Dogmatics – Lecture 26

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. We’re dealing with messianism, the issue of messianism, which is really connected to Maimonides’ twelfth principle, the coming of the Messiah. About resurrection of the dead, Maimonides only writes that there is such a thing, he doesn’t add anything, so basically today I want to finish this whole matter of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles. After Passover we’ll continue a bit with this series, but I want to finish the principles today. Next week there won’t be a lecture, because that’s already the search for leaven. Okay, so regarding messianism, we saw that the concept is basically not a halakhic concept. There is no prohibition in principle against being a false messiah, unlike, for example, a false prophet, where there is a prohibition against being a false prophet, and therefore this concept is really more of a sociological concept than a halakhic one. And because of that, it’s hard to define. Meaning, how exactly do we define the concept of a false prophet, and of course there’s always also the question what it means that someone or something is defined as false messianism. Is it just a sociological matter? But the whole story starts from a very clear negative attitude that arises with respect to this concept. In other words, the term messianism, or false messianism, comes with a negative connotation, and that’s obvious. Therefore the definitions or characterizations of the concept of false messianism cannot be detached from the question of what is actually bad about false messianism. If I understand what is bad about false messianism, maybe I’ll be able to diagnose various historical phenomena and see whether this is false messianism or not. Whether it has the problematic characteristics we talked about or not. So I basically suggested a few possibilities for defining false messianism. One possibility is simply to believe that the Messiah will come. Leibowitz and Ben-Gurion—according to them that itself is already false messianism, because the Messiah is not supposed to arrive at all; we’re only supposed to await him, according to their conceptions. Fine, that’s not an accepted approach in our circles, in any case. The second possibility is to await the coming of the Messiah and to engage in activity to bring him. In other words, not just to wait. Waiting is a positive thing. But to carry out activity whose purpose is to bring him—just the fact that I act in order to bring the Messiah makes me messianic. And here indeed one can discuss, as I said before, what exactly is bad about that. In other words, why is acting to bring the Messiah a bad thing? Of course that will depend on what actions I’m taking, but I’m saying on the principled level, the very fact that I’m taking actions in order to bring him is itself hard to see as something bad. And therefore I said there’s a third possibility: that I’m taking actions of a certain type, a problematic type, in order to bring the Messiah, and that is false messianism. I think that really is the more reasonable definition. Now, what kind of problematic quality can there be in these actions? I also suggested several possibilities. One possibility is that these are actions that are against Jewish law. And the claim is that since this is being done in order to bring the Messiah, it’s some sort of transgression for the sake of Heaven, kind of like Steinberg from Safed, who committed adultery with women and explained to them that this would bring the Messiah, or I don’t know exactly, redemption, or something of that sort. So these are actions that constitute a deviation from Jewish law. And again, the excuse is that this is being done to bring the Messiah. A second possibility is that these are unrealistic actions to bring the Messiah. In other words, you’re basically doing things, or taking risks, or willing to pay prices that are not realistic, with the goal of bringing the Messiah, and maybe you even rely on the fact that this is being done to bring the Messiah in order to say: don’t worry, there’s no need to fear these prices. And in this context I brought the story about the Rabbi of Brisk and Rabbi Herzog, where Rabbi Herzog said—there were rumors that the Rabbi of Brisk was about to leave Jerusalem when the War of Independence began. And Rabbi Herzog told him that we have a tradition that the Third Temple will not be destroyed, and the Rabbi of Brisk told him: And I have a tradition that when people are shooting, you run away. And I said that Rabbi Herzog here represents, expresses here, a distinctly messianic position. He’s basically saying: look, true, they’re shooting, it’s dangerous, all true, but we have a tradition that the Third Temple will not be destroyed. Some kind of metaphysical consideration of redemption basically causes you to make calculations that are unrealistic, or contrary to realistic considerations. And again, I said, I also said, I don’t necessarily think that one had to run away as soon as there’s a war; we won’t get far if every time there’s a war we run away. I’m only claiming that the argument for why not to run away is not that the Messiah will come and the Third Temple will not be destroyed, but rather because we have to fight so that we remain alive here and don’t get wiped out. That’s perfectly fine; there are arguments for why not to flee. But the argument Rabbi Herzog chose, at least this argument that is known—I don’t know what the whole conversation there was—but this argument he chose is a messianic argument. In contrast, the Rabbi of Brisk represented a position that was very realistic and practical. He says: forget it, they’re shooting; when people are shooting, I run away. In other words, I don’t know—he didn’t argue with him about whether the Messiah will come or not, whether the Third Temple will or will not be destroyed. It may be that the Third Temple won’t be destroyed, all true, I have no idea where people are inventing all these promises from, but let’s say so. Fine? He didn’t argue with him on that question. In other words, even if the Third Temple won’t be destroyed, if they’re shooting, I run away. Why? Because when people are shooting, you have to conduct yourself according to the situation you’re in, and not according to all kinds of divine, metaphysical, theological promises. Why? Why, actually?

[Speaker C] So that’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] an example of actions that are not realpolitik or not realistic from a security standpoint, actions done in order to bring the Messiah or in reliance on the idea that redemption or the Messiah is coming, and that’s the second type of messianism. What’s the logic? What’s the logic in that?

[Speaker B] I said—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was another shade to it: actions that are not accepted in our tradition. I gave the example of cooperation with secular Jews, maybe, or something like that, where it’s not prohibited, but somehow it seems technically kosher but reeking. Okay? It just doesn’t fit the accepted Torah mode of thought, even though there’s no prohibition here in the formal sense. And the third thing, as I said, is unrealistic actions.

[Speaker B] Now what—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to do now is just briefly go over my daughter’s work—it’s on the website, you can read it there, everything there is laid out at much greater length and in much more detail; here I’m only summarizing. Rabbi, can you hear us? And the claim basically is that when we do a historical survey, because what? You can’t hear me?

[Speaker C] We can hear you, Rabbi.

[Speaker D] The rabbi can’t hear us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, one second. Right, true. Okay, now I can hear. What did you ask?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, why is that actually logical if there’s no moral issue here? Is the whole thing only religious? What am I not getting? Because if there’s no moral consideration here, and we’re focusing only on the religious issue—there’s a metaphysical faith issue in the matter itself—let’s say we believe it’s true, why are we not supposed to act accordingly? Why is that so irrational? It seems very rational that someone who believes this would act that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll leave that for now; I’ll get to it later.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, I also had a question. When the rabbi talks about false messianism, does he mean a person who says about himself that he is the Messiah and is lying, or the idea of false messianism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I think that falsehood in itself is not false messianism. In other words, if I walk around in the street and say I’m the Messiah, that’s not false messianism, that’s just some fool or a liar, whatever. False messianism is a historical phenomenon; it’s not a person saying something or lying. Now, it may be that this historical phenomenon is based on a person who is lying, but the problem here is not the lie he says. The problem here is the phenomenon that occurs as a result of that lie. By the way, I think many false messiahs weren’t liars at all—they genuinely believed they were the Messiah. And still, the movement is a messianic movement. Therefore I don’t think the falsehood here is an essential issue. Obviously if someone who is not the Messiah says he is the Messiah and creates a messianic movement, then he’s a liar, that’s obvious, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the lie is the problem here—that what is wrong with false messianism is that you lied. Yes, people call it false messianism, but not because the problem is the lie, rather as a description of the phenomenon: this is a messianism that is not true, false messianism.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, could Jesus have been one of those?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’m getting to that in a moment. So therefore, since we’re dealing with a phenomenon that is more sociological than halakhic, maybe the best way to examine it is simply to examine the historical phenomena, those that were treated as false messianisms, and try to see what problems people saw in them. And from that maybe we can distill a definition of the concept, or understand an insight—I don’t know if a definition, but a better insight into what this concept of false messianism is. Again, because from sources you can’t learn anything. The sources say nothing, because there are no halakhic determinations here. There are sources in the sense that there are books that people wrote about what they thought of this false messiah or that false messiah. Fine, but those are history books, not books of Jewish law. Therefore one cannot treat them as some kind of authoritative source. But I think that since the whole concept is a sociological one, the way to try to make progress in clarifying it is to examine the social, sociological, historical phenomena that were treated as false messianisms. Okay? And from that we can try to understand this phenomenon, what its nature is and what it even means. So basically there are—when I mentioned earlier the different types of false messianisms, among these historical phenomena there really are examples of the different types. There are false messiahs whose story ended in apostasy, involving prohibitions and so on. That’s the first type. There are false messianisms that are technically kosher but reeking, and there it’s really not entirely clear that people saw it as false messianism. We’ll see an example later. The third type—and I think that usually this is what people really refer to as false messianism, and certainly what today we call messianism in contexts not necessarily within the religious world, but more generally in our society—is unrealistic conduct. Okay? That’s the third type. Now in the historical phenomena I’m about to survey, very briefly, we’ll see the different types. So the first type is Jesus and Christianity. Now there—maybe one more remark before I start the survey—I said that the collapse of the movement does not necessarily indicate that we’re dealing with false messianism. Let’s say I were to declare myself the Messiah, okay? Nothing would happen, but I would declare myself the Messiah, and in the end after my hundred and twenty years it would turn out that apparently I was not the Messiah. Okay? Is that false messianism? No. Just a person who lived in error, or lied, whatever, and that’s it. In other words, being proven wrong does not itself turn messianism into false messianism. Obviously false messianism will also in the end be disproven, because he’s a false messiah, so in the end it’ll become clear that he really wasn’t the Messiah, that’s true. But whether he is a false messiah, or whether the movement is a messianic movement or false messianism—I don’t think you can base that only on its collapse. The fact that the movement failed does not in itself mean this is false messianism. If you took actions that were reasonable actions and genuinely thought that you were the Messiah, or that he was the Messiah, or whoever, and it turned out not to be so, you were mistaken. That’s not false messianism. Not what we call false messianism. Therefore collapse is not the criterion. The criterion is from what I said earlier: prohibitions, unreasonableness, unrealistic behavior, or conduct that is not accepted. Right? Those are the three possibilities I mentioned earlier. So let’s try a bit to see what this is about. So regarding Christianity, of course there are different stages, but already quite early in Christianity—

[Speaker E] Rabbi, sorry to interrupt, but it’s a bit hard to expect from the Messiah that it would be realpolitik, that he would align with realpolitik. Why? Because Messiah is something that somewhat goes beyond… no? Not necessarily.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, I don’t know, but really not necessarily. The Sages say: “The only difference between this world and the days of the Messiah is subjugation to foreign kingdoms.” Yes. And the Messiah, in principle, it seems to me at least—or certainly that’s how one can understand it—that when the Messiah comes, he will do completely realistic things; it will just succeed for him. In other words, take Herzl for example: people really did see him as a messiah. Quite a few did, including rabbis, who saw him as an actual Messiah son of Joseph, some kind of messiah, with various definitions of one sort or another. Now he did things that were completely realistic—he just succeeded. In other words, he generated a movement and it looked like this was really moving toward a return to the Land of Israel and attaining sovereignty, a state, and so on—which of course was much later than him—but people already saw progress in that direction. And the feeling was that yes, maybe there is some redemption or messiah or something like that here, and all of it in a completely realistic way. In other words, he didn’t perform wonders and didn’t do anything involving special risks or things like that. But that’s part of what I’m saying.

[Speaker C] “If you will it, it is no legend”—that too is a statement. A statement.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, “If you will it, it is no legend” is a vision, not an unrealistic action.

[Speaker C] Action—vision is perfectly fine. Unrealistic action means that you take risks. In every belief you take risks. In every belief people take risks.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person who very deeply believes that it is justified to bring a child into the world cannot guarantee him, cannot guarantee himself, that the child will have a good life. And that is not called taking risks. Taking risks means doing things that a reasonable person does not do, only because this is redemption or Messiah. A reasonable person—but what is a reasonable person? A reasonable person who believes very deeply and sees before his mind’s eye the state arising, and therefore it is worth taking risks and acting? Or a person who just came in off the street and has no connection at all to the idea? If you take actions that are based on some kind of theological metaphysics but are not grounded in realistic considerations, that’s called messianism. If you take actions that are actions to realize a vision, that’s perfectly fine. Why is that not messianism?

[Speaker C] Why is the metaphysical invalid? What? Why is the metaphysical invalid if there’s a moral issue here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s not grounded in realistic considerations.

[Speaker C] But metaphysical belief is not realistic?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the belief—but the actions are supposed to be realistic actions. Why?

[Speaker C] Why shouldn’t they stem from it? If you really believe, then generally you act accordingly, if he really believes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then why is he not willing to take realistic actions?

[Speaker C] Why? Why? That assumption isn’t clear to me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That assumption is a sociological assumption, not a halakhic one, so why do you expect me to answer you? I’m trying to characterize the concept of false messianism—a sociological concept. So I’m telling you that sociologically, that’s usually what people called false messianism.

[Speaker C] Yes, I agree with the rabbi, only the rabbi seemingly also agrees with this. The Torah can say: sociologically that’s true, but mistaken. A believing person should behave differently.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s bad about it? I’m not entering at all into the question whether it’s positive or negative. We’ll maybe talk about that later. At this stage I’m trying to characterize the phenomenon. Okay? Afterward we’ll see why it’s negative, if it’s negative. Fine, we’ll discuss it. But first of all we need to characterize the phenomenon—what exactly are we talking about. So I say: I’ll start with Christianity. Regarding Christianity—and again, at the end one might say that its end testified to its beginning. In the end, there was abandonment of faith, of commitment to the commandments. That’s no longer Judaism, right? It’s no longer even within the framework of Judaism. So there, seemingly, it’s easy. But even that is not so simple. Because at the beginning—again, I’m not so expert in the details of early Christianity, I don’t know how well founded this information is—but at the beginning we’re talking about a Jew who was committed to Jewish law, preached some moral messages or something like that, tried to awaken people, probably also had some mystical conceptions, part of the Gnostic currents spreading in that period or a little before or after. I don’t think one can put one’s finger on the actions, at least of the early Jesus, as messianic actions. And here precisely the question comes in whether the end proves the beginning. In other words, whether what happened in the end, the collapse of the messianic movement, is the indication that it was false messianism. And if I said before that it’s not, then here too that’s not necessarily the point. It is true, however, that fairly quickly—and it seems to me this was already during Jesus’ own lifetime, not only among his disciples—the abandonment of Jewish law had already begun. I don’t know exactly what was with him personally, but certainly around him, those who were around him were already people who were not committed to Jewish law. And in that sense this certainly fulfills the condition that some actions were being done here that went against Jewish law.

[Speaker F] Rabbi, but it sounds to me like the rabbi is giving this thing credit only by the test of the result.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But—

[Speaker F] I’m not sure that’s how it should be. I mean, it’s like saying, I don’t know, if Hitler hadn’t succeeded, if the plan hadn’t worked, then he wouldn’t have been a Nazi? He was still that, and he was also charismatic, and he also got people to follow him. I don’t understand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re repeating what I’m saying and putting a question mark at the end? So I didn’t understand the question. I didn’t understand.

[Speaker F] No, because it doesn’t seem to me that it should be measured only by the test of the result.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s exactly what I said—that you don’t judge by the result. I don’t understand.

[Speaker F] Ah, okay, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s my whole claim: that you don’t judge by the result.

[Speaker F] Meaning, even if he hadn’t succeeded, he would still be a false messiah; it doesn’t matter whether he was successful or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. And even if he did succeed, it could still be that he was a false messiah. I don’t know. You have to see what the characteristics are. That’s exactly the point. I said: the collapse, the outcome in the end, is not a sufficient measure. So what is? So I’m saying: there I’m not talking about the final result. The fact that the movement itself called for abandoning the commandments—that’s not that in the end his disciples abandoned everything and that’s what came out of him. That really would be a retrospective result. The end would prove the beginning. And that’s exactly why I rejected it. And I said no—I don’t think one can speak in terms of the end proving the beginning. So you have to check his conduct itself and see what is problematic there. And I’m saying that with Jesus it really isn’t only the end. In other words, his own conduct, the conception that he himself represented, included in part a call to abandon commandments, or some of the commandments. Replacing commandments with morality, and so on. So in that sense I think that with Jesus it’s quite a simple story. Of course, along with the abandonment of commandments—let’s say if someone were to preach to people, “leave religion,” running seminars for becoming secular, is he a false messiah? No, but—

[Speaker D] He doesn’t define himself as the Messiah. Ah!

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In other words, it’s not enough that Jesus said to leave the commandments; rather, he said to leave the commandments because redemption is coming, because I am—

[Speaker D] the Messiah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And this isn’t a seminar for going secular; rather, it’s a messianic claim. Meaning, by virtue of my authority as commander, and on the occasion of the IDF exercise currently taking place, as they say on the radio—meaning, by virtue of my authority as the messiah, I’m telling you that in order to bring redemption, you have to abandon the commandments. That is false messianism. Now what’s the problem with that? The halakhic / of Jewish law problem is that they abandoned the commandments. But false messianism is some kind of problem beyond the halakhic / of Jewish law problem. That itself is perceived as a negative event, a problematic event, by the Sages. Okay? Therefore I’m saying: the fact that in the end they abandoned the commandments is maybe some kind of indication. Not only that it happened in the end, but that Jesus himself called for doing it—that’s an indication. But we still haven’t captured the point, because a seminar for going secular is not false messianism. Rather, there’s something here that involves eschatology, yes, some striving toward some redemption, toward the coming of the messiah, that is bound up with abandoning the commandments. And then it really becomes a phenomenon of false messianism. Abandoning the commandments by itself is not enough. You see that it’s very hard to define these things, but I’m trying anyway. I assume there is such a concept. I see that the Sages throughout the generations viewed it negatively. So from that I’m trying to distill what the characteristics of this thing are. There are no sources and nothing. You can only try to guess, gather the existing references to all kinds of such phenomena and see what comes out. So that’s regarding Christianity. Right? They adopted the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), but without the Oral Torah, without Jewish law, basically. In the end they also persecuted the Jews. But again, that was only at the end. Not only was it only at the end, but to a large extent the Jews also persecuted them. Meaning, the Christians’ persecution of the Jews was a response. Right? We always have this victim mentality—it’s one of the prominent Jewish characteristics. We’re very used to relating to the whole universe as people who persecute us. We just tend to forget a little whom we persecuted when the power was in our hands. Right? Ask the Haredim—ultra-Orthodox, not only Haredim—ultra-Orthodox but usually Haredim—ultra-Orthodox, about their attitude toward the Enlightenment. Right? The Enlightenment is terrible, they persecuted us, they wanted to convert us, they informed to the authorities, and so on. The religious people informed on the maskilim much more than the maskilim informed on the religious people, as far as I know. There were informers there, the Black Office in Kovno and a few other things of that kind—terrible, awful things they did to them. So what’s the wonder that afterward they feel frustrated and react against them? But we have this tendency to forget what we did and accuse whoever persecuted us without remembering that these things have some kind of context. By the way, some time ago—I don’t know how long ago—I wrote on my website that the conduct of the Haredim—ultra-Orthodox among us now, in these years, is suddenly starting to clarify for me the phenomenon of antisemitism throughout the generations. Suddenly I’m beginning to understand that it’s not so far-fetched to hate the Jews. And yes, people were terribly shocked by this and all that—even at the university they already summoned me for clarification over it, over all kinds of things. Freedom of speech exists only within certain limits. In any case, my claim was that the fact that they hated us and persecuted us—that’s all true—but these things also have a context. Now, I’m not saying that in every place it was justified or that it was justified at all, but I am saying that things have a context. And if Jews conduct themselves in the ways Jews conduct themselves here in the State of Israel, I’m in utter astonishment that there still haven’t been pogroms here. Real astonishment. It’s amazing.

[Speaker E] You later corrected that expression. What? You took that expression down afterward because of all the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t even remember anymore what I corrected there, but I completely think that. I’m astonished that there aren’t pogroms here. Amazing. It’s simply unbelievable to me why there aren’t pogroms here. It’s just—it’s inconceivable. Now again, I’m not saying it’s justified. I think that’s what I corrected. I don’t think I removed it; rather, I clarified that I don’t think it’s justified to carry out pogroms, but I very much understand why pogroms happened. I don’t remember exactly, but that’s basically what I’m saying. Forget it, I don’t know what I did there; I really don’t remember anymore. Absolutely. And we have this tendency always to look at those who persecute us and ignore a bit what we did. Right? My uncle tells me with a chuckle—my uncle is Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) in the United States—he tells me a story about someone he apparently knew, I don’t know exactly what. He’s driving in Manhattan in his car. A cop gives him a ticket—I don’t know, maybe he ran a red light, something like that. So he says to him, “You’re giving me a ticket? Okay, let’s see.” He goes around the corner, comes back to the same place, runs the red light again. The cop gives him another ticket. He goes around again, runs the red light again, the cop gives him another ticket. That’s how it went three, four, five times, I don’t know how many. Okay? Fine—and now he doesn’t pay the ticket, he asks for a trial. He comes before the judge and says, “Look, Your Honor, this cop is persecuting me. Nothing like this ever happened. Look—he gave me five tickets in a quarter of an hour. Does that make sense to you? Is that reasonable to you? Obviously he’s persecuting me.” And my uncle was delighted by the cleverness of this Jew. What a sharp and charming Jew. I was horrified. I was practically tearing my hair out. Now, stories like that existed by the millions. Now of course it’s always the question of cause and effect. Once the gentiles hit you, you answer back too; there are two sides to the coin. But there are two sides to the coin. We’re so used to screwing over the gentiles that we kind of forget that the fact that we screw over the gentiles also eventually brings their persecutions back upon us. And no—they’re antisemites, they persecute us, what do they want from our lives? We just forget the background to these things. And again I’m saying: it wasn’t always justified, what they did to us. Many times it wasn’t. But in certain cases it was understandable, even if not justified. Two different things. Okay, back to our subject. Well done, Rabbi, for saying these things.

[Speaker C] I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I was there myself—not you, me. I was there with my uncle, and he enjoyed the whole thing very much. He didn’t just take pride in the quip. Right, he really put one over on the gentile, that Jew. It’s just horrifying, that kind of outlook. Now you’re talking about a country that overall treats Jews very well. The United States doesn’t persecute Jews. There’s antisemitism there, fine, but the state as a state definitely does not persecute Jews. So there really is no justification there for that kind of attitude. Okay, anyway, back to our topic. So therefore I’m saying: true, there were persecutions; Christianity caused us enormous trouble throughout the generations. That is not the criterion for a messianic movement. Okay? Therefore we still need to ask: so what is? So here there is the abandonment of Jewish law.

[Speaker C] More power to you for the previous remarks. I didn’t know the Rabbi had said that about… the antisemitism that’s becoming somewhat clearer in our times, and really, great credit for the courage—I forgot to say that. But regarding the issue of messianism, if suppose there arose some Lithuanian group, Sephardic group, I don’t know, some Hasidic sect or another, it doesn’t matter which, and it said: look, we discovered the truth about Judaism. This is how a Jew should be. Whoever deviates—all the other sects are not Jews. They’re not kosher Jews, and they have departed from Jewish history. And I think if that were to happen, it would come out that messianism is basically the negation of pluralism. Judaism has some tolerance in it—that everyone believes and goes his own way and is decisive about it, but knows that others also have a place. He doesn’t exclude them from the Jewish people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do you feel that the negation of pluralism is connected to messianism?

[Speaker C] No, I’m saying tolerance—or what? No, no, not tolerance. No, no, the Rabbi should try to think: if some Jewish sector that keeps Torah and commandments properly were to say that all the others are not Jews—not that it discovered the one true truth, the right path—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that connected to messianism? I didn’t understand.

[Speaker C] I don’t know, I had the feeling that it would ultimately express itself that way. After all, he discovered the truth, so he discovered the right path. He discovered the truth—and what does that have to do with it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does that have to do with messianism? What? It’s intolerance or whatever, I don’t know what—but why is it connected to messianism? Or arrogance, or whatever. I don’t see it.

[Speaker C] He arrived at the final correct truth, he arrived at… so there’s an element of redemption in that—we discovered the right path, we reached Mount Sinai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That sounds to me like a nice homiletic line. I don’t think it’s connected. I wouldn’t tie that to messianism. And again, the concept isn’t defined; you can define whatever you want. But I wouldn’t connect it to messianism. Messianism is not connected to the question of truth and whether my truth is the only one or not. That’s a question of tolerance, pluralism, things of that sort. I don’t think it’s connected to messianism. So in short, regarding Christianity: Maimonides indeed writes—yes, this is a Jewish law passage that was partially censored in Laws of Kings—when he defines what the messiah is, he says: “Even Jesus the Christian, who imagined that he would be the messiah and was killed by the religious court, Daniel had already prophesied about him, as it says, ‘And the violent among your people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision, but they shall stumble.’ And is there any greater stumbling block than this? For all the prophets spoke of the messiah as redeeming Israel and saving them and gathering their dispersed and strengthening their commandments, whereas this one caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, and their remnant to be scattered and humiliated, and he changed the Torah and caused the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord.” And again, if you’re talking to me about what happened in the end, then at most you can tell me that he really was a false messiah in the sense that he really was not the messiah. Because in fact all kinds of other things happened in the end. That’s not false messianism in the sense we’re talking about. He wasn’t the messiah, fine—but that’s not enough. Meaning, you have to tell me how he behaved, or what his contribution was to what happened at the end, in order to define the thing as false messianism or as a messianic movement in the negative sense. For example, Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, in Magen VaHerev, analyzes Christianity, and he says: it turns out he acknowledged not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah, insofar as that was, in Jesus’s view, accepted tradition. And for some time this stood him in good stead, because otherwise, had he preached changing even a minor matter from the Torah, no one would have listened to him, and all would have been his pursuers and adversaries. Therefore he always said about upholding it: “I have not come to change the Torah but to fulfill the Torah.” Right, that’s a saying of Jesus. And he also said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one word of the Torah shall pass away.” Meaning, Jesus on the face of it behaved in a way—Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh de Modena even claims that he was close to the Pharisees. Meaning, he accepted the Oral Torah and so on, and that’s why they accepted him at the beginning. At some stage he began to undermine some laws, some components of the tradition—this is from Sinai, this isn’t from Sinai. Hand-washing—this even appears in the Gospels, he challenged hand-washing, never mind, all kinds of things like that—and then the attitude toward him began to develop. Fine? But this starts out as some totally intra-Jewish phenomenon with some kind of, I don’t know, certain intellectual hue. But that in itself still doesn’t say anything, and the results don’t say anything either. Meaning, the phenomenon is a very elusive phenomenon, and that’s really the point. More than that—or maybe not more than that, but another point—Maimonides says in Laws of Kings chapter 11: “Do not imagine that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders, or introduce new things into the world, or resurrect the dead… or things of that sort. The matter is not so. For Rabbi Akiva, a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah, was the armor-bearer of King ben Koziva, and he said of him that he was the King Messiah; and he and all the sages of his generation thought that he was the King Messiah until he was killed because of sins. Once he was killed, it became known to them that he was not, and the Sages had asked of him neither sign nor wonder.” How did Rabbi Akiva declare him to be the messiah? He didn’t ask him for signs and wonders. It can’t be that he asked, because if he had asked, Bar Kokhba would not have been able to provide them, because in the end it became clear that he really wasn’t the messiah. So apparently he did not receive signs and wonders, and nevertheless declared him the messiah. Fine? So Maimonides says—and this is the main point—that “this Torah, its statutes and laws, are forever and for all eternity, and nothing may be added to them or taken from them. And anyone who adds or detracts, or gives a forced interpretation to the Torah and takes the commandments out of their plain meaning, is certainly wicked and a heretic.” So the messiah cannot take things out of Jewish law, because if so then he is a false messiah. But he doesn’t have to perform signs and wonders. That’s not—he isn’t required to do things of that kind. Maybe even more than that: there’s more than a hint here in Maimonides, I think, that if he does perform signs and wonders, that is already a sign that he’s a false messiah. By definition, the messiah is not supposed to perform signs and wonders—apropos the question asked earlier about whether the messiah has to behave in realpolitik terms. Maimonides says yes. More than that is implied by Maimonides: that if he doesn’t behave that way, then he is not the messiah; he’s some kind of magician. So he gives two interesting signs here. One of them: if he performs signs and wonders—in other words, not realistic, right? Not realistic even in a milder sense than I said earlier—not taking risks and bringing terrible costs, but doing wonders. The moment he does wonders, that’s already one sign. If he deviates from Jewish law—

[Speaker D] Rabbi, where does Maimonides get all these things from?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are his sources? I didn’t check; I don’t know. “There is no difference between this world and the days of the messiah except subjugation to foreign kingdoms”—maybe that’s a source, I don’t know. But that’s how he—again—

[Speaker D] I’m saying it seems derived from a very clear, very precise definition, as though there’s some source for it. There’s no source at all for these things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying the whole concept is a sociological concept, so there can’t be a source for such a thing. Maimonides simply analyzes—

[Speaker D] the phenomenon as it appears to him. What? So that’s just made up. If there’s no source, then what is it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s how he understands this phenomenon. It’s a sociological phenomenon, but sociology also has meaning. You see an invalid phenomenon and you try to mark it and say that it’s invalid. That doesn’t mean that someone who performs wonders has violated this or that prohibition. Though according to Maimonides, if you perform wonders then you have violated prohibitions—“You shall not practice divination” and “you shall not practice soothsaying,” and all things of that kind. For Maimonides, all of that is by definition false; meaning, there are no real wonders, at least not if they come from the wrong side. But as is well known, there are disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) about that. Okay, in any case, the claim is that even Jesus himself—which is seemingly a straightforward case—even there it’s not so simple. It’s simple because it was disproved in the end; it’s simple because they aren’t Jews at all today; it’s simple because they persecuted us; it’s simple because they abandoned Jewish law. But all those are outcomes. The question is what happened in the days of Jesus himself, in the process itself—that is a completely different question. And for example, how can you identify in real time that this person is a false messiah? After all, the messiah is supposed to come. If I believe the messiah will come, then the messiah is supposed to come. And the messiah says, “Look, I’m the messiah”—that by itself doesn’t make him a false messiah. The true messiah too, when he comes in the end, will say, “I’m the messiah,” right? So you can’t say that everyone who comes and says “I’m the messiah” is a false messiah—unless you’re Leibowitz. Right? But that’s not it. So what is? What is he supposed to do? Are you supposed to stand on the side and wait to see whether he is disproved at the end? We said no: being disproved at the end is not the indication. Something in his own conduct is supposed to mark him for you. Now how can something like that mark him for you? Meaning, how can you know before it is disproved, while we’re still on the way? Seemingly you can’t know. So Maimonides says yes: if he performs wonders, or if he deviates from Jewish law. Those are basically the indications Maimonides gives. The second example is what I brought earlier from Maimonides, what Maimonides brings regarding Bar Kokhba. With Bar Kokhba, again, there are many references. What’s mainly interesting are the rabbinic references. Because the rabbinic references, regardless of whether they’re true in the historical sense, describe what exactly the problem was that the Sages saw in Bar Kokhba. Meaning, why did they see it as false messianism? So of course first of all, because he was disproved in the end—he died in the end—so true. But was there also some invalid phenomenon along the way? False messianism—not only that the messiah turned out to be false, meaning he wasn’t the messiah in the end, but that’s not false messianism as I said. So what was it? What was there along the way? There were the legends about him; there were all kinds of rabbinic descriptions there: he became arrogant, abused the young men of Israel—there they had to uproot cedars, cut off their own hand, there were all kinds of things like that. And again, this really is some kind of forceful conduct, irrational, unreasonable. And this is a different kind of indication—not abandoning Jewish law. With Bar Kokhba there was no abandonment of Jewish law, at least not in the usual senses. But there was a great deal of forcefulness, and of course activity that was not rational, not realpolitik. Right, there’s a book I mentioned, the book by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Vision Not Fantasy. Of course he has our generation in mind, but the book is a historical book about Bar Kokhba, and he argues that what Bar Kokhba had was not a vision, it was a fantasy, and therefore in the end we paid in much blood for Bar Kokhba’s foolish vision. And that is basically an expression—again, Yehoshafat Harkabi was not among the leading halakhic decisors of the generation, but I think he does describe the phenomenon that rabbis too see as a phenomenon of false messianism: some kind of unrealistic conduct, conduct where in the name of your being the messiah and God being with you and your building the Temple and bringing redemption, you go out to war against Rome. With all due respect, you do not wage war against Rome, even if you are the messiah himself. Okay? That’s basically the claim. And the actions—so Bar Kokhba is an example of irrational, unrealistic actions. Now you can bring all kinds of sources for this or that, but broadly speaking, I think that’s what characterizes Bar Kokhba. Maimonides in Laws of Kings brings again that Rabbi Akiva we mentioned earlier. He says: “Rabbi Akiva was a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah, and he was the armor-bearer of King ben Koziva, and he said of him that he was the King Messiah, and he and all the sages of his generation thought that he was King Messiah.” By the way, “he and all the sages of his generation.” On the face of the Talmudic text, it’s brought as a dispute. Rabbi Akiva thought so, but other Sages thought otherwise. Maimonides says no, that is divided up. In Rabbi Akiva’s generation everyone thought like him. In later generations, after it had already been disproved, then they understood that not. And that’s what he says: “the King Messiah who was killed because of sins; once he was killed, it became known to them that he was not, and the Sages had asked of him neither sign nor wonder.” Notice that sentence: “once he was killed, it became known to them that he was not.” Meaning, what is the indication that he is a false messiah? Because he was disproved, he was killed in the end. Because there were no other indications from Maimonides’ standpoint: there was no abandonment of the commandments and he did not perform wonders. So how do you know he’s a false messiah? You know he’s a false messiah only as an outcome. And then from Maimonides’ standpoint this really doesn’t look like a negative phenomenon. On the contrary: Maimonides says that Rabbi Akiva and all the sages of his generation saw Bar Kokhba as the messiah, and that is perfectly fine; he has no criticism of them, because according to what they saw in their own time, that really was the picture. We are wise in hindsight, when we know it was disproved, so he is a false messiah in the factual sense—obviously he was false, he wasn’t the messiah in the end—but that is not false messianism in the sense we are looking for. In contrast, I think that both in the rabbinic descriptions and in the descriptions of many others—not Maimonides—it is quite clear that Bar Kokhba was a false messiah, not only that he was disproved in the end. His mode of conduct itself was false messianism. And what does that basically mean? That he acted unrealistically, forcefully, and therefore they related to him as a false messiah. And indeed, if you read the Talmud straightforwardly—and I think most commentators do, unlike Maimonides—it is not true that Rabbi Akiva and all the sages of his generation saw Bar Kokhba as the messiah. Rabbi Akiva saw him as the messiah; other Sages disagreed with him, did not agree. Why didn’t they agree? Because already in real time they understood there was something problematic here. Rabbi Akiva says: at the moment I don’t see anything. So Maimonides says: why doesn’t he see anything? Because according to Maimonides it’s either signs and wonders—which weren’t there—or abandoning the commandments, which also wasn’t there. So why shouldn’t he be the messiah? But the possibility is that this itself is a dispute among the Tannaim, or a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) if you like: the Sages who disagree with Rabbi Akiva, according to those authorities who really held in real time that they disagreed with him, say: that’s not enough. He didn’t perform wonders, everything’s fine; he didn’t abandon the commandments, excellent. But if he conducts himself in a forceful and unrealistic way, that is still false messianism. And that apparently Maimonides does not accept, and perhaps Rabbi Akiva did not accept either. Okay, so that’s one side. What?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, doesn’t Maimonides’ position, at its deeper level, basically hint in the direction of Leibowitz—that if you say every messiah is always under a question mark, so even if he comes, he does whatever he does, meanwhile everything is fine, and he asks us, “Tell me, do you believe one hundred percent that I’m the messiah?”—“No, we’ll see what happens; if in twenty years something…” You can take that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] two or three steps further and arrive at Leibowitz. Leibowitz isn’t written in Maimonides. If you think it hints at Leibowitz, I can’t say.

[Speaker C] No, not Leibowitz’s point. I’m not trying to bring in Leibowitz now. I’m saying: in Maimonides’ position, it always comes out that the messiah is always with a question mark, subject to there not being some future screw-up. If there’s a screw-up, it will become clear retroactively that the whole story was never right. So what kind of messiah is that? A messiah with a question mark. We don’t believe in God with a question mark, contingent on outcomes. And here they tell you regarding the messiah: contingent on what happens twenty years from now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, there’s a question mark about everything. Nothing is certain. God too—because He really is God. But with regard to the messiah, so what if there’s a question mark? Fine, obviously we don’t know. We’ll see if it materializes. Fine. That doesn’t mean I’m not supposed to join him along the way. And afterward it may become clear that I was mistaken. That still isn’t false messianism.

[Speaker C] No, I’m talking about the relation—not, no, I didn’t say false messianism. But true messianism—Maimonides’ view affects what true messianism is, that there’s no such thing at all. There’s no messianism where you can say to him, “Listen, I accept you.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is such a thing, only you can never be sure that this is it. Fine, so what?

[Speaker C] Never—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Never.

[Speaker C] Even when it happens, you’ll never be sure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. But you don’t need to be sure. You only need to verify that it’s not false messianism. If it’s not false messianism, then you go with him. And now it may be that you’ll be disappointed and in the end it’ll turn out that this wasn’t the true messiah. It isn’t false messianism because he conducted himself properly, but he isn’t the real messiah. So you can join him and you may be wrong—what can you do? Fine. I don’t

[Speaker C] see that as a principled problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, we always…

[Speaker C] I didn’t mean that on the existential level you’ll never have a messiah you’d follow through fire and water, because whenever he asks you, “Do you believe in me all the way?”—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, let’s see what happens. No, you follow him through fire and water even if you don’t believe in him all the way, because that’s what you think—and it may turn out in the end that you were wrong. What can you do? So there’s… there’s room…

[Speaker G] But Maimonides in Laws of Kings does give signs for certainty as opposed to signs of presumption, so maybe that completes the picture. Maimonides in Laws of Kings does give some signs for when it is definitely the messiah and not only a presumptive messiah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. He gathers the dispersed of Israel, he does things, all kinds of things of that sort. Okay, fine.

[Speaker G] Defeats Rome, in short. But those are signs that you can never—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “gathers the dispersed of Israel” mean? How many do you have to gather, and to where, in order for that sign to be considered fulfilled? No, there’s really no sharp definition here. There are indications.

[Speaker G] He says he defeats all the nations, I don’t know, maybe he already defeated—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “All the nations” is already more… indications, you know. What does “defeated” mean? If he loses a battle but wins the war, is that called defeated or not defeated? You never really get out of doubt. Meaning, you have these or those indications; you can estimate, you can assess, but you’ll never know with certainty. Okay? Now there is actually some rabbinic source, by the way, that says Bar Kokhba said he removed God from the picture. He said, “Rely on us; we don’t need God.” I’m not sure I brought it here. I have it somewhere. I don’t remember, I can’t find it at the moment, but somewhere in the Talmud there appears some aggadic story like that, where he says to God that he took God off the stage—meaning, leave it to me, I’ll manage. No, I can’t find it right now. Okay. Now for example, when Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch writes about Bar Kokhba, look at his wording—it’s interesting. “It was in the period of Emperor Hadrian, at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt. That revolt was revealed as a grievously disastrous error, and it was necessary to warn Israel for all generations not to repeat this attempt, for not by their own power and the strength of their hand will they restore the crown of Israel to its former glory, but rather they are obligated to entrust their national future to the guidance of God alone. And thus a lesson was learned for all generations: that we should remove our minds from the help of flesh and blood and cast our burden upon God alone, who did good for us… and will reign and guard,” and so on. How do you understand what he’s saying—like what I said earlier? In my opinion, absolutely not. He’s arguing—not that Bar Kokhba was a false messiah because he behaved unrealistically. There isn’t a word here about unrealistic behavior. It might be perfectly realistic. He just wanted to bring redemption by his own power. But it may have been realistic. At least Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch doesn’t mention that it wasn’t realistic. And he argues that what we’re supposed to do is leave it to God to bring redemption. If we think that by our own power we will bring redemption, that itself is false messianism. Not because you do unrealistic actions. You see that Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on this issue goes in the second direction of the three that I mentioned? The second direction says: the moment you take practical action to bring the messiah, that is false messianism. Those actions do not have to involve a transgression or an unrealistic action or any of the possibilities I presented later. No. The very fact that you act with your own hands to bring the messiah—that is false messianism. You are supposed to await him, but he is supposed to come down from heaven. I brought the dispute between Rashi and the Arukh LaNer on this issue. He is supposed to come from heaven. God is supposed to send him. The very fact that you take actions to bring him—that is false messianism. Quite a radical statement, yes? Think what that means, for example, about Zionism—at least Religious Zionism. According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Religious Zionism is false messianism. Unequivocally.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, how would you define the Chabad movement in that framework?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I hope I’ll comment on that later. But notice that according to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Religious Zionism really says—it doesn’t tend to take unrealistic actions. Sometimes that too can happen, but ordinarily it doesn’t take unrealistic actions. But it definitely sees itself as a partner in actions that will bring the messiah by our own hands and by our own power. That’s the whole Religious Zionist agenda. You need to understand that according to how I defined it earlier, that is not false messianism. As long as you act realistically, everything is fine. According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, that is completely false messianism—when you think that by your own power you will bring redemption. Fine. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch thinks that; that’s his right. Nobody needs to get too excited about it. I’m only saying: notice the significance of that conception. And that conception basically says: you are not supposed to act at all in order to bring the messiah—not even realistic actions. Nothing. That of course raises the question of what happens with various rebbes who did mystical actions to bring the messiah, or kabbalists who did mystical actions to bring the messiah. Is that too included under messianism? My impression is that Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch would not have called that messianism. I don’t know whether he would have liked it or not. He probably means forcefulness. Meaning, there is something about forcefulness—but not excessive forcefulness, not because it’s unrealistic, but the very fact that you conduct yourself forcefully, that you place trust in power, yes, “my power and the strength of my hand have gotten me this wealth”—it is known that in Derashot HaRan he explains “my power and the strength of my hand have gotten me this wealth” as an exclamation point. That is how one should think. Because what do you mean? The Torah itself says that one should not say “my power and the strength of my hand have gotten me this wealth,” but rather that God gives you the power—He gives us the power to accomplish. But the one who accomplishes is us, not God. It’s only our ability to accomplish that we received from Him. But in the end, I have to act with my own power. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says no—or at least regarding redemption. You are not supposed to act with your own power in order to bring redemption. It is supposed to come from God. The moment you take action, even if it is realistic, that is false messianism.

[Speaker D] It could also be that part of Religious Zionism, in leadership positions and within the war cabinet, makes decisions on the basis that maybe we are in the days of redemption?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be. I said there are certain cases or certain people within Religious Zionism who are sometimes also prepared to take unrealistic actions out of the sense that God is with us and we will succeed in the end and there’s no need to get worked up over the gentiles.

[Speaker D] Yes, but realism is supposedly even more of a novelty, because okay, he’s acting within ordinary bounds, within realistic bounds, but even that is apparently problematic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—no, I’m not saying it’s problematic. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch says it’s problematic. I’m not sure I agree with him; I don’t think I agree with him. But I’m trying to show you the range of possibilities.

[Speaker D] No, but there is something there, because even though… the action is realistic, it’s based on something where we don’t know if it will happen or when it will happen. By the way, interestingly, just today I spoke with someone who deals a lot in real estate, and he told me that since October seventh, Jerusalem real-estate prices have risen a lot because many people are buying because they think we are in the days of the messiah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, this is a phenomenon—I spoke about it one of the previous times—that people sort of… it’s a real-world action, but in this sense it’s not realistic. “Not realistic actions” means that you’re basically buying a house that, say, economically speaking, it wasn’t right to buy for the sake of the discussion. If you’re just buying a house there and not somewhere else because that’s where the Messiah will come—well, good for you. But if you do that, you sell your house and buy a house there and now wait in a tent until the Messiah comes—okay, that’s an unrealistic action. In my view too, that’s false messianism. But Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch isn’t talking about that; Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch is talking about realistic actions. Not only that: even that action is not an action to bring the Messiah, but an action that assumes the Messiah will come and therefore I act that way. He’s talking about actions meant to bring the Messiah, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Okay? So this really is, overall, quite a radical approach. When you read it simply, it looks similar to what I said, but it’s not similar. It’s a different conception. Okay, there are all kinds of… I won’t now go into that whole survey, there are Alroy and Lemlein and all kinds of people like that who also did very unrealistic things. He behaved like a king—with horses and retinues and things like that. He was even recognized by non-Jewish kings, Alroy and so on. In the end it turned out to be false, and again the question is why he was a false messiah beyond the fact that it collapsed in the end, where apparently we’re dealing with a phenomenon of unrealistic conduct. So that’s regarding Lemlein. There are David Reuveni and Shlomo Molkho. There too, Reuveni is like Alroy, but Shlomo Molkho for example, who was Reuveni’s student and basically believed in him until the end of his life—ultimately there are quite a few people in history who see him too as a false messiah. In the end he was ordered by the king to convert, and he sanctified God’s name—he refused to convert and was burned, Shlomo Molkho. And therefore many later authorities see him as a holy martyr. And others see him as a false messiah because he was partnered with Reuveni. And in the end he took part in his, I would say, royal-style organization, which is a bit—or even more than a bit—unrealistic. But after all he did not deviate from Jewish law, he himself did nothing, he did nothing really unrealistic, but yes, royal customs and organizing an army to conquer the Holy Land and so on. There was here—you see that here the sages are already hesitating. Rabbi Yosef Karo himself sees Shlomo Molkho as a holy martyr, the author of the Shulchan Arukh, yes? And other later authorities see him as a false messiah because he attached himself to Alroy. Fine, so those are two more examples. And he was a convert, by the way, Shlomo Molkho—this is Diego, from the royal court. Then of course there’s Shabbetai Tzvi, whom in a survey like this you can’t ignore. With Shabbetai Tzvi there really were many features: first of all, lots of mysticism, a very characteristic feature of various messianic movements—reliance on mysticism. Reliance on mysticism is important in this context because it can also explain actions that are forbidden. Well, mysticism—we have to do it even though it’s forbidden by Jewish law because it brings the Messiah, that’s the Steinberg story. Or unrealistic actions, and there too I say: okay, I see in the cards, in letter-skipping in the Zohar, that there’s no problem, we’ll win this war, and therefore it’s possible to do an unrealistic action. So mysticism often serves the false messiah in carrying out unrealistic actions or even justifying transgressions. But mysticism in itself has no false messianism in it. Someone who believes in mysticism believes in mysticism—that’s completely legitimate. You can agree with him or not agree with him, but there’s nothing sinful in that, so long as, again, it isn’t used to justify transgressions or unrealistic actions. So mysticism is one feature. Shabbetai Tzvi, of course, converted to Islam in the end, and his students too, everything. At first he brought everyone to repentance and he was really the Messiah, the Messiah, and quite a few of the greatest later authorities followed him. There was—I think—the Taz perhaps, or some major figures really followed him, believed in him with complete faith, it was clear to them that he was the Messiah. And in the end that whole story blew up. It blew up, and it blew up already in Shabbetai Tzvi’s own lifetime, not only with his students or later generations. But on the other hand, at the beginning of the process, many very important people identified with him, many of the Jewish people, and his rabbinic leadership too identified with him and thought he was the Messiah and went with him. So again, it’s not entirely only in retrospect, because the consequences didn’t happen after Shabbetai Tzvi but in his own lifetime. But it is retrospective in the sense that the beginning of the process was probably completely realistic. He really looked like the Messiah; later on he slipped. Again, that shows us the difficulty in diagnosing this matter. In short, what actually comes out of all this, if I adopt at least these approaches, is that at the very least it’s clear that if you call for abandoning Jewish law, there’s nothing to discuss. If you do unrealistic actions, apparently everyone also agrees that it’s wrong to act that way. If you simply do actions—Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch claims that even that is false messianism. It seems to me that that goes a bit too far. Meaning, I don’t think that everyone who does actions to bring the Messiah is automatically engaging in false messianism. And that’s it. From here on, I think these really are things that are hard to call false messianism. So it seems to me that we can come away with some kind of picture that is more or less agreed upon, and there are gray areas where one can argue. On unrealistic actions, for example, we saw that even about that there is a dispute. Rabbi Akiva and Maimonides—or Rabbi Akiva according to Maimonides, and maybe all his colleagues too according to Maimonides—say there’s no problem with doing unrealistic actions, so long as you don’t deviate from Jewish law, because the Messiah will apparently get the job done and he’ll win even though it’s unrealistic. Rabbi Akiva’s colleagues, or the medieval authorities who disagree with Maimonides, disagree with him. They say no: if you do an unrealistic action, then no—even though you haven’t committed a transgression. If you commit transgressions then there’s nothing to discuss, but therefore I think we can still come away with a certain picture. Now I want nevertheless to still get to the more current implications regarding Zionism and Religious Zionism in general. Zionism as such is very hard to regard as a messianic movement. So very often they do attach to it the title of a messianic movement because they expect some kind of redemption in a secular sense, meaning to bring the Jewish people to a better state. But that’s a borrowed sense. When we talk about false messianism there has to be some theological, metaphysical dimension here. It’s not enough that you act to realize a vision. Acting to realize a vision is not false messianism. Even if you act to realize a vision in an unrealistic way—that’s stupidity. False messianism is acting to realize a vision in an unrealistic way when you rely on the fact that you are the Messiah or that the Holy One, blessed be He, will help you, on theological and metaphysical grounds, and by doing so you allow yourself to act unrealistically, and certainly if you violate Jewish law. That, I think, is the more correct definition of false messianism. Therefore this brings me from Zionism in general to Religious Zionism, because in Religious Zionism it already starts getting closer to this. In Religious Zionism they basically perform actions whose declared purpose is to advance redemption, to bring the Messiah—that’s unequivocal. Now I’m saying: according to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, that itself is already false messianism. I’m not inclined to think so. Again—why not inclined to think so? Not just because of words; in my eyes that’s not negative. I said: the definition, whether it is false messianism or not, can’t be separated from the question whether it’s negative or not. And in what way is it negative?

[Speaker F] Rabbi, I’m not sure all of Religious Zionism is messianic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you define as messianic?

[Speaker D] I’m talking about that now. Fine, so I’m saying it could be that there is Religious Zionism that basically says that Zionism in itself is a commandment, and the commandment of settling the land and all those things—not connected to the Messiah at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not the mainstream of Religious Zionism. Maybe there are also such people. Never mind names—I’m talking about the view that says we join the Zionist move because it brings redemption. That’s the Religious Zionist mainstream. So according to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, that view is false messianism. I’m not inclined to think so, because overall it sounds to me like a legitimate statement. And it may even be that in the end the Messiah really will come and in the end it won’t even be disproved but will succeed. According to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, even if it succeeds in the end, I’m not sure he would accept it—although in his opinion it probably also won’t succeed, because he thinks we know that redemption is supposed to come from above. So it probably also won’t succeed, but the point is not success or failure, but the use of force, “my power and the might of my hand.” It’s like, like, like what Nachmanides writes about Joseph, yes, that he didn’t send a messenger to his father to tell him he was alive, in order to fulfill the dreams that had come to him. So everyone wonders about this Nachmanides—what is your role, to fulfill the dreams you dreamed? If you have an obligation of honoring your father, to inform your father that you’re alive, send a messenger to your father and tell him you’re alive. The dreams won’t come true? Leave it to the Holy One, blessed be He, to fulfill the dreams He sends you. It’s not your job to fulfill the dreams. In that sense I think here too—it’s the same thing, that’s basically the claim. Now what I do want to sharpen is really another point, which in my view also has an element of false messianism. Again, false messianism is too strong a phrase, but I think there’s a whiff of false messianism here. And the claim is basically this: the argument between Religious Zionism and anti-Religious-Zionism, anti-Zionist Haredi Judaism, usually—or at least the ideological vanguard at the extremes—is basically arguing over the question of which demon stands behind the process. Does Religious Zionism say that what stands behind the process is the Holy One, blessed be He, with His tendency to bring the Messiah and the redemption and so on and so forth? Rabbi Yoelish of Satmar, the author of Vayoel Moshe, sees in it the sitra achra, yes—some demon from the other side, the “other side.” Basically the argument between Religious Zionism and anti-Zionist Haredi Judaism is an argument over which demon stands behind the process. But I want to claim that the moment you formulate a position regarding historical events, ideological movements, social movements of one kind or another, according to the demon standing behind them—that itself is problematic. I claim that one should not relate at all to the character of the demon standing behind the process. And this in two senses: first, you don’t know who that demon is, or whether there is such a demon, and so on. How do you know? What, do you have some peek behind the scenes to know what’s going on there? What the Holy One, blessed be He, is cooking up, or what the sitra achra is cooking up? It’s just old wives’ tales. That’s one side. And I’m making a more far-reaching claim: even if there is a demon there, and it may be negative and it may be positive, it really doesn’t matter. You’re not supposed to take that into account when forming a position regarding a process. Your position regarding a process should be formed on the basis of two types of considerations—I also spoke about this in the previous lecture: one consideration is Jewish law and its values, and the second consideration is realpolitik. That’s all. Meaning, obviously if you come to the Land of Israel to settle the Land of Israel because there is a commandment to settle the Land of Israel, you are not a messianic Jew, so long as you do it in a realistic way. The fact that you have goals that are commandments—that is not messianism. We are supposed to fulfill the commandments. The commandments were given to us so that we would fulfill them, okay? But where I’m not talking about commandments, I’m talking about metaphysical, theological considerations, like bringing the Messiah—there is no commandment to bring the Messiah, no one claims there is such a commandment, okay? So the claim is that since, on the metaphysical level, the move is going toward redemption, I join it—or it goes in another direction or is driven by another demon, so I oppose it. The common denominator of both disputants here is that both judge events by the metaphysics standing behind them. And I claim: first, you can’t know the metaphysics standing behind them; it’s all made up. Second, even if there were some prophet who told me what the correct metaphysics or the correct theology was, I still should not take that into account when forming a position regarding the Zionist process. If the Zionist process is criminal or unworthy, I don’t join it even if it will bring the Messiah. And if it is a positive process that I want to be part of, or perhaps even should be part of—just out of interest, whatever, that doesn’t matter right now—then the fact that in the end the sitra achra is rolling it along is of no interest to me whatsoever. I’m not supposed to consider that when forming a position regarding this process. Meaning, my claim is that the very reliance on metaphysics and theology when forming a position regarding real events in our world—that itself smells like some kind of false messianism. And again I say: I’m cautious. In my view we are supposed to relate to things according to what we see, to judge them according to Jewish law, according to values, morality, whatever it may be, and according to realpolitik—like any non-Jew would do, with the addition of Jewish law. That’s basically what we are supposed to do. And not because there is no metaphysics, and not because the processes are not driven from above or are driven—I don’t know—but because even if they are, that still should not be my consideration. I need to judge things as they are, as I see them with my own eyes, and not according to the layers standing behind them. Why? That’s the claim. Meaning, the claim is that this is not supposed to be your consideration, just like with Joseph. You are to make your decisions according to what appears to you before your eyes—that’s your role. There is a division of labor. Leave bringing redemption to the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s basically the claim. Okay? So again, bringing redemption in the metaphysical sense—if you want to settle the land, establish a state here, build the Temple, everything is fine; there is a commandment of settling the land, there is a commandment of building the Temple, everything is fine. But bringing redemption as an eschatological, theological process and so on—as a consideration in the question whether I’m for the process or against it, or as the motivation for why I’m doing it—that, in my opinion, should not be there. Now part of the issue of course is that this will also lead to problems, because the diagnoses of which demon stands behind the processes are problematic diagnoses. Everyone is terribly sure of himself, but they’re all talking nonsense, both sides. None of them understands anything. Everyone speaks very decisively, but none of them can really know what stands behind the processes. So first of all, truly, it can’t be known. But perhaps because it truly can’t be known, one can broaden it and say: this kind of consideration is irrelevant. You’re not supposed to resort to it. And now this is already regardless of whether it’s true or not. Rather, you’re not—I’ll maybe give an example, I see I already need to finish, I’ll just give an example of something similar, a similar idea that I also wrote about in—I think there was a column about it, and if not there probably still will be. I wrote there that I discussed the attitude of Jewish law toward dreams. There are contradictory passages in tractate Nedarim and in Sanhedrin. I’m abbreviating. According to Maimonides’ position, it turns out that even where there are very good indications that the dream is true, Jewish law does not take it into account. Let’s say I found money, and I dreamed at night that this money belonged to my father and was hidden in some place; in the dream they told me it’s there in your yard next to that tree, dig there, it’s there. And I know there was money of my father’s and I’m looking for it and I don’t know where it is. And in the dream it was revealed to me that it’s there. I dug and indeed found it. So it seems that this dream probably really did come from above; there are indications that this dream is a true dream. But in the dream it says that it is second-tithe money, or money belonging to so-and-so. Am I obligated to give it to so-and-so? Or am I obligated to take the second-tithe money to Jerusalem? Maimonides says no. Why? Not because of concern that the dream is incorrect. My claim is that it’s because dreams, even if they are correct, are not supposed to take part in halakhic consideration. This is a metaphysical plane, a different plane. Our halakhic decisions are made according to the realistic plane. And therefore it’s not because dreams are not true. It may be that the reason for the verse is the concern that I will interpret dreams incorrectly. And in dreams too—just as grain cannot exist without chaff, so a dream cannot exist without idle things. So there are also concerns about dream interpretation, but I think that may be the reason behind the rule. Bottom line: you’re not supposed to relate to dreams within the framework of halakhic considerations. And there is halakhic evidence for this, that’s what I’m saying here. Because if it weren’t so, if it were only a concern about idle elements, then I should at least act according to the laws of doubt. Maybe the dream is true, maybe it’s not true—why don’t we act here according to the laws of doubt? My claim is that it’s not because of doubt whether the dream is true or not, but because dreams are not supposed to take part in halakhic decisions. It’s not the right plane. I argued that the same is true of a litigant’s own admission, by the way. A litigant’s own admission is ineffective where it harms others—not because you’re not believed when it harms others, but because a litigant’s own admission, even if you are believed like a hundred witnesses, applies only regarding yourself. Because a litigant’s own admission is subjective evidence. And therefore it can be applied only to my own subjective world. In the objective halakhic world, a litigant’s own admission has no standing. And that is akin to the status of dreams. I’m abbreviating here, but you can see it in the article, in the article on Parashat Miketz in Midah Tovah. But in practice, what I really want to say is that forming a position regarding current events should be conducted through the prism of Jewish law, values, morality, and so on. It’s some kind of statement of division of labor between us and the Holy One, blessed be He—not in the sense that it’s untrue, but there needs to be some division of labor: you, as a human being, are supposed to conduct yourself realistically. That’s the claim. And here I say: since I don’t think that almost the entire Jewish world is a messianic movement—yes, both the Zionists and the anti-Zionists—that’s a very far-reaching statement. I do think that most of it is conducting itself in a mistaken way. Conducting itself in a mistaken way because we are not supposed to make considerations like these. Also because there is no basis whatsoever for them being true, but I’m saying beyond that: this is not our mandate. Our mandate is to make the decisions as we understand them; the Holy One, blessed be He, will do what is good in His eyes. Okay, I’ll stop here. There are a few more things, but you can see it on the website, I’ve put everything there. I said I’d also respond about Chabad and that, but I didn’t get to it already—look there, it’s all there.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, Rabbi, the Rabbi’s last conclusion—if the Rabbi were to formulate it all the way—it would be in the moral realm, because the moment a person comes and builds for himself some metaphysical theory and now serves it, then he removes responsibility: it’s not me, this is what God told me, so I’m doing it too. Right, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That goes back to what I said earlier: that is false messianism par excellence. False messianism par excellence is when people say: I use a theological-metaphysical consideration to justify actions that are problematic in themselves. But I’m not talking about that; I’m talking about the very resort to a metaphysical consideration.

[Speaker C] No, Rabbi, I didn’t mean doing a moral act that is immoral, but because I—I now—I’m now going to erase Gaza because God revealed Himself to me and this is now the thing, and Greater Land of Israel, and we’ll do it—and you stop being, if you’re not sure this is it, then you’re taking it upon yourself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There, exactly—you’re coming back, therefore, to an immoral act done in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He. There are—

[Speaker C] There are those who will say that in light of redemption, that is moral. No, that’s what I’m talking about, come on—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what are we arguing about then? That’s also what I said. If you justify it in terms of redemption, then that’s messianism—or again, a smell of messianism, I don’t know what to call it, or maybe even outright messianism. If it’s immoral or not halakhic or I don’t know exactly what, then that really is messianism or excessive forcefulness. But if it’s just—there’s no excessive forcefulness here—I want to join the Zionist movement, so I join the Zionist movement. I said: I too am a religious Jew and a secular Zionist. My Zionism is secular. I join the Zionist movement the way Ben-Gurion joined it. Fine? That is a completely legitimate consideration. Someone else joins the Zionist movement because that is his way of bringing redemption. That, in my eyes, is an improper consideration. It is an improper consideration because it is not supposed to take part in forming your position—and notice: not because joining Zionism has a moral, halakhic, or other problem. Rather, the very fact that you formed an attitude toward the Zionist movement, or toward some process in our world, based on some theological-metaphysical conjecture—that itself is problematic. That’s my claim. And in the tradition, I think—

[Speaker H] One more sentence—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that in our tradition, in the mainstream of our tradition, people really did not make considerations like these. No one made considerations like these. We don’t make decisions—over thousands of years people made decisions according to Jewish law, according to morality, and according to realpolitik, meaning according to realistic considerations. No one allowed himself to do one thing or another because it would bring redemption. That’s not how one conducts oneself in the world. In that sense I think my position really represents the mainstream. Somehow in the last generation, since the beginning of Zionism, suddenly the whole religious world is divided into metaphysicians. There are metaphysicians who are for it and metaphysicians who are against it, but both of them, in my opinion, deviate from the mainstream path. The Torah mainstream did not relate to this kind of consideration. You see a phenomenon, you relate to it according to what it is—not according to what it expresses, not according to the demon behind it, but rather: do you think it’s okay? Excellent. You think it’s not okay? Fine too—say it’s not okay, fight against it, join it, all fine—but not on metaphysical grounds. Look at it and see what it says. That’s all. Did someone want to comment?

[Speaker I] Rabbi, may I ask a question? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, someone started earlier and I silenced him for a moment—who was it? I’m not… here, no? Okay.

[Speaker I] Rabbi, earlier what you said—that considerations of whether the process of redemption comes from the sitra achra or from the Holy One, blessed be He—you called that false messianism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—a whiff of false messianism. No, I said it’s hard to say that it’s actual false messianism, because the actions you are doing are realistic actions and there’s no prohibition in them and everything is fine; it is permissible to be Zionist. There’s no problem with that, not moral and not… and not because it goes against realism. But if you are Zionist because of the metaphysical consideration, then there is some whiff of messianism here.

[Speaker I] Messianism, but not connected to falsehood. What? Not connected to false messianism, but rather—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Messianism in the sense that you resort to metaphysical considerations. The Messiah takes part for you in forming your realistic positions. And that, in my opinion, is not supposed to be part of our world.

[Speaker I] Rabbi, I also wanted to ask about what you said earlier in passing about your column—which I didn’t read—regarding antisemitism. Briefly, I wanted to ask: I didn’t understand whether you’re claiming that the behavior of Haredi society, Harediness, is behavior that Jews acted with in exile?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To a certain extent, yes. I think the Haredim behave this way in Israel because they simply got used to it. Among the gentiles, that’s how everyone behaved. And today in Israel, there are people who see this as a Jewish state, while from their perspective it’s just another gentile state.

[Speaker I] But what, in the sense of tax evasion, of not working—it seems less, like, relevant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the sense of only rights without obligations, in the sense of lack of loyalty. Jews almost never—very rarely—enlisted in the armies of states that were at war; they mostly evaded all the time in most cases. There were places where they did, but in most cases that’s what they did. There was some kind of exactly the things we see here. And the whole claim here of people is, listen, but this is a Jewish state, we’re no longer in exile; and my claim is much deeper—even in exile one should not behave that way.

[Speaker I] Behavior that’s, like, not civic? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re supposed to be loyal to the state you are in. Again, if it persecutes you, if it’s not okay—fine, that’s something else. But a reasonable state that treats you decently and you are its citizen—there is no justification for evading military service. Even in Belgium. Jabotinsky in 1916… that’s what enrages me about this whole argument going around about “help from Israel against an oppressor” and “obligatory war” and all that nonsense. It has nothing to do with obligatory war and nothing like that. It’s simply a civic duty: if there is a threat and we need to fight, everyone needs to shoulder the burden. That’s all. Even in Belgium, if I were the only Jew, I would still have an obligation to contribute my part if Belgium were under threat.

[Speaker H] Jabotinsky in 1916 wrote to the Jews of England—there were at least a hundred thousand Jews in England who had fled Russia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th—and he wrote: enlist. You live in a country that protects you, guards you; enlist in the army, because otherwise other countries won’t want to take in Jews in the world, because why would they want these people who don’t carry the burden?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether there’s a moral argument here or a utilitarian, usefulness-based argument?

[Speaker H] No, there’s the moral argument, and he says: also take into account the consequences, how this will be seen in the United States, since the United States hadn’t yet entered the war, and he says: why give refuge to people who don’t help build and protect that refuge?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.

[Speaker I] Rabbi, I just want to ask—I knew there was religious separatism among Jews in exile, but I didn’t know and didn’t think there was, you know, evasion of basic civic duties. Is that something known?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there was. The Haredi conduct here is very deeply rooted in the Jewish pattern of conduct from time immemorial. They didn’t invent anything.

[Speaker I] Honestly, it’s sad to hear. I wasn’t aware of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, part of it really is the result of the fact that we were persecuted. I’m saying: this tango has two sides.

[Speaker H] German Jews enlisted in the army almost in proportion to their share of the population. Do you hear? German Jews enlisted in the army almost in proportion to their share of the population.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Germany is a well-known exceptional case. In the United States too quite a few Jews enlisted in the army—today I don’t think so, but in World War II, say, there were quite a few Jews, I don’t know if it was proportional to their share of the population, but there too there was fairly broad enlistment. Yes, much less so; in the Soviet Union the rate of enlistment was higher than their share of the population, and they also particularly distinguished themselves. I assume that in the Soviet Union, though, these weren’t religious Jews, but Jews who were part of the communist move. Okay, thank you. Separation from the gentiles and alienation from the gentiles very easily leads to contempt for our obligations toward our surroundings. Because if we are the best and we are the closest to the Holy One, blessed be He, and we are the most righteous and we have Jewish law and morality—that’s altogether an atheistic category, as Leibowitz said—then very quickly you really get to some kind of conduct like this, what we see among the Haredim today.

[Speaker I] They’re basically just continuing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the accepted path.

[Speaker I] I just don’t understand—here we’re a welfare state that somehow created this situation with the Haredim, giving and giving and giving, and somehow not forcing them to become civic, let’s call it that. But among the gentiles, I just don’t understand why they would allow such a thing? Why wouldn’t Jews be productive, integrate into the economy? What do you mean, allow?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] People schemed. There were clever Jews. People schemed, paid off… in places where there was more prosperity, Jews were also wealthier, so they knew how to manage. It depends; there are places where not. In the end that was the conduct, and sometimes when they didn’t allow it—like the Cantonist decrees, as they’re called—then yes, they took them into the army. What is the Cantonist decree? Think about it. Part of the Jewish mythos is the Cantonist decree, a Jewish trauma. What is the Cantonist decree? They took young Jews into the army. Why? Because they didn’t come on their own. Again, I don’t know what those wars were and to what extent it really was proper to go there and whether it really was possible.

[Speaker H] Trumpeldor was exceptional when he enlisted in the Russian army. What? Trumpeldor enlisted in the Russian army out of idealism, but he was exceptional.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, friends, have a kosher and happy Passover. May we have good news, I hope.

[Speaker B] Happy holiday, happy holiday, thank you very much, thank you very much, Shabbat shalom, Shabbat—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] shalom, Shabbat—

[Speaker H] shalom.