of such claims. Now, some want to say that this too is a halakhic prohibition, but I don’t see what the halakhic prohibition is here. I cooperate with heretics and secular people, but I myself can still keep all of Jewish law. So it is not necessarily bound up with halakhic prohibitions. There is some claim here that it “doesn’t fit”—that is, it can’t be. So you have not transgressed a halakhic prohibition, but it cannot be that redemption would come in such a way. In other words, this is not the reasonable route, in terms of our tradition, for bringing the Messiah. Or, I don’t know, “that they should not force the end” and “that they should not rebel against the nations.” Is there a prohibition against forcing the end or rebelling against the nations? The three oaths, yes, in Ketubot—the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel with three oaths. There is no such prohibition. So what is there? What has been received by us is that this is not how one acts. One does not rebel against the nations, one does not force the end—a kind of “it doesn’t fit,” as I said. Tradition says this is not the accepted mode of conduct. So this—is the oaths themselves not a prohibition? What? Aren’t the oaths themselves a prohibition? From what prohibition? Like an oath—what is an oath? Isn’t the Torah “not in heaven”? When were we adjured to this? Were we adjured at Sinai? Where does this come from? It is not counted by Maimonides, not counted by any enumerator of the commandments. There is some statement like this: the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel with three oaths. What exactly does that mean? People treated it as a prohibition—the Satmar people and so on. The Satmar people treat a lot of things in a lot of ways; that doesn’t prove anything. Vayoel Moshe is a ridiculous book. I mean, he is a Torah scholar—he knows a lot, Rabbi Yoelish—but the book is ridiculous. Its tendentiousness is comical. He takes every midrash and builds these little inferences from it and… and there is no source for it. You can see that the book is not serious. So yes, he of course also takes the three oaths; that is perhaps the least innovative part. That interpretation of the three oaths one can still hear out. All the rest is nonsense—I mean not everything, but much of the rest is nonsense. So I’m saying: but still, with the three oaths you still see some kind of guidance there, even if it is not a prohibition or a sharp criterion. But still, it appears in the Talmud. So there is some sort of guidance here. What is that guidance? That guidance says, look, there is some normal way that redemption is supposed to come. This is not about prohibitions; it’s not about what is forbidden and permitted. But when something does not proceed by the accepted route—yes, Yisrael Saba—then it probably is not supposed to be, and so that is a messianic movement. One could define it that way too. Again, these are all suggestions; I’m proposing suggestions. A third possibility, which may be connected to the second, is actions that have no realistic justification. And that is of course perhaps a subcategory of the previous one. “That they should not rebel against the nations” and so on—that is not only because it is not what has been accepted by us, but because it simply is not… that is, it is not rational to act that way. It is not rational to act that way. Now you tell me, what do you mean? The Messiah is here—don’t worry, the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us, so we’ll go out to world war against the United States. Alright? They have nuclear weapons and all the capabilities, and of course we have no realistic chance whatsoever, but the Messiah is with us and the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us, and we’ll go to war against the United States and Russia together if you want. What? Did you see the film “The Mouse That Roared”? No. Okay. In any case, yes—who raises dust like me and you? The mouse and the elephant go together, and the mouse says to the elephant, look how much dust we’re making. In other words, I’m saying that once you take actions that are unrealistic, you are being forceful in a way that is not justified on the realistic plane. And again, without violating anything, without prohibitions or anything else—that itself is perceived as a messianic movement. There are clear sources that view it that way. That is, the Haredi attitude toward the Zionist movement was in part like that. Part of the diagnosis of why they saw it as some kind of false messianism was that they rebelled against the nations and in fact took forceful steps that were not really justified in terms of realpolitik, and therefore this was a messianic movement. That was basically the claim. This is the possibility that you are taking excessive risks, exaggerated risks. You sell all your property in order to go up to the Land of Israel when in fact it isn’t sensible; you sell it at a low price or in such a way that if it does not happen, you are in trouble. Right? All kinds of things of that sort. It is not necessarily rebellion against the nations; that is just one example. Yes? There were periods like that. Some messianic movement spread, and the public sold off its property—and as you know, when you sell property in that kind of way, you get a low price, of course, right? There is high supply and low demand, so you get a low price. But what do you care? The Messiah is coming; you don’t need money anymore, you don’t need anything. That is an unrealistic action, even though it is not provoking the nations and not entering risks in the security sense, but it is entering economic risks, irrational considerations. So in that sense too—by the way, I think in the book Knesset HaGedolah, we’ll see this later—he describes how his father sold the brick oven from which he earned his living because he understood that they were going to the Land of Israel—it was Almelayim, I think, or something like that. In other words, there are very widespread phenomena, and there are documented cases of people who did this. And by the way, there are stories—I think I mentioned this—I heard of three such stories. The documented story that I found online was about Rabbi Yaakov Gesundhayt of Warsaw. A rumor like this spread there too, and people started selling their property and packing up their belongings, and then he stood in the synagogue and swore that the Messiah would not come that year, or not within some particular period. That is pretty far-reaching, because he basically meant that he was decreeing on the Holy One, blessed be He, not to bring the Messiah, even if He had planned to, because he understood that there was some problem here. In other words, he saw some kind of unrealistic conduct because of the rumor about the Messiah, and he said: this cannot be, this cannot be the Messiah, and therefore he swore that the Messiah would not come. There are several such stories. I heard such a story also about Rabbi Shmuel Salant in Jerusalem, where there was—and I told you about Shulamit Lapid there, with Like a Broken Vessel, her book—where she describes the mass conversion to Christianity that took place in Jerusalem. That was historical, in the old yishuv in Jerusalem. Among the major Haredi figures of the old yishuv there were many people who converted there because of such a messianic crisis—there was a rumor that the Messiah was coming, there was great suffering of course, and they waited for him, and in the end he did not come. So Rabbi Shmuel Salant there swore that the Messiah would not come in the coming year. Someone once told me such a story also about Rabbi Aharon Kotler; I don’t know, I didn’t find documentation for that. And there was someone else, I no longer remember—I also heard a story, maybe about the Tzemach Tzedek, I think there was also such a story. The Tzemach Tzedek is from Chabad, which makes it even more interesting. But there too, I think there was some story like that. I’m saying, what is common to all these stories is that those rabbis decided this was not the Messiah because the conduct was unrealistic. In other words, the diagnosis of the messianic movement is this third diagnosis I mentioned here: that you are taking some action that is irrational in ordinary terms—ordinary economic considerations. Even if the Messiah were really true, would it still not have been alright to take these actions? Apparently not. That is, one is supposed to do things in some kind of way. I mean, you know, we won’t know until—as Maimonides writes—we won’t know until we are there. But yes, their assessment was that one does not do things this way. In other words, this is not how it works. There they thought there was such a high chance that the Messiah would come that they swore—even if it were true, there was a chance the Messiah would come—nothing changed in the reason for telling them that the Messiah would not come; they wanted to prevent that situation. But if it really is the Messiah, then how can you swear that the Messiah will not come? What if it really is the Messiah? Can you swear about something you’re not sure of? Better that than having them sell all their property. So they were certain—that is, they knowingly took a false oath in order to keep people from getting into trouble. It’s simply a characterization of a false messiah: the way of doing things. I assume that this is part of the issue. Once you take unrealistic steps when it is not yet clear that this is the Messiah—yes. What does that have to do with the Messiah? No, no—I’m talking about a messianic movement, not a false messiah. There is a difference, and that’s why I made the distinction earlier between a false messiah and a messianic movement. A false messiah means that someone comes and declares himself the Messiah even though he is deceiving us; he is not the Messiah at all, he’s just fooling us. A messianic movement is not that. A messianic movement could perhaps even be centered around a messiah who has real potential to be the Messiah, and still there are modes of conduct by which we are forbidden to conduct ourselves that way. In other words, as long as it is not clear to you that this is already the real thing, you are to act sensibly. No—once there is a messianic movement, then they swore that this messiah would not come to realization. Because a messianic movement is a mode of conduct that will not allow the Messiah to come, because you are behaving improperly. A messianic movement is an incorrect messianic mode of conduct. Now that doesn’t mean that the messiah in question was necessarily a false messiah—I don’t know, not necessarily. But it means only that in the end he was not revealed as the Messiah—that is, it did not come to realization. Like Hezekiah, who was a true messiah, but it did not come to realization. Why? Because this mode of conduct will not allow it. Suppose the true Messiah comes, and now the Jewish people violate a rabbinic prohibition, boundaries or something like that. Then what the Rabbi of Brisk was basically saying there is that even if this is the true Messiah, in the end it will not happen. Because it is impossible that redemption should come in such a way. Did the Rabbi of Brisk say that about the Messiah? The rabbi is now simply projecting it. I understand. I’m only saying, and that’s why I’m shifting the issue from the question of a false messiah to the question of a messianic movement. Is it certain that this really applies? No, nothing is certain; I’m proposing possibilities here. But I’m saying that I am trying to diagnose, in light of attitudes that existed in the past, how people saw this thing called a messianic movement. So they viewed a messianic movement as involving irrational actions. What does that mean? Does it mean that the messiah himself is also really a false messiah or not? I don’t know—maybe yes, maybe no. As you say, it could very well be that the messiah there perhaps really did have the potential to be genuine, but they said: this is a messianic movement, it cannot happen, it will not be realized. Now you suggested a possibility that maybe one cannot even infer that from what they did. Maybe it could even have been realized, but they preferred to swear falsely provided the people of Israel would not get into trouble in case it did not happen. Maybe. I don’t know. The question is whether one says to a person, “Sin so that your fellow may benefit”—a small sin versus a great sin. There is Tosafot in Shabbat 4b there, about removing bread from the oven. There is room to hesitate whether one says to a person, “Sin so that your fellow may benefit.” In effect, you swear falsely, which is a prohibition, in order to save people. It may be that they did not swear in a way that violated the prohibition of an oath on folio 20. The claim is that there really was an oath there. An oath—because that is what persuaded people. “I swear”—I stand behind it, this isn’t stories. At least that is the claim. I don’t know, I don’t have firm evidence on this. Okay. All these things, of course, have implications for the question of the Zionist movement or Religious Zionism. Yes, the question what the criterion is for a messianic movement will project onto the question how we judge the events within which we are living. As for activity itself to bring the Messiah—there certainly is that here. That is, whoever sees such a thing as a messianic movement, then Religious Zionism is a messianic movement in every respect. That is option B. But I’m saying that that is one possibility—who said that’s the definition? Option C—and I also said earlier that a messianic movement is not necessarily a prohibition, so the entire discussion here is somewhat amorphous. The third possibility is that the mode of conduct is problematic. Then one needs to understand: if we are talking about transgressions, there are those who want to claim that this too exists here. Even the most extreme criterion exists here, and Zionism and Religious Zionism are a messianic movement. Why? Because, for example—and look, this is not entirely baseless—when you establish a state here and by the power of that state’s rule you enforce, I don’t know, Sabbath desecration, immodest activities, recognition of Christianity, a legal system that does not operate according to Torah, that is, the prohibition of gentile courts, which obligates the whole public to use it—it is hard to reject out of hand the claim that there are deviations from Jewish law here. And Religious Zionism cooperates with this. It would not want this to happen, fine, but in practice it is part of the matter. That is, it cooperates with it. So I’m saying that according to criterion C1—that is, the improper mode of conduct, where “1” means a halakhic prohibition—even that may be present here. In other words, it is not something one can categorically deny. Again, I am speaking cautiously because I personally am not inclined to think that this applies. I’m saying one cannot reject these claims out of hand, but if you ask me, I am not inclined to think this applies. Why? Because regarding the prohibition of gentile courts, for example, in my opinion this falls under the king’s law—yes, not beyond the king’s law. The king’s law, fine, but still almost all the rabbis of Religious Zionism say that going to state court is still gentile courts despite the king’s law. By the way, I personally disagree with them on this matter, because I think there is no alternative; there must be an effective legal system. It is impossible for us to be such purists and not allow recourse to courts when we really have no other way to run society effectively. There has to be some legal system accepted by the public. There’s no help for it—that is the foundation of courts in Syria. The foundation of courts in Syria is precisely this: if you do not have fitting Torah scholars, then appoint whoever you have. Now the problem in our case is that we do have fitting Torah scholars. That is, there are people who could be valid judges and could adjudicate, and they are not appointed. So it is not exactly like courts in Syria, but it seems that the idea of courts in Syria does apply here, since those people fit to judge are not accepted by most of the public. What can you do? It’s very bad, fine, so what shall we do? Have a society with no effective legal system? Or separation of communities, as Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch proposed, yes? Or the world of the Ketav Sofer? In other words, separation of communities—okay, we will run a community that is conducted according to Jewish law and put the proper judges there, and all the others can be a different society. Strategically, we chose not to separate the communities. Once we chose that, we have no other option, and in reality there has to be a legal system here. Alright? There was indeed a major dispute about separation of communities involving the Ketav Sofer and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, and there are responsa of the Netziv on this matter and responsa of major halakhic decisors who oppose this—including Haredim—who oppose it and say that it is not right to separate the communities. There was a dispute around this issue, and once you do not separate the community, it seems that the law of courts in Syria has to be expanded even to a place where there are fitting judges. That is always the discussion; people always distinguish between courts in Syria where there are no fitting judges and a place where there are fitting judges. I’m saying that this distinction is mistaken if you are speaking about a community that does not accept the authority of the fitting judges. So what will you do—not have a legal system? You can’t live that way. A society cannot live without a legal system. That is the foundation of the law of the kingdom, that is the foundation of courts in Syria; there is nothing to be done. Therefore, if you ask me, I do not think it is a halakhic transgression to establish here a legal system foreign to the Torah system. In that sense there is no halakhic transgression here. But I cannot say that someone who claims this is an ignoramus or speaking nonsense. Almost all the halakhic decisors say this. That is, I disagree with them, but you can’t say it’s nonsense. So even this criterion—if we move to the more moderate criterion, actions in a way not accepted within our tradition—here too there is room for hesitation. Because in fact what was done here was some movement that took the Jewish people and brought them into not insignificant risks, coming to an unsown land, yes? With no high probability of success. Sometimes there was also some provocation of the population living here, risks and all kinds of things of that sort. Alright, one can say that this is still within the realm of the reasonable; it’s not some crazy thing, but here too this is a matter of evaluation. Therefore I say: there are those who evaluated it as unreasonable actions. Here I’ve really already moved to the third fact, actually. The second fact is something outside our tradition. And it is outside our tradition to do anything at all regarding the coming of the Messiah. Once one does something, that is already against what we were used to. Therefore I moved straight to section C, that is, the third possibility: unrealistic actions, rebellion against the nations. People spoke about these things, yes? The Haredim speak a lot about the issue that in Zionism there is some type of rebellion against the nations. Against that they say: what do you mean? There was a vote in the UN, and the UN gave a mandate and allowed it. So okay, there is a complicated question here. Today, certainly, we do somewhat rebel against the nations, at least according to the way the nations relate to us today, which sounds like a very unfair attitude. Fine. But still, that is what the nations say. So if you need to bow your head and not rebel against the nations, then there are those who claim that you still are rebelling against the nations. Doesn’t a messianic movement have to rely on the fact that in the end some messiah will protect it from those nations? What? I didn’t understand. Doesn’t a messianic movement have to rely on the fact that in the end there will be some messiah or something? A person? Not necessarily right now, but if there is a problem with rebelling against the nations because this is a messianic movement, it is only because we think the Messiah will save us from those nations. Fine, that’s what they think. Obviously. Things people do every day. In all this nonsense—I’m not talking about secular Zionism. Secular Zionism is a messianic movement in quotation marks because it is messianism in a national sense, not in a religious sense, like communism; it is a national movement. Fine. But the Religious Zionist movement has an agenda of bringing the Messiah too, that is, bringing redemption. They hitch themselves to this wagon, or climb onto this wagon, with an additional aim—“the donkey of the Messiah”—that’s the title of Seffi Rachlevsky’s book. They climb onto the wagon of secular Zionism, but their goal is not just national sovereignty and that’s it; there is also some idea of bringing the Messiah. Therefore today, for example, in the debate around compromises with our neighbors—territorial compromises, diplomatic compromises, security compromises—there are often statements saying there is no need to be afraid: “What concern have you with the hidden things of the Merciful One?” You do what you are supposed to do and the Holy One, blessed be He, will help. What are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to compromise? No, you are supposed to bring the Messiah, you are supposed to bring redemption, you are supposed to conquer the Land of Israel. Therefore you should not be troubled by such things. So these are indeed statements that combine into our considerations the promise that someday the Messiah will come—do we have that? What do you mean, a promise? Yes, they are sure that in the end the Messiah will come. Yes, certainly. All the prophetic signs, the signs given by prophecy—“And you, mountains of Israel, shall give forth your branches,” all these things—that in the end we came here, the signs are being fulfilled, and in the end the Messiah will be here. The end of this process is Messiah. “The beginning of the flowering of our redemption.” Yes, certainly—that is part of the considerations. I’ll say more, and we’ll get to that later. Beyond the claim that it will happen in the end—which itself is another question, that is, a metaphysical speculation that it will happen in the end, about which one can say maybe that is calculating the end, I don’t know if it is a messianic movement—there are also statements that take this into account in practical deliberations. That is, the question whether I am prepared to take security risks because I know this is what is incumbent on me, and the Messiah is here and the Holy One, blessed be He, is with me and everything will be fine. Or whether I need to make the calculation. This is often a dispute, say, between Haredi thinking and Religious Zionist thinking. Haredi thinking says you are forbidden to make calculations like that; you have to make realistic calculations. We arose—fine, we established the state, we are already here, Zionism succeeded, everything is fine. And still, how do we conduct ourselves? Do we conduct ourselves with the idea that the Holy One, blessed be He, will help, or do we conduct ourselves in a way somewhat opposite to that agenda? Because the Haredim say: do not rely on the Holy One, blessed be He, to help. You need to do things that are realistic. And very often people accuse the conduct of the state, and certainly of Religious Zionism, of the religious and non-religious right, of being a forceful, unrealistic conduct. And why does the religious right do this? Because the religious right relies on the Holy One, blessed be He, to help it because it needs to bring the Messiah. In public conduct, the Haredim don’t rely on the Holy One, blessed be He, and Religious Zionism does? Exactly. I’m saying—that’s why I said there is some absurd reverse-twist here, but it’s not exactly a reverse-twist, because they really do say that you need to make your own effort; even on the private plane they do not really rely on the Holy One, blessed be He. They only always say “with God’s help,” but they go to the best doctor and pay him as much as they can. In other words, even on the private plane they do not rely on Him. And the agenda behind that is that you need to make your best effort in the best possible way, using realistic medical or security considerations, depending on the context—both on the private plane and on the public plane. And together with that, pray and trust that the Holy One, blessed be He, will help. But do not factor that into your calculations. You are forbidden to factor it in. For example, someone who stays home and does not go to the doctor—this does not fit the accepted Haredi approach, though I have known such people. But it does not fit the accepted Haredi approach. There is a notion of effort—that is, you have to do everything you can to make this succeed. Help the Holy One, blessed be He, as I mentioned the other evening about our electronics lecturer. We were terribly afraid of the electronics exam. Not that it was a hard course, but it was one of those disorganized courses—there were no orderly techniques for solving the problems. It was very troubling, especially to me; I don’t like things that are not systematic. So we were terribly afraid of the exam, and he said to us, “Look,” and he told us about this Persian fellow who talks to the Holy One, blessed be He—forgive me if someone here belongs to that group; people just tell these stories about Persians. I don’t think it has any real connection to the traits of that group. Anyway, he comes to God with complaints about why he never wins the lottery. And God says: because in order to win the lottery you have to buy a ticket. In other words, our lecturer said to us, “Friends, alright, I’ll help you, as God, but you have to buy a ticket”—meaning, you have to study. So in the Haredi conception I’m describing now, what that means is: you need to buy a ticket. That is, do the work as one does it, with sensible realpolitik and economic considerations. In the end the Holy One, blessed be He, will help and it will happen, but that does not exempt you from responsibility for realistic considerations. I don’t think you can find something like that in the Haredi world; on the contrary. Very often people accuse the Haredim of being too realistic. The slogans are all heavenly—the Holy One, blessed be He, will help and everything is from Him and not by our own strength and all that. But in practice they are completely “by our own strength.” Everything depends on us; they leave the Holy One, blessed be He, nothing. In other words, everything is done through entirely down-to-earth effort. I think this very much characterizes Haredi conduct. So I don’t think there is a dissonance between the private plane and the public plane. They are consistent on both planes. What about livelihood? Also with livelihood, in certain senses and within certain limits. There indeed it is an exceptional area, where they go and become kollel scholars and so on, but even so they send their Knesset members to do all the necessary efforts and do not leave it to the Holy One, blessed be He, to provide for the kollel scholars. The groom says “God will help,” and the father-in-law says “Does he think I’m God?” Like the story about Mushka and the nobleman—I think I told it once—where the nobleman calls Mushka and says: “You, Mushka, say that the Holy One, blessed be He, helps you all the time. Let’s see. I’m sending you to the forest, and we’ll see if your God helps you.” Fine. Poor Mushka goes to the forest; he has no idea where his help will come from for several weeks, and however long. Where will he get food? He doesn’t know how to hunt and all those gentile things—that’s no work for Jews. So he has no idea what will happen there. The nobleman calls his servant and says, “Listen, leave him a basket with breakfast; he’ll think the Holy One, blessed be He, is taking care of him, and when he comes back I’ll explain to him who really took care of him.” After all, he liked Mushka, so he didn’t want him to starve. So alright, every morning he leaves him a little basket of food. Mushka returns joyful and happy-hearted to the nobleman—you can imagine the end of the story. The nobleman says to him: “Well, Mushka, did your God help you?” He says, “You won’t believe it, your honor the nobleman—every morning there was a basket of food. Unbelievable! I couldn’t believe it.” He calls the servant and says, “Tell him who really helped him.” So the servant tells the story. And then of course Mushka says, “Yes, that is how the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to help me—through you.” In the end, it has to happen in a realistic way. Anyway, that’s the story here, of course. After all, they make the effort in the most forceful and sometimes ugliest human ways in order to ensure that kollel scholars can make a living. You are taking a risk when you send many people not to earn a living and do not teach them things that prepare them for work and so on, but you make very, very strong efforts to help them in this matter. And then you ask the person, “Wait, why are you doing this? The Holy One, blessed be He, will help—what’s the problem?” He says, “Right, this is how He helps.” And that is the story of Mushka and the nobleman—that is exactly the same thing. In the end, the success of those political efforts is perceived there as the way in which the Holy One, blessed be He, helps us. That is how they understand it, and whoever stands on the other side of the barricade gets a bit irritated, and it is exactly the same story as the nobleman and Mushka. It is the same, because when we tell the story of the nobleman and Mushka, we all identify with Mushka. Because Mushka—the nobleman is an idiot. The nobleman did not understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, used him to help Mushka. In this case, we are the nobleman. “We,” meaning the general non-Haredi public, let’s say. We are the nobleman, and suddenly Mushka is not exactly so appealing to us. But that is exactly the same claim. That is Mushka’s claim. Fine. In any case, for our purposes, as I say, applying these criteria of a messianic movement to our own time is not so simple. And if so, one should not be too surprised that throughout history there were various messianic movements around which there was great ambiguity. And many of the great leaders of Israel—actual halakhic decisors and the most prominent rabbis of those generations in history—Rabbi Akiva, for example—were taken in, went after these movements. Today we know that this was being led astray. They went after these movements and agreed with them, because the diagnoses are very far from simple. I say this all the time with an eye toward the present, because someone living within this reality is perfectly certain that it is nonsense—what, me, a messianic movement? Me? Obviously not. Now what? That was true then as well. And in the end, retrospectively—that is, after history has said what it had to say—it becomes clear to us that we were living inside an error. So one cannot reject out of hand the possibility that with us too it is like that—that we think this is not a messianic movement in the negative sense, that it is a messianic movement in the positive sense, without quotation marks, but not a messianic movement in the negative sense. But how do you know? It can be disproved. And I mentioned before what Rabbi Kalner said—I heard it, I didn’t read it, but I heard that he said that if the state is destroyed, he will take off his kippah. One of the rabbis of the pre-military academy in Eli and its satellite institutions. In a certain sense, I actually appreciate his honesty, because he is genuinely willing to put things to an empirical test—not only to declare them and then come up with excuses if it doesn’t work out. Although I assume, as I already said, that if it happens he too will come up with excuses, but at least he states things sharply. That is, he is not willing to take into account the possibility that history may speak retrospectively and it may not be realized. Okay. It reminds me a bit—perhaps this is also connected to our discussion—of the famous story about Rabbi Herzog and the Rabbi of Brisk. During the War of Independence there were rumors that the Rabbi of Brisk was about to flee Jerusalem. The situation in Jerusalem there was not simple. So Rabbi Herzog feared that this would demoralize the public, so he went to persuade the Rabbi of Brisk not to go, not to flee. And he said to him: “It has been received by us from our rabbis that a third Temple is not destroyed.” He found someone to say that to. So Rabbi Herzog says to the Rabbi of Brisk: “It has been received by us from our rabbis that a third Temple is not destroyed.” Not destroyed. By the way, I don’t know where this came from; it’s not clear to me what exactly the source is for this tradition. Some attribute it to the Hatam Sofer or the Vilna Gaon. I don’t know exactly. No, I don’t know at all where the source of this tradition is. Rabbi Sabato writes about it in one of his books. What? Rabbi Sabato, in one of his books, writes that he looked for the source and didn’t find it. Yes. Afterwards I saw an article about it in Tzohar—I think Ari Shvat wrote some article about the source of this tradition—but it is a tradition that was invented at some stage; it has no real source. In any event, Rabbi Herzog says this to the Rabbi of Brisk, and the Rabbi of Brisk says to him: “And I received from my father that when people shoot, one has to run away.” Which I think is a wonderful story because it shows exactly the two modes of thought. Rabbi Herzog has a messianic conception. He is basically saying: in terms of realpolitik, I agree with you that this is dangerous and really a matter of saving life, and one ought to flee. But “it has been received by us from our rabbis that a third Temple is not destroyed,” and the consideration of redemption, the metaphysical consideration, plays a role in his practical decision-making. In that sense there is an element here of a messianic movement, because a messianic movement essentially mixes metaphysics—metaphysical considerations—into its practical decisions. And the Rabbi of Brisk is basically saying: I don’t know. Maybe this is Messiah, maybe it isn’t Messiah, but when people shoot, one has to run away. One has to act realistically. And that is basically what he says. I don’t think the disagreement here is about whether the Messiah will really come in the end or not. That is a different discussion. The question is: even if in the end this movement will bring the Messiah, how should one conduct oneself on the way there? Can I take non-realistic considerations into account because the Messiah will come and everything will be fine, or not? Fine, Messiah will come, Messiah will come—it’s like the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams, as Nachmanides discusses. Why did Joseph not inform his father that he was still alive? Nachmanides says that Joseph wanted to ensure that the dreams would be fulfilled. That’s one of the explanations—he has two or three answers there—but one answer is that he wanted to ensure the dreams’ fulfillment. And everyone is astonished at this Nachmanides: what concern have you with the hidden things of the Merciful One? Why do you need to make sure the dreams sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, are fulfilled? You should do what you need to do. If honoring parents requires informing your father that you are alive, then tell your father and do not leave him to live in sorrow. As for the dreams, the Holy One, blessed be He, will have to take care of them; if they need to be fulfilled, they will be fulfilled and He will see to it. You are not supposed to take metaphysical considerations into account in your conduct—that is what lies behind these things. You need to conduct yourself as Jewish law, or ethics, or realpolitik—the considerations that are supposed to guide you—you need to act according to those. And not mix metaphysics into the matter, even if those considerations are correct. In other words, not because they are not correct, but because you are not supposed to take them into account when you make decisions. When you make decisions, you have to make them the way decisions are made—according to reason, according to Jewish law, according to ethics—and not mix metaphysics into the issue. So I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself, but I’m trying to show that the characterizations of a messianic movement are not so distant from certain characteristics one can also see in Religious Zionist thinking today. Again, I’m speaking cautiously because these are certain characteristics, not at the most extreme level, and in any case a messianic movement is not a prohibition. So I’m speaking cautiously, but I still say that one cannot determine categorically that there is none of this here and that it is just demagoguery. There is a book by Hamburger. Yes, you know Hamburger? He’s a Jew from Bnei Brak—I know him—a very interesting Jew, one of those yekkes. Two Hamburger brothers established the minyan in the Maayanei Hayeshua hospital. There is a yekke minyan there, which is even more extreme than Mekor Haim, I think, because they reconstructed from tapes and all kinds of traditions the melodies and all the customs. They wrote a book on Ashkenazic customs; Hamburger wrote a two-volume book on Ashkenazic customs. Crazy people—I don’t know why all those customs are interesting. Once a custom has faded away, then it’s no longer interesting. After all, the whole idea of a custom is that because it exists, you need to preserve it. What is the point of reconstructing ancient customs? I just cannot understand this obsession. Once it’s faded away, it’s faded away; good riddance. Why do I need to reconstruct it? Never mind. In any event, they are crazy about this and made recordings and studied it, and then they became the prayer leaders there, because they wanted only the exact melody. You can’t just go up there casually; only according to the regulations, exactly what they did in Frankfurt am Main in Germany—that is what has to be done there. I prayed there a few times; it is a fascinating and hilariously funny place. Worse than Mekor Haim. On weekdays too? I think there is a minyan there all the time. I was there on the Sabbath, but I think it is an active synagogue. In any case, this Hamburger, in the typical yekke way—I also spoke with him about tekhelet; I think I told this once. He researched tekhelet—he’s a sort of scholarly yekke. There are such people. There is that type of yekke that researches things, including Ashkenazic customs. And he’s smart too, able to get to relevant sources and analyze them—he’s a historian with real abilities. And then he also researched the issue of tekhelet. I called him, after I had reached the conclusion that at least because of doubt one should wear tekhelet; we still haven’t escaped the doubt. So people told me, “Talk to Hamburger, because he checked it with all the leading rabbis, he checked it thoroughly.” So I called him, and he said, “It’s an invention of the mizrachnikim.” I said to him, “It’s an invention of the mizrachnikim? What do you answer to the arguments? There are arguments.” And he said, “Mizrachnikim, that’s all, it’s an invention of the mizrachnikim.” There the agenda clearly took him over. But he did write a book called False Messiahs and Their Opponents, the most comprehensive book I know on the phenomenon of false messianism. But of course the whole book is tendentious, meant to show that Herzl is a false messiah and Zionism is a messianic movement, false messianism—it is all directed there. But on the way there, he went through a great many false messiahs and tried to show their characteristics and so on. He is the only one I know who really did any systematic work on this topic of false messianism. Now he did it in a very tendentious way, and you can see that, but still, he did much of the work. In that sense, I think it is a foundational book in this field, even though the last chapter deals with Herzl. That is, that is obviously the goal of the whole book. But for our purposes, one can see there that in light of the characteristics of messianic movements throughout history, it really is not far-fetched to find such characteristics in the Zionist movement as well. That is, it is not far-fetched. One also has to beware of the opposite agenda. That is, someone in the “yes-Zionist” camp will immediately dismiss everything written there as tendentious nonsense. It is tendentious, but not nonsense. This is a discussion that has to be conducted. It is not simple. Okay, so now I’ll begin a bit—I’ve already given the introductions, and basically also the conclusions along with the introductions, more or less—but I’ll describe some messianism from history and attitudes toward it, because that is the only basis we can use to characterize this phenomenon. The first phenomenon is Christianity. I don’t know whether it was the first false messiah, but it was the first prominent and most prominent false messiah. It was part of the Gnostic sects at the beginning in the first centuries of the Common Era. I’m not going to describe the whole development of Christianity here; I’m not expert enough for that. I wrote down for myself a few points. At least in its beginnings, Christianity adopted—and to this day does—the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), at least as the Old Testament. And regarding Jesus himself, there is debate among scholars, but quite a few scholars, including later Jewish authorities who wrote about this, and medieval and later authorities who wrote about the matter, said that Jesus was a Pharisee. That is, he was part of halakhic Judaism in every respect, against the Sadducees. In other words, he was fully committed to Jewish law, and it is not at all clear that he saw himself as the Messiah. Somehow this developed later retrospectively—his disciples, or I don’t know, the disciples of his disciples, somehow in the end built some kind of myth of messianism around him. Apparently there were already some things in his conduct that hinted in that direction, but it is not entirely clear what of that was a myth created later and what was really there in real time. I think I once told what our little chirpy American friend Eliza said—she has lots of jokes about Jews and Christians and so on. I think I told this once: some Jew comes to church; the priest was his friend. So he came to church to hear the priest’s little sermon, his Sunday talk. Fine, so he’s sitting there, and the priest sees the Jew and starts in forcefully, saying, “I ask all Jews to leave. I can’t—this is intended only for Christians.” The Jew remains seated, says nothing. The priest says again, “I strongly ask all Jews to leave. I am speaking only to Christians.” Nothing. The third time he asks, and the Jew gets up, sees he has no choice, takes the statue of Jesus and says, “Friend, they don’t want us here.” To a large extent, that reflects something real. Jesus in his time was apparently just an ordinary observant Jew. In the end he became some symbol of evil or messianism or transgression. For example, I’ll read to you from Magen VaHerev by Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, one of the sages of Italy in the 16th–17th century. He analyzes Christianity historically and ideologically at considerable length. He says there, describing the sects in the Land of Israel that existed in that period: “Thus it is found that Jesus admitted not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah, insofar as it was accepted in his opinion.” He already says there were deviations, but still he had Written Torah, Oral Torah. Again, all this is not necessarily connected to actual history, but this is how rabbis understood the history of Christianity, and that is what matters. It doesn’t matter what really happened; what matters is how we analyze phenomena. “And that sustained him for a while.” Therefore indeed the sages themselves did not know how to formulate a position about Jesus for some time. The sages themselves related to him—not necessarily as the Messiah, but as a legitimate Jew. It’s just not clear to what extent he was even a messiah at all, but they did not see him as a problematic deviation. “For were it not so, if he had preached changing even a minor point of the Torah, no one would have listened to him, and all would have pursued him and been his adversaries.” Here is the indication of C1 that I mentioned earlier. Once the messiah changes Jewish law, goes against the Torah, then this is a messianic movement; then obviously it is a false messiah. But with Jesus this was not the case, at least not clearly. Therefore Jesus always said that he came to uphold the Torah—he now quotes: “I did not come to change the Torah but to fulfill the Torah.” He also said: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one word of the Torah will pass away.” Fine? These are, I think, verses from the New Testament. In other words, Jesus came in order to uphold the Torah, and that too is a characteristic of later messianic movements: the messiah begins, as Maimonides says, in the status of being presumed to be the Messiah. He comes, even brings a pedigree or is somehow from the descendants of the House of David as much as possible, and he brings Israel back to repentance and causes strengthening of Torah. He acts in these ways, so that at the beginning—and this happened more than a few times in history—even great rabbis thought this was at least a legitimate phenomenon and perhaps even that there was really a messiah here. Okay? There are two levels or several levels on which one can relate to this. And so it was throughout history, and also with Jesus. Here Maimonides in Laws of Kings, again in a passage censored in that same chapter 11, which was censored quite a bit, writes: “Even Jesus the Christian, who imagined himself to be the Messiah, and was executed by the religious court…” Maimonides adopts the one place in the Sages where it says that Jesus was executed by a religious court. What the Christians say—that we killed him—that is rooted in the Talmud. And they did well to censor this passage of Maimonides, because according to this Maimonides the Christians are right. We really did kill him, and not only handed him over to Pontius Pilate, and not only ignored him and the Romans killed him—there are all kinds of excuses. In one place in the Talmud, which was also censored of course, and in Maimonides, which was censored, it says that he was executed by a religious court. “Daniel already prophesied about him, as it is said: ‘And the lawless among your people shall raise themselves up to establish the vision, but they shall stumble.’ And is there a greater stumbling block than this? For all the prophets spoke of the Messiah as the redeemer of Israel and their savior, and one who gathers their dispersed and strengthens their commandments. But this one caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be scattered, and them to be humiliated, and the Torah to be changed, and most of the world to be led astray to serve a god other than the Lord.” What is he saying there? These are consequential criteria. He is not asking what Jesus did, but rather what happened as a result of the movement he generated. And therefore this is indeed a very problematic criterion. In Jesus’s own time, it is entirely possible that people could not analyze matters and see all that Maimonides writes here. Maimonides writes it here with retrospective wisdom. We know what Christianity later led to. But in real time you cannot know that. If the criterion is only retrospective—and we spoke about this—then indeed with many messiahs it is very easy to become confused. So here the measure is indeed a consequential one. And in what I said earlier from Magen VaHerev of Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, one really sees that in real time, before the consequences came, it was very difficult to diagnose that this was false messianism. At some stage he began doing wonders—at least that is what his disciples testify. Again, I’m saying I don’t know how historically true that is, but his disciples testify that he did wonders. And once again, this hints toward various future messiahs, who also begin by restoring the Torah and strengthening the Torah, and being from the House of David and so on. Gradually they begin… wonders. Does the Messiah need to perform wonders? No, Maimonides writes explicitly that he does not. But this is a very common phenomenon among false messiahs—not all, but some of them perform various wonders. And that itself, by the way, according to Maimonides, could be an indication of their falseness, because Maimonides does not believe in these wonders. And that is a dispute among the medieval authorities. Not in the context of false messianism, but in the context of idolatry, because Maimonides writes that all sorcery, divination, omens, and all these things are in fact sleight of hand. There is no such thing. The prohibition of “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God,” or “You shall not practice divination or soothsaying,” and all such things, is according to Maimonides a prohibition against being stupid. That is the prohibition according to Maimonides, because in truth all of this is sleight of hand; there is nothing real here. In practice, then, it is not the messiah who is the problem but those who believe in him. So I said, if he does such sleight-of-hand things, that itself is a problem. For example, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He did not say, “I am the Messiah.” I told this story—I’m not sure he didn’t say it. No, no, I didn’t hear him say it. How much did you hear him? I didn’t hear it. Others heard him. It may be they heard him. No, what—the Hasidim? Never mind, but his Hasidim said he did such wonders, did other wonders. In other words, he didn’t come and say “I.” I don’t think that’s precise. There are things that he himself did and himself said, and it is easy to describe them that way. I’m saying, with all the respect due to him, there was some messianic aspect there in him too. I told the story about Efraim—fine, I’ll finish just with this—Efraim Shach, the son of Rabbi Shach, the supervisor in the Ministry of Education, Dr. Efraim Shach, told—I once heard him on the radio—that he had been to the Lubavitcher Rebbe during the dollar distribution. So he stood there in line, and when he reached the Rebbe, the Rebbe asked him, “What is your name?” “Efraim.” “Efraim what?” “Efraim Shach.” So he says, “Are you the son of the rosh yeshiva?” He says, “Yes.” He says, “Then wait a moment, I want to tell you something afterwards.” Fine, he waits on the side. The Rebbe finishes distributing the dollars, and then says to him, “Listen, when you return to Israel, tell your father that it’s not me, it’s my Hasidim.” Just what you said. Fine, okay, I’ll tell him. He returns to Israel and goes in to his father—now I heard him tell this on the radio. He goes in to his father and says, “Father, listen, I was with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe said that it’s not him, it’s his Hasidim.” So his father—Rabbi Shach—says to him, “The next time you’re with him, tell him that next time he should say that to his Hasidim, not to me.” And that is a very true response. Because what does it mean, it’s the Hasidim and not him? Didn’t he know they were doing this? He knew. So at least his passive attitude was, in my opinion, also an active stance. He did not come out against it. On the contrary, after he died it was a crisis. They said he was the Messiah while he was still alive. He did not come out against it. Quite the opposite—his death was the crisis. They said he was the Messiah while he was alive, and after he died the excuses began as to how he could still be the Messiah even though he had already died, and they started saying that he is alive in a meaningful sense. Alright. So Christianity lays the platform for the discussion of all kinds of later movements. It already began with the Christians. For us, Maimonides writes—and I’ll just read his wording and with this we’ll finish—what I said earlier: “And do not imagine that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders and create new things in the world or revive the dead.” Maimonides does not write this for no reason. He writes it because there were messianic movements in which a person claimed the crown of messiahhood by virtue of wonders he performed. Now regardless of whether this really happened or not, Maimonides says: this is not the criterion at all. According to Maimonides’s own view it is also obvious that this cannot be the criterion, because Maimonides holds that one cannot perform such wonders. For Maimonides, in Laws of Idolatry or in the Guide for the Perplexed, when he speaks about idolatry, he says that all wonders and divination and “be wholehearted” and all these things are just nonsense. Against him stand many other medieval authorities who say no—there is a “sitra achra,” an impure side, and it too has powers; there are other powers, and it is forbidden to make use of them, but such powers do exist. That is, one can perform wonders from the impure side, not from the side of holiness. For Maimonides there is no such thing. In other words, it is impossible to perform such wonders, and therefore according to Maimonides it is obvious that it is not only that the Messiah does not need to perform wonders, but if he does perform wonders then he is not the Messiah, because then he is just a transgressor. He violates Torah prohibitions—“You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” But that is according to Maimonides. He is a transgressor in a certain sense; if he says there is something to it, then he is a fraud. No—but he is also a transgressor. “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” Yes, and according to the other medieval authorities, then you could say maybe wonders are not a criterion for the Messiah, but if he performed wonders that still does not disqualify him. I don’t know, because in principle it is possible to perform wonders. Alright.