Messianism – Rabbi Michael Avraham – Lesson 5

Table of Contents

• Possible ways to define a messianic movement
• Tradition, innovation, and the claim that deviating from the path is itself messianism
• Christianity, Gnosticism, and outcome-based versus principled criteria
• The criterion of denying the Oral Torah and the difficulty of diagnosing it
• The dynamic of the gradual “slippage” of false messiahs and the descriptions of the Tashbetz
• The authority of medieval authorities (Rishonim), historical data, and speculations
• Miracles, the “other side” of impurity, and the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides
• Charisma, verses, and distrust of biblical interpretation
• Bar Kokhba: absence of halakhic deviation, forcefulness, and dependence on outcomes
• Bar Kokhba and Zionism in ethos and in critique
• Jacob Emden: systematic classification and the messianism of “forcing the end”

Summary

General Overview

The text presents several possible ways to define a “messianic movement” in the negative sense, since there is no sharp halakhic definition and the classification is mainly sociological-religious. It suggests criteria focused on the character of the action taken to bring redemption, on the question of deviation from Jewish law or from tradition, and on the tendency to justify problematic or unrealistic acts in the name of redemption. It adds that an outcome-based test—namely, historical damage—also affects the evaluation. It then examines Christianity as an early model of a messianic movement and Bar Kokhba as a more complex case, and cites sources such as Maimonides, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena, the Tashbetz, the Ritva, Maharsha Hirsch, and Jacob Emden, while emphasizing that the sources themselves move between outcome-based criteria and principled criticism of deviation from a realistic and traditional mode of conduct.

Possible ways to define a messianic movement

The text states that there is no clear halakhic definition of a messianic movement, and therefore several a priori definitions of the phenomenon can be proposed. It rejects as an unusual approach the position attributed to Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz, according to which a messiah who has arrived is not the messiah, and one must only hope for the future without actual realization. It proposes as a second definition that the practical attempt to “bring” the messiah from below is a sign of a messianic movement, because the messiah is supposed to come “from above,” sent by the Holy One Blessed be He, and not as the result of human actions.

The text uses Nachmanides’ example of Joseph, who acted to realize his dreams and therefore did not reveal to Jacob that he was alive, and presents a critique of that interpretation: even if the dream was sent by the Holy One Blessed be He, its realization is not incumbent upon man, certainly not when the act itself is problematic. It distinguishes between a natural positive action, such as moving to settle in a place out of hope that redemption will come, and a situation in which the only justification for a problematic act is “fulfilling a dream” or “helping” the Holy One Blessed be He. In that case, the desire for redemption does not justify the act.

The text proposes as a third definition that certain kinds of actions taken to bring redemption define negative messianism, and it lists three modes: an action involving a halakhic prohibition, an action that contradicts accepted tradition even without a formal prohibition, and an action that has no realistic justification and is accompanied by risk-taking and forceful considerations out of confidence that the Holy One Blessed be He is “with us,” so there is no need to hold back. It notes that these modes tend to come together, and that sometimes even transgressions are justified in the name of a messianic purpose. It cites the Rabbi of Brisk, who says that the messiah will not come even for a rabbinic prohibition if it involves violating a rabbinic prohibition. It presents the “Three Oaths” as a possible guide to what not to do, even if one does not treat them as a formal halakhic prohibition, and notes that Rashi has two versions that change the meaning.

Tradition, innovation, and the claim that deviating from the path is itself messianism

The text presents the claim that talking about bringing the messiah necessarily requires innovation because “there is no tradition about the messiah,” but rejects it and argues that tradition deals with how one ought to conduct oneself in general, and therefore the means of bringing the messiah also do not permit deviation from ordinary modes of conduct. It states that the claim “here it’s different because we’re bringing the messiah” is itself an indication of a messianic movement, because it grants permission to bypass normative boundaries in the name of a supreme goal.

The text gives the example of campaigns such as an initiative that “everyone should keep two Sabbaths” in order to bring the messiah, and presents this as in principle legitimate, since it is a matter of encouraging commandment observance. But it warns of a great crisis if the messiah does not come, and of an unfalsifiable structure in which “the excuses are already in your pocket.” It connects this to an outcome-based examination of a messianic movement, in which even an initiative that seems positive can lead to problematic results.

Christianity, Gnosticism, and outcome-based versus principled criteria

The text describes Christianity as a prominent messianic movement and places it in the context of mystical Gnostic movements that intensified around the destruction of the Temple, some of which proposed new sacred writings or new interpretations and changes in Jewish law. It distinguishes between “Gnostic” and “agnostic” and suggests a connection to the root of “knowledge” (*gnosis*), without committing to a precise linguistic definition. It asks whether it was possible to identify the problem with Christianity in real time, or whether only the historical results determined the diagnosis, and notes that those results included abandoning commandments, persecutions, and pogroms. So in retrospect it is obviously easy to understand why the movement was rejected.

The text cites Maimonides in Laws of Kings: “And even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the messiah and was executed by the religious court… could there be a greater stumbling block than this?… This caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be scattered and humiliated, the Torah to be changed, and most of the world to be led astray to worship a god other than the Lord.” It interprets this as a distinctly outcome-based criterion. It emphasizes that when examining how sages define a messianic movement, the criterion is what they thought had happened, not necessarily what historically happened in fact, because that reveals their conception of the classification.

The criterion of denying the Oral Torah and the difficulty of diagnosing it

The text cites Magen VaHerev by Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh of Modena, according to which Jesus “is found to acknowledge not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah… but the Oral Torah only in what was accepted in his opinion,” and it describes the difficulty of distinguishing in real time between mistaken interpretation within the discourse and a deviation that places a person “outside the boundary.” It presents the principle that once one diagnoses a deviation from the Oral Torah, we are dealing with a false messiah, but points to the practical difficulty, because the Oral Torah is full of disputes and almost every change is presented as interpretation.

The text sharpens the point that the claim “if he had expounded to change even a minor thing from the Torah, no one would have listened to him” depends on distinguishing what counts as changing something “from the Torah,” because the sages too interpreted verses against their simple meaning, such as “an eye for an eye” meaning monetary compensation. So it is hard to determine when we are dealing with uprooting the Torah and when with interpretation. It presents an exchange in which a distinction is suggested between interpretation and an explicit call to desecrate the Sabbath instead of observing it, and it connects this to Maimonides’ understanding of “the prophet, father of all prophets” as a boundary that cannot be challenged.

The dynamic of the gradual “slippage” of false messiahs and the descriptions of the Tashbetz

The text argues that confusion over who was responsible for later changes is a typical phenomenon of messianic movements, because they begin within the halakhic world and sometimes even strengthen commandment observance, and then there is a gradual “slippage” in which parts of the framework get thrown out. It raises the possibility that this is not necessarily a cynical trick but an innocent process that becomes excessive through success and charisma, and it brings a discussion of a causal connection between success and deterioration.

The text cites the Tashbetz in the treatise Contradicting the Faith of the Christians, who argues that Jesus himself did not think of himself as the son of God, and that all the later ideas of deification and the Trinity came afterward. It presents a claim according to which Jesus’ execution served as a “test” of whether he was a true messiah or a false one, along with the criticism that this is Russian roulette resting on an ungrounded thesis that a true messiah cannot be killed.

The authority of medieval authorities (Rishonim), historical data, and speculations

The text presents skepticism toward claims of the authority of medieval and later authorities in contexts where they themselves admit they have no clear tradition and are merely offering conjectures. It compares this to statements by medieval authorities (Rishonim) about the “hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded,” where they said, “they were lost to us,” and that they no longer know how to expound. It concludes that where there is no tradition, proposals should be examined according to whether they “hold water,” and not according to authority.

The text states that historical research too sometimes involves speculations that are not necessarily any better, and it justifies a critical examination of claims about what early Christianity was like and how its myths developed.

Miracles, the “other side” of impurity, and the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides

The text presents miracle-working as an element attributed to Christianity, and connects this to a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) over whether there are forces of impurity capable of performing real miracles. It attributes to Maimonides the position that there is no “other side” in the sense of an independent power that works miracles, and therefore the miracles are sleight of hand or are to be explained in other ways. By contrast, according to Nachmanides and mystical approaches, it is possible that a false prophet performs miracles and nevertheless one may not follow him. It mentions a long responsum on the subject in VaYashev HaYam by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel.

The text combines this with a practical-principled discussion about healing by a “sorcerer” or “shaman,” and about the attitude toward being healed in a context of idolatry. It presents his own view that according to Maimonides, “something that isn’t real can’t work,” so if it works, then it is medicine or placebo, and the prohibition is basically “the prohibition against being stupid” within the framework of “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” It then presents a more conservative objection in the style of Nachmanides, which speaks of “resorting to other powers” and of the difficulty of distinguishing between holiness and impurity. It discusses the distinction between idolatrous worship and making use of something in an idolatrous context for medical purposes, in relation to the accessories of idolatry and the rule of “be killed rather than transgress,” and notes that sorcery in Maimonides appears in the Laws of Idolatry.

Charisma, verses, and distrust of biblical interpretation

The text attributes to the Ritva a description of Jesus’ power as charisma, appeal to the common people, use of distorted quotations, and bringing proofs from scripture for his messianic status. It describes how prophetic chapters such as those in Isaiah are interpreted by Christians as direct descriptions of Jesus—“he shall bear their sins”—and presents this as evidence that seems to him “no less good” than certain Jewish methods of exposition. Therefore he is wary of relying on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) as a medium that allows one to derive “everything and its opposite.”

The text argues that the interpretive flexibility of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) prevents one from drawing practical conclusions that justify deviating from what would otherwise be done, certainly not prohibitions or risks. It cites Rabbi Kalner as saying that if the State of Israel were destroyed, he would “take off his kippah,” and concludes that even if such a scenario were actually to occur, most of the public would not change its beliefs. Therefore, the very willingness to “manage with the verses even when reality flips over” shows that the verses are not a binding basis for sharp conclusions. It distinguishes between studying Talmud, which demands interpretive discipline and can teach new legal structures, and studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), which in his view is too open and mainly teaches what the learner already brought with him—especially basic morality such as repentance and commandment observance, and a general familiarity with the world of faith.

Bar Kokhba: absence of halakhic deviation, forcefulness, and dependence on outcomes

The text presents Bar Kokhba as a second example in which there was no “conversion of religion” or blatant violation of Jewish law in the style of Christianity or Shabbetai Tzvi, even if there are sources about bodily harm during training. It suggests that the possible problem was lack of realism and forcefulness in the face of the Roman Empire, and it cites rabbinic traditions that Bar Kokhba said to the Holy One Blessed be He, “Master of the world, neither help nor hinder,” as evidence of a problematic conception of divine providence. It connects this to the midrash about Elazar of Modi’in, whose prayer protected Betar, and to the message that spirit and merit are what decide things, not physical force alone.

The text quotes Maimonides on Bar Kokhba: “Rabbi Akiva, a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah, was the armor-bearer of King Ben Koziva, and he would say of him that he was the king messiah. And he and all the sages of his generation imagined that he was the king messiah, until he was killed because of sins… and the sages did not ask of him either a sign or a miracle.” It concludes that according to Maimonides, the diagnosis was mainly outcome-based, because until the downfall there was no sharp criterion for disqualification. It notes that there are other sources that criticize Bar Kokhba already in the midst of events, and it presents a tension between Maimonides’ approach and midrashim that place the criticism on the conduct itself.

Bar Kokhba and Zionism in ethos and in critique

The text describes how Zionism latched onto Bar Kokhba as part of its ethos—“We carry torches,” “No miracle happened for us”—and cites Hamburger, who compares Bar Kokhba to the Zionist movement and criticizes even phenomena such as “Bar Kokhba” sports clubs and physical development as false messianism. The text rejects this as tendentious interpretation and argues that physical development and training are a military necessity, not proof of false messianism. It presents the focus of possible criticism instead as lack of realism, provoking the nations, and the pretension of bringing redemption by force.

Jacob Emden: systematic classification and the messianism of “forcing the end”

The text presents Jacob Emden in Biraat Migdal Oz as one of the only figures who dealt systematically with the phenomenon of false messianism and classified it into types. It quotes the “seventh type,” which includes “deceiving fools like Ben Koziva, like David Almosar, Rabbi Solomon Molcho, and Rabbi Asher Lemmlein,” as well as “those who use adjurations and practical Kabbalah.” It emphasizes that Emden argues that some of them “meant well” and “did not transgress the Torahs” and “did not cast off the yoke,” but “transgressed the oath… that they should not force the end.” He interprets the Three Oaths as guidance for realistic conduct and not as a focus on formal transgression, and presents the central damage as arousing “the jealousy and hatred of the nations” and the failure of trying “to conquer sovereignty through the counsel of hasty intrigue.”

The text concludes by describing Emden’s language, which prefers “believers, children of believers,” who “will neither hasten nor break through to go up as a wall,” who will “seek the peace of the city to which they were exiled,” and who will plead with the Holy One Blessed be He to gather in the dispersed. It sets up impatience and activism that forces the end as the hallmark of false messianism of this type.

Okay, we’re in the topic of messianism. I said that basically there are several possibilities, and I’ll summarize where we’re holding. There are several ways to define a movement as messianic, since there is no halakhic definition and it’s very hard to decide this from clear sources. This is more of a sociological or religious-sociological phenomenon, but not so much Jewish law, at least according to most views; today we’ll see a few exceptions. So one can raise, a priori, several possibilities for defining a movement as a messianic movement. And again, a “messianic movement” in quotation marks. Meaning, a messianic movement in the negative sense of the phrase. You can say a messianic movement is anyone who hopes for the Messiah. Fine, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. So I started with a view that probably doesn’t seem reasonable to me to even include in the discussion, and that is Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz: a Messiah who arrives is not the Messiah. The Messiah only has to come in the future; we are told to hope for him, but he is not really supposed to materialize. A less extreme approach says that the very fact that you try to bring the Messiah, that itself turns it into a messianic movement, because the Messiah is supposed to come from above, through the Holy One, blessed be He, to be sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, and not as a result of our activities. So any practical involvement whose purpose is to assist in bringing the Messiah—what I mentioned as that example in Nachmanides about Joseph, who acted in order to realize his dreams, and therefore did not tell his father that he was still alive. And Nachmanides explains, in one of his explanations, that it was because he wanted to fulfill the dreams. And many have already commented on that explanation of Nachmanides, that even if that dream was sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, the role of bringing about that dream, or realizing that dream, belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He. You are not supposed to help Him realize that matter, and certainly not in a case—and this connects to what follows—certainly not in a case where the activity meant to realize that dream is itself problematic. Meaning, were it not for the motivation of fulfilling the dream, the act would be a problematic act. And here, when he doesn’t tell his father that he is still alive, that is a problematic act. So at least in that context one can say that this is not incumbent on you. Even if, say, naturally, you simply dream that if you go somewhere and settle in a certain community, redemption will come to that community. Fine, then you can go settle there and do your part to contribute to bringing redemption, and that still is not included in the criticism I mentioned of Nachmanides. But if you do something that is problematic in itself, and its whole justification is only because you are fulfilling the dream or helping the Holy One, blessed be He, carry out what He wants to carry out, then maybe that is the definition of a messianic movement. And that is the second definition. The third definition is that—and really I already introduced it in what I just said—the third definition is the question: maybe you can act to bring redemption, but there are certain kinds or modes of action that will be defined as a messianic movement. And here I suggested three possibilities. One possibility is when these actions involve a halakhic prohibition. A second possibility is that these actions somehow contradict what is accepted in our tradition or something like that, let’s say, even if there is no formal halakhic problem here, but this is not how one acts; it is not accepted that this is how one acts. I said within this perhaps the Three Oaths, that the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel not to go up as a wall, and not to rebel against the nations, and not to force the end, or not to delay the end—there are two versions in Rashi there that of course reverse the meaning. So even if one does not regard this as a halakhic prohibition, there is still some sort of instruction here as to what we are supposed to do. And one who does not act in that way is not a halakhic offender, but he acts in some way that is not how one is supposed to act. Maybe that too can be defined as a messianic movement. Of course, this can apply even without the Three Oaths or some specific instruction; rather, we see that throughout history people did not act that way. Even though this is not a halakhic prohibition, it could still perhaps raise doubts about the matter. I may bring examples later. What? Tefillin stands? Tefillin stands? Could be—why, putting tefillin stands is to give Jews the merit of putting on tefillin. I’m not sure the trend has to be specifically bringing redemption. It may be that around this too there is discourse about bringing redemption, but this could also be justified without any connection to redemption. And besides, I don’t know if it goes against tradition. The tradition of helping people put on tefillin—I personally don’t think this has much value, but someone could come and say, what do you mean, you’re causing people to fulfill a commandment—how is that against tradition? On the contrary: “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” “you shall surely rebuke your fellow.” What, the ABC. In the afternoon it’s permitted? What? In the afternoon it’s permitted to put on tefillin? All day. Not that they say it’s obligatory—permitted. People used to wear tefillin all day; today they don’t do that. In the Old City of Jerusalem. Yes, there are some who do. The third possibility is when we are talking about actions that are, say—perhaps in the second possibility I mentioned—when Joseph did not tell his father that he was still alive. If we go back to the example I brought from Nachmanides, how would we classify that action? Well, one can say there is a halakhic prohibition here of honoring one’s parents, a neglect of the positive commandment of honoring one’s parents, I don’t know, maybe. But it can also be classified this way: basically, it is simply improper to act like that. I don’t know if there is a formal halakhic prohibition in it, but clearly it is not right and not fitting to act that way were it not for the consideration of fulfilling the dream. So where, were it not for the fulfillment of the dream, the action is problematic, then fulfilling the dream does not justify it either. Or in our case, the desire to bring redemption or the Messiah. A third possibility is actions that have no justification in realistic thinking—not in our tradition or in accepted non-halakhic thought, but simply because they are unrealistic. You take forceful actions, you take risks, you do things that in real-political terms are wrong to do, but you say: look, the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us, we’re on the secure track to redemption, and therefore you are not troubled by risks of that kind. That too can be defined as an indication of a messianic movement. Again, there is a connection between these things as well; often they come together, at least some of them, sometimes all of them without the examples. Because doing things that are against our tradition, that too is often justified in the context of bringing the Messiah. Meaning, okay, it is true that usually this was not done, but here there is some important goal, and that justifies the matter. There are those who will justify even actual transgressions that way. Fine, I brought the rabbi of Brisk, who says that limits of Sabbath travel do apply above ten handbreadths; he says that even for a rabbinic prohibition the Messiah will not come if it involves violating even a rabbinic prohibition. But in the second category I mentioned, actions that go against accepted thinking or accepted tradition but are not a halakhic prohibition, there it may be that you cannot accuse the person—he is not an offender in the halakhic sense. And still, you will hear from him justifications of the type: okay, I understand that this is not the usual way we were educated to act, but bringing the Messiah justifies it. So these things are not always sharply separated. Messiah and tradition are almost contradictory, because there is no tradition about the Messiah—meaning anyone who talks about him and it’s not the Messiah will speak about how tradition does not say how to bring the Messiah. Tradition says how one should behave correctly. No, tradition does not deal with the Messiah. Tradition says how to behave in general. Since what I am saying is, anyone who speaks about Messiah basically—there is no tradition about it, so he has to innovate something. No, that is exactly the claim. One who says that in order to bring the Messiah one may behave in ways that we did not receive in the tradition—that itself is the problem. Tradition did not deal with the Messiah; tradition dealt with how one should behave. But the claim is that even in the means you adopt in order to bring the Messiah, you may not deviate from the ordinary ways in which, independent of the Messiah, one should behave. The very fact that you claim the tradition does not relate to this situation because here we are bringing the Messiah—that itself is the definition that you are a messianic movement. Okay? Not that we have a tradition of how to bring the Messiah, but that is the point itself: that you do not need a tradition for how to bring the Messiah, because the Merciful One did not say it on his own authority. And from that it is almost impossible to escape. What? From that definition it is almost impossible to escape. No, to say that a person brings the Messiah because he brings all the Jewish people to repentance and causes them to perform commandments, or launches a campaign to keep two Sabbaths—once I heard of such a campaign—that all Israel will be redeemed if everyone keeps two Sabbaths. So someone tried to make this into an initiative: let’s all keep two Sabbaths and that will bring the Messiah. And in that there is no problem on the principled level; that is perfectly fine—you are causing people to fulfill commandments, so fine. It may be that even in that there will be a problem, because if the Messiah does not come after those two Sabbaths, then there is a great break, and we talked about this—there will never be a situation in which everyone keeps two Sabbaths. There will always be one person left who doesn’t keep them. But then why are you doing the campaign? Meaning, your campaign assumes that such a thing can happen, so it is a kind of campaign that cannot be refuted. Meaning, you undertake some initiative when you know that if it doesn’t happen, the excuses are already in my pocket, the document and its cancellation together. Yes, you just didn’t do what needed to be done, and that’s why he didn’t come, yes, the aftershock, etc. And still, that will not prevent the break, and to some extent justifiably. Therefore, in the consequential sense—I talked about the consequential test of a messianic movement—perhaps even a situation like that can be problematic, because it can lead to problematic results. Okay, so those are the possibilities. And at the end of the previous session I began to describe a bit how people relate to Christianity. Yes, the first messianism one can examine in this context—or the first prominent one one can examine on this topic—is Christianity. I described a bit last time that it was probably part of the Gnostic movements, meaning movements that existed in that period and even preceded Christianity. But the Gnostic movements, at least some of them, as far as I know—and I’m no expert in this—as far as I know, not all of them were messianic movements. Meaning, they made changes or recommended different behaviors, but not necessarily in order to bring the Messiah, rather for various reasons, each movement with its own reasons. Though among them there were also messianic movements, meaning those that said that this is indeed how one advances redemption. So Christianity was part of that whole thing. What are Gnostic movements? What are they? Some kind of mystical movements that arose a little before the destruction of the Temple and continued afterward too, even before Christianity. Christianity is considered part of them, here in the Land, among the Jews. Various types; they inclined toward mysticism, they presented all kinds of new sacred writings or new interpretations, scrolls. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually belong to various sects of this sort. They often dealt in hidden matters—yes, I said mysticism—somewhat changed Jewish law, or changed it quite a lot; sometimes they changed accepted Jewish law. Though there are those who say that actually the Pharisees changed the accepted law and that this was the law originally accepted. Fine, there are all kinds of speculations about that. But there was a very strong Gnostic awakening in that period. Is agnostic and Gnostic the same thing? I don’t think so. I really don’t know what the word means, meaning the literal meaning probably is the same, but I don’t know exactly what the significance is. An agnostic is someone who has no position regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, regarding God. Yes, earlier the Rabbi said agnostic movements. No, Gnostic movements. Ah, that’s what I heard. But agnostic means he is a-gnostic, meaning there is a connection; gnosis is knowledge or hidden knowledge or something like that, and agnostic means I have no knowledge in hidden matters or something like that. I don’t know exactly the literal meaning of the term. So Christianity is basically almost a model of a messianic movement, the first important one. Now the question is by virtue of what it earned that label or that treatment. The question is whether one could have seen this while it was happening, or whether it is only because of the later results—and certainly the later results played a part here, because in the end Christianity led to complete abandonment of the commandments, not to mention persecution of Jews and pogroms. Fine, by then we are already reaching situations where explanations are no longer needed. But the question is whether the judgment of Christianity as a messianic movement is only because of the consequential consideration, because of what happened throughout history, or whether in principle, if I had lived at that time, I should already have been able to put my finger on it and say: there is something problematic here. And I mentioned that… so I mentioned Maimonides in Laws of Kings, where Maimonides writes: “Even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the Messiah”—yes, this was censored of course in later editions—“even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the Messiah, and was executed by a religious court.” Do you hear? Maimonides adopts the tradition—there is such a tradition also in the Sages, and there too there are different descriptions—that he was executed by a religious court. “And Daniel already prophesied about him, as it is said, ‘And the violent among your people shall exalt themselves to establish the vision, but they shall stumble.’ And is there a greater stumbling block than this? For all the prophets spoke that the Messiah redeems Israel and saves them and gathers their dispersed and strengthens their commandments, and this one caused Israel to be lost by the sword, and their remnant to be scattered and humiliated, and the Torah to be changed, and most of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord.” And again, here it seems that the criterion is consequential. Meaning, I don’t think that in Jesus’s own time—again, I don’t know how Maimonides saw it, because the question is whether I need to examine it in light of the history of what really happened there. Today I think we have more knowledge on this than Maimonides had. What knowledge do we have today of what was there—besides the Christian writings, what other descriptions? Christian writings, which I assume were not all familiar to Maimonides, yes, things like that. Why not? Why not? He didn’t have time. No, I don’t think he knew the Christian writings; he knew the Muslim writings. I don’t think he knew the Christian writings. Even with the Muslim writings, I don’t know whether it was the Quran or only the Muslim philosophers. He seems to write that he read every book of idolatry translated into Arabic. The Sabeans, the Sabeans—no, no, I don’t think every book of the Sabeans, it seems to me. There is some unclear thing there about what exactly these Sabeans were. In any case, whether he knew them or not, he knew them. The question is—again, one has to be careful, and I mentioned this earlier too—that when we try to examine how the Sages viewed a messianic movement, we look at what happened historically and then say, ah, this is what the Sages said was a messianic movement. The more correct test is to ask how the Sages viewed what was there, not what was actually there, because later Sages—well, Sages at the time—they saw what was there. In that sense it is of course a relevant criterion. But for later sages who write about it, one has to see what they write about what was there, not what really was there, because that will give us the measure of what, from their perspective, was perceived as a messianic movement. So here Maimonides says that the test was a consequential test. I brought Magen VaHerev by Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, who writes: “It turns out that he admitted not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah.” Jesus, yes, basically, acknowledged the Written Torah and the Oral Torah in what existed, but only the Oral Torah in what was accepted in his opinion, “and therefore he prevailed for a while,” meaning it was hard to diagnose exactly what the issue was. Meaning, here too you already see something else: if there is heresy even in part of the Oral Torah, if that is already clear-cut—if not, you can say it is just a dispute. He interpreted differently, and one can always disagree within the Oral Torah; the Oral Torah is full of disputes. Therefore it is very hard to determine when a person departs from the Oral Torah and when he merely offers a different interpretation, even if he is mistaken, but he is still within the discourse—that is, he is arguing, he has his own position, that is how he interprets it. So it is hard to distinguish, but on the principled level he is saying something here. Once you have diagnosed that the man departed from the Oral Torah, then he is a false messiah. Meaning, that is clear. I’m not sure how practical this criterion is, but the principle itself is clear. “For otherwise, had he expounded to change even a minor thing from the Torah, no one would have listened to him, and everyone would have pursued him and opposed him.” Therefore during his lifetime he did spread, and the Sages probably did not diagnose in an unequivocal way that he was a false messiah. Even if in the end the Sages killed him, and even if not—I said there are different sources on this—but clearly it took time before they were at all prepared to judge him in that way. He says: if he had tried to change something from the Torah, then obviously no one would have listened to him. Now here one has to understand a bit what it means to change something from the Torah. There is almost no such thing as changing something from the Torah not through the mediation of the Oral Torah. You will say: what counts as changing something from the Torah? To say that tefillin are round? Fine, I am proposing that as an interpretation within the Oral Torah, of the verse “and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand.” That the inheritance is for Israel and not for a gentile. Where is that written? In the interpretation of “inheritance.” Always, always, interpretations of the Sages are involved here, even in Torah-level law, that is obvious. Therefore only something “that even the Sadducees admit,” as the Sages put it—meaning something explicitly written in the Torah: “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” Fine, that is written. Though again, if I already take the Sages completely, the Sages extracted verses from their simple meaning. “An eye for an eye” means money. So what is that? Is that not uprooting something from the Torah? So here I say: once the Sages left the matter in its simple meaning, then you can say that if a person takes it out of its simple meaning, then he is uprooting something from the Torah. He is not denying the Oral Torah but the Written Torah. But this is not entirely precise, because even that he can present as interpretation of the Oral Torah, because the Sages too uproot something from the Torah through interpretation. So it is not completely clear to me how far this goes. To him it seems obvious that if he had uprooted something from the Torah, there would have been nothing to talk about, obviously they would not have gone with him. Rather what? He accepted part of the Oral Torah and part he did not accept, and therefore it was hard to make a diagnosis and it took time before they understood that this man was outside the bounds. I’m not so sure this criterion stands up either, as I said just now. But the interpretation that “an eye for an eye” means money is not uprooting something from the Torah; they are saying, this is the Torah, so that is not uprooting. You’re saying that if he says—if he were some Shiite suicide type—and says the Torah says “remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it,” and I say “profane the Sabbath day to sanctify it,” not that I am proposing an interpretation that “remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it” means to go to the beach, which would be an Oral Torah interpretation, but he says no, the Torah means the thirty-nine categories of labor and I say not to listen to the Torah. Fine, but then it really is trivial. It seems to me that when Maimonides says in Principles of Faith that the Messiah is a prophet above all prophets, that is referring to this, basically to Christianity, right? That you can never challenge him. So from that I understood that what Jesus claimed was that he could challenge Moses our teacher—that was exactly the boundary. Again, I’m saying—here you see Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena saying that he did not challenge the prophecy of Moses and not the Written Torah, but rather a certain part of the Oral Torah. Again, there are disagreements about this too, and I don’t know, again, what these disagreements are based on—that is, to what extent they really had knowledge of what was there, or whether this is just how they understood the Sages’ attitude toward Jesus. These are later interpretations. The fact is that there are different interpretations. Researchers too have different interpretations, so even if we have the knowledge that still does not mean that we know completely what was there. Could it be that he didn’t change commandments? What is the New Testament? The New Testament means the story with the Jewish people is over and begins… Yes, the New Testament is not Jesus. The New Testament is the apostles, the twelve apostles and his disciples, and that is already after him; it has nothing to do with him at all. Those are later things. So this confusion—I insist on this, I sharpen it—because this confusion is very typical of messianic movements. It is very typical. Meaning, all the false messiahs, some of whom I will describe later as well, begin like this. They begin inside the halakhic world, accept everything completely—on the contrary, sometimes they want to bring all the Jewish people to repentance and awaken them, yes, the awakeners. And they operate within the framework, and slowly some sort of slippage begins. And by the way, it is not always clear that this was from the outset part of the process, meaning that it was some cynical trick in which they really concealed things and then gradually revealed them; rather, it may be that it began innocently. The person really thought he could bring redemption—not in that sense, but bring the Jewish people back to repentance. Meaning, do what is incumbent on each of us. And slowly he begins to see himself in some somewhat exaggerated way and starts going wild. Meaning, throwing things out. Once he succeeds, that is usually when it happens—once he succeeds, suddenly, as they say, it goes to his head. Meaning, completely—on the contrary, someone who starts this way from the outset does not succeed. Oh yes? Ah, you’re saying the direction of the correlation here is unclear. Okay. Or alternatively, if he succeeds, then he is not seen as part of false messianism within Judaism, but as some successful religious figure from within Judaism? Not clear. No, no, but I’m saying someone who succeeds and then slips, yes. So the question is whether the slippage is because of the success, or the success is because of the slippage. Meaning, the other way around: the success is because he had not slipped yet. Yes, right, so the question is what is cause and what is effect. So the Tashbetz, for example, also describes it in a very similar way. He writes in “Refutation of Christian Belief”—he has a pamphlet called “Refutation of Christian Belief.” He lived in Algeria so he could write such a thing. And he describes it very similarly; he says that Jesus himself did not think of himself at all as the son of God. All the incarnation, yes, the Trinity and his deification and all those things, are entirely later ideas; they have nothing to do with him. I mentioned the story with Rabbi Shach’s son, right, last time; that too is the same kind of thing. Okay, in any case, the main thing happened after his life. In whose case? In Jesus’s case, the deification. Yes yes, of course, I only brought it as a metaphorical example, not a comparison. No, I’m saying that in that sense the Lubavitcher Rebbe was a greater false messiah than Jesus, because he contributed to the process—not that it was created after him, yes, that is pretty clear. In any case, the Tashbetz also argues that his execution is part of the test of whether he is a true messiah or a false messiah. They killed Jesus and said: let’s see—if we can kill him, then he is apparently a false messiah. Again, the consequential test. Because if he is a true messiah, there is no chance; we will not succeed in killing him. So either way, we can do this and let’s see what comes out. That itself was the test. Well, an interesting claim. Where does it say that a true messiah cannot die? I already anticipated—fair enough. Meaning, let’s say it is Russian roulette, meaning it is Russian roulette when you build it on some thesis that is not grounded. Meaning, if the thesis were grounded, then indeed no problem, you won’t succeed. But who says it is really so? Who says one cannot kill a true messiah? Well, I don’t know. In any case, you see again how much one can at least get the impression that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) who deal with this matter are in the same darkness as we are. Meaning, to rely on the medieval authorities (Rishonim) in this matter is with very limited warranty. I mentioned once long ago also regarding the hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded, that I wrote all sorts of things in that context against the medieval authorities (Rishonim). And people told me: ah, there is Tosafot Rid, there is Rashba, who says otherwise. I said, okay, they say otherwise—so what? They themselves say they do not understand the hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded. So they offer their speculation and I offer mine; now decide which is better. There is no reason to give authority to a person who himself says he does not understand, but is only trying to understand—not from tradition, but from his own understanding. I can respect what he says, but now I will examine whether it holds water or not. And if not—if I have a better idea, then I offer a better idea, and let’s see who is right. One cannot speak here about authority. In general I do not fully accept the authority of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—yes, we already spoke about that. But I am saying: even the authority of weight—I do grant them some weight—but even weight I do not give them in this context. What weight do they have? They did not have the data that I have before me. They tried to produce an interpretation, and either they succeeded or they did not. Meaning, they are not relying here on some tradition where I can say they are closer than I am to the source, so I am prepared to accept that there is more chance they are right than I am. Where they themselves say, we do not understand, but this is our suggestion. The proof is that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) did not derive laws through the thirteen hermeneutic principles. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) explicitly write: this has been lost to us, we can no longer do it, we do not know how. Fine, so if there is a self-admission, then what room is there for an argument from authority in this matter? So I am saying that here too one can see that these are guesses of one sort or another, exactly what we hear today from historians too, by the way—no, often not even that good. Fine, guesses—I know how to offer guesses too. Okay, so we spoke about—now there is more. He also writes, the Tashbetz, that they tried to test; there were wonders. Jesus performed wonders, walked on water, or things like that. And again, I am not sure this is actually true, or whether these are myths that were created. What does actually true mean? Does it mean whether this already existed in his own time, or whether this myth was only created afterward? Maybe it even really happened; Rabbi Kook raises the possibility that it really happened, in “Perplexities of the Generation.” Well, maybe. Not only Rabbi Kook; there are Jewish writings from the period, from the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), Crescas I think, who correspond with Christians. I did not study it in depth, but I skimmed a bit, and it seems that many of them proceed from the assumption that it really happened. And they said it was an act of Satan, all kinds of things. No, so that’s true—here, as the possibility, I mentioned that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and it may depend on that dispute: the view of Maimonides and those who follow him, Sefer HaChinukh too, although there are slight contradictions in Sefer HaChinukh on this matter, is that there is no such thing—meaning, there is no other power, no “other side.” Meaning, if you perform miracles, it is by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. There are also all kinds of things Maimonides says about miracles—we once spoke about that in the series on miracles—but there too, there are not really miracles in the sense people usually understand. But there is no power from the impure side that is not from holiness; there is no such thing. But Nachmanides and other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who are closer, say, to mystical conceptions or such, argue that there is a possibility of performing wonders also from the other side, as a false prophet who performs a wonder, and still you are not to follow him, because you have all kinds of indications—not important right now how—but there are all kinds of indications. So the claim is that real wonders can be done even if they do not come from a pure source. A very interesting dispute. There is a very long responsum about it in Vayeshev Hayam by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel of Jerusalem, head of the kabbalists’ yeshiva Nahar Shalom, I think that’s what his yeshiva is called. So he has a very, very long responsum on this dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), about half a book more or less. A question—empirical, no? What? An empirical question, what? What? The question is whether he has powers. Fine, what can you do? One is right and one is wrong, but I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. Okay, so a dispute. There was once a question that came up when I was in Otzar HaChochma, when I hung around there on that forum. So a practical question came up: some Jew from the United States who was sick with a dangerous, incurable disease—medicine had nothing to do with such a thing, and that was it, he was going to die, meaning within a set time, I don’t remember how long, but within some period more or less he was going to die. Now he heard that there was some Indian sorcerer in Bolivia, I don’t know exactly where, in South America, who does all kinds of things, and in fact he had succeeded with certain people—several people, all of them, I don’t know, something—there were testimonies of success. The question was whether it is permitted to go do this, and he uses all kinds of his idolatrous things, some kind of shaman, meaning—and the question is whether it is permitted to make use of such a thing. So I argued there—there was some debate there—and someone there, Mordechai Halperin, really needed to answer that question, and he also participated in that debate. I argued that according to Maimonides, certainly it is permitted, because if it works then it is apparently a real medical treatment, because Maimonides says that something untrue cannot work. So either it’s placebo or it really works—one of the two. But if you have no other treatment, if you have nothing else, then do it—that is, just don’t believe in the idolatry involved in the matter. You do the medical practice, and he does the medical practice; you don’t believe in idolatry or anything. But according to Maimonides, in principle, if it works then it apparently does not belong to that category. And this really raises the question—well, this is all in parentheses really. What? So what about what it says that one may not be healed through idolatry? According to Maimonides, one may not be stupid. To be healed through… that’s what Maimonides says: one may not be stupid. “You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” All those prohibitions are a prohibition against being stupid. There is no such thing—you won’t be healed. You merely come to believe in idolatry because of placebo—now I’m saying this in modern language. So yes, you were healed, but not because of the idolatry, rather because you believed in the idolatry—you’re stupid, and that is the prohibition. And this really is a dispute. According to Maimonides, the prohibition is the prohibition against being stupid. That is a bit strange; it does not sound that way from the Torah and the Sages, that the prohibition is a prohibition against being stupid. From there it sounds as though the prohibition really is to resort to other powers. Because according to Nachmanides, the question is how do I know that this is idolatry. Meaning, according to what? According to the things involved in it. If you see that he is involved with—what do you see? What do you see involved? So he invokes the Holy One, blessed be He, while dancing around the bonfire, that shaman. So what if he says so? He says so—so what? He said it. So what if he says it? But maybe this thing is actually drawing on some force of holiness and making use of it. How do you know when that force is drawn from holiness or drawn from impurity? Do you have some independent indication? According to the context of it—a spiritual context—according to how the person… But again, the person himself, you know, at one point they managed to drag me—I was ill—they managed to drag me to a few, one or two, alternative healers. And once I even went to Rabbi Elazar; I confess my sin today. I don’t know how they managed to do that, but already on the spot I told them this was the last time it was happening. I was young and… lucky that in the end I wasn’t sick. So the… to such an extent there was no power there that apparently I had not really been sick to begin with, meaning… So the… I once went to some guy who started explaining to me about energy lines and all kinds of things. I told him, listen, leave it, leave it, no explanations—just tell me what you want me to do. That’s all. Why? Because I say: if you have successes, then maybe you have good intuition and you’ve stumbled onto some way that works. But your explanations—you understand them about as well as I do, meaning more or less—you’re talking nonsense, you’re… leave it, spare me your explanations, just tell me what you want me to do. Let’s try and see whether it works or not. It did not work, of course. What I’m bringing here is just to make you understand that even if the person—don’t ask him—and he’ll tell you there are meridians and energy lines and he’ll explain it to you, he’ll give you a lecture, a full lecture on the matter, meaning a two-year course, a bachelor’s degree in some medicine or other—that’s all nonsense, there’s nothing there. He himself doesn’t understand what he is talking about at all. So I’m saying: the shaman too can tell you that he is acting on behalf of some idol that appeared to him in a dream and told him to do this. Now, that changes absolutely nothing. He may actually be using forces of holiness—perhaps, I’m offering a suggestion. Perhaps he is using… he simply doesn’t understand himself. He thinks he is acting by the power of, I don’t know, Baal Peor. Fine, so he is an idiot. But that assumption is not… the Rabbi is treating forces of holiness or impurity like natural things, but it seems to me that someone who holds that view would not assume that. He would say: it is impossible to use forces of holiness while thinking that you are serving idols. Why not? Do you know how forces of holiness work? I don’t know how they work. I have no idea. I don’t know either, but it sounds plausible to me that it doesn’t work that way. But there are halakhic definitions of idolatry, and what falls under the halakhic definitions of idolatry… No, we are not talking here about serving idolatry. Serving idolatry is forbidden. Even not for its own sake, it is probably Torah-level forbidden, although there is no death penalty. But from love or fear—the famous Maimonides, we have spoken about that more than once. But… But I’m talking about being healed through idolatry not in the sense that you are serving idolatry, but that you use an idolatrous context in order to be healed. You are not committing the prohibition of idolatry. It is not done for the sake of idolatry if you are using it for yourself; maybe that is… But I’m saying, if there are healing properties, then it heals. I’m not serving idolatry. Why not? I’m not serving idolatry. I want to be healed. That is already another matter, what it means to be healed through idolatry. There are those who say that accessories to idolatry are also subject to “be killed rather than transgress.” But not everyone agrees that accessories have the same law as the prohibition itself, and there is no “be killed rather than transgress” for accessories, not even for Torah-level accessories. There is Ran on rabbinic-level accessories. But even Torah-level accessories, it is not certain that one must be killed rather than transgress for them. And then it could be that if I am not serving idolatry myself, then the fact that the healing is done within a context of idolatry—so what? It is saving a life. If it works, it works. Feel okay with it. Wait, and if it is the prohibition of sorcery? Then why would that be… Maimonides says sorcery is a subsection of idolatry. The prohibitions of sorcery appear in Maimonides in Laws of Idolatry. Really? Be killed rather than transgress? Where is that written? In Maimonides, in Laws of Idolatry, the whole issue appears there—“you shall not practice divination or soothsaying”—it appears in Laws of Idolatry. That does not mean it is “be killed rather than transgress.” No, is it “be killed rather than transgress”? I don’t remember whether he writes it explicitly, but the commentators write that it is all idolatry. So is that on the side of the customs of idolaters, like sidelocks, or like not going to theaters, I don’t know? Is sorcery from that group? Ah, I… again, even regarding that, there are many halakhic decisors who say there is “be killed rather than transgress.” But that of course already belongs to the dispute over accessories, but again, Torah-level accessories, not rabbinic-level accessories—that is the novelty of Ran—but Torah-level accessories, which is a more common view. Understand? But regarding sorcery itself, in my opinion it is more than that. It is not merely that this is their way, because understand, the idolatry itself is that. So there is no real difference. Rather what? You do what those idiots do—you are stupid like them. That, according to Maimonides, is called the prohibition of idolatry. It is fundamentally an intellectual prohibition. You have to make it into practical implementation; thought by itself is not the prohibition of idolatry, you need ritual, one of the four services or in its particular mode of worship. But still, at root it is an intellectual prohibition. So why is there no coercion in matters of opinion? That is a great question, why there is no coercion in matters of opinion. Maimonides probably held either that there is no coercion in matters of opinion, or that he is talking about a person who somehow does know that this is idolatry or that it is forbidden. But if he knows, then according to what the Rabbi said earlier, he does not transgress. What? According to what the Rabbi said earlier, the whole prohibition… Perhaps he is not liable to death; why should he be liable to death if he is not transgressing? He is not liable to death. The question is how a person becomes liable to death for idolatry. There it is probably simply because if you worship due to inclination, then you are liable even to death. But with regard to the four acts of worship, there is also “accepting it as a god”; there too he transgresses idolatry if he joins to it. What? No, you need the four acts of worship, but there is a condition of accepting it as a god. No, what suddenly? But godhood is heresy, it is a conceptual error. The prohibition of idolatry is a practical prohibition. It is not apostasy or heresy; that is not the prohibition of idolatry. To believe in the Trinity is not the prohibition of idolatry; to believe in the Trinity is an error in faith. It is like denying a fundamental principle—it is worse. Fine, denying a fundamental principle, but that is not idolatry. The prohibition of idolatry is a practical prohibition, something you do. And Maimonides writes there: either through the worship specific to it, like excreting for Peor, or through one of the four forms of worship even if not specific to it, meaning slaughtering, receiving the blood, carrying it, and sprinkling it. Okay? Burning maybe? No, he says one of the four. Burning, yes, I don’t remember, because slaughtering really is not a Temple service. We need to look there; I don’t remember. In any case there are four such things. Okay, so I’m saying here—I return to the characterization of Christianity as a messianic movement—so the Tashbetz claims that part of it was performing wonders. And again, performing wonders by another power, not by divine power, but from the other side. And that of course depends on the question whether such a thing is possible. According to Maimonides, one can still say the same thing: sleight of hand, not wonders by another power. Maimonides—I mentioned him—writes that “it should not enter your mind that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders and create new things in the world.” I think Maimonides here is really referring, it seems to me at least, to Christianity. Because there one might think that it must be so, and then what happens? If a person performs wonders, you follow him even though he tells you all sorts of other nonsense. And because of that danger, Maimonides says: do not let it enter your mind that this is a criterion; it is not a criterion. He does not need to perform wonders; wonders validate nothing. According to Maimonides’s view, wonders validate nothing because there is no such thing as wonders; he is fooling you. And according to other medieval authorities (Rishonim), it could be that wonders really are actual wonders from the other side, but you still must not follow them; the Holy One, blessed be He, is testing you, as with a false prophet or something like that. Okay. Now, more than that: the Ritva attributes Jesus’s power to charisma, which is also something very characteristic of false messiahs, that they have some ability to sweep people along. Of course, this also depends on hard times—the period of the destruction, hard times and persecutions—then messianic movements flourish. We already discussed performing wonders. Twisted quotations from sacred writings, the Ritva says, yes. He draws close to simple folk who cannot really critique what he is saying. By the way, this reminds one of other movements; Hasidism too in a sense did something like that, and there is room to discuss this—I dealt with it not long ago. And the Christians brought proofs of his messiahship from the sacred writings. To this day there are chapters in Isaiah and other places where they show one by one that everything is described exactly as happened with Jesus; everything is wonderful. Which of course raises… We too commonly use gematria and all kinds of things. No, it’s not gematria. If only their gematrias were ten times better than ours. Really, gematrias are just side dishes to wisdom; they bring explicit verses, not gematrias. The verses describe what happened there: “he shall bear their sins,” that whole verse there, that chapter in Isaiah. There are descriptions that definitely—let’s say, no less well than the descriptions brought by us, not gematrias—descriptions written in the verses, no less good in my opinion. And therefore I am in general wary of relying on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh); I’ve written this more than once already. If the Sages do whatever they want with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), then in any case one cannot learn anything from it. Meaning, if “there is nothing that is not alluded to in the Torah,” then mathematically everything and its opposite is alluded to. No, the real meaning of “there is nothing that is not alluded to in the Torah.” What are you saying? “There is nothing”—you are taking it out of its simple meaning. “There is nothing that is not alluded to in the Torah”—you say that means you can extract anything, and that I agree with, but that is not the original meaning. That you can basically extract everything from the Torah. Once you can extract everything, then extract nothing. So I do not trust that medium. Meaning, what do I mean, I do not trust it? I trust the prophets, but I cannot learn anything from them. Meaning, it is not… Yes, I mentioned Rabbi Kalner, yes, who says that if the State of Israel is destroyed, he will take off his kippah. That is what I heard; I did not see it written, but I heard it in his name. I also saw it written—not that I wrote it because I wrote it; I saw it in some book, “Truth, Fanaticism, and Duality”; it appears there in the last part of the book. Okay, so here I said this a few years ago. I didn’t understand? Never mind. So maybe I heard it from you. Could be. I once heard it from someone, I don’t remember who. So the claim is that he really takes this seriously. Why? Because he says it is written in the prophets, there are signs, not to mention the Sages at the end of Sotah and elsewhere, “insolence will increase” and all those matters. I say: let’s say now that the State of Israel is destroyed, fine? Nothing happens, God forbid, no Messiah comes, we return to exile, canceled, the autonomy is revoked. That’s it, nothing happened, we returned to the same place. Fine? You understand that most of the public would not change anything in their faith. I hope—and I also believe—that that is what would happen. Okay, I tend to think that even Rabbi Kalner would not change anything despite what he himself says. I don’t quite believe him. Meaning, I believe him that this is what he thinks; I do not believe him that this is what he would do when it happens. Just as if the Messiah comes, people also won’t change. That I don’t know, maybe yes maybe no, but that is no longer my responsibility to realize those dreams; the Holy One, blessed be He, has to do that. But you understand what this means. What this basically means is that from the outset, when we understood the verses that way, even then we should not have drawn conclusions. Since if, when it is reversed, I can still manage with the verses, then the verses are in fact open to both interpretations, and then you can no longer derive anything from them. No, but maybe—it doesn’t have to be all or nothing—maybe the verses, there are certain interpretations that are more… Okay, I would not build on them. If I return to the criteria I mentioned earlier, I would not build on them to make any move that goes beyond what I would otherwise do. Certainly not a forbidden move. Why? One can say… Why not? I don’t trust them enough. Fine, but most things people do in life are also based on assumptions that have no certainty. No, I’m not talking about certainty. I’m saying that once you say the verses are open to several interpretations and you too are prepared to do that, then I would not build on it. I’m saying… Why? That’s probably how it is, but maybe… So because it’s probable… on that probability I don’t think I… I would not justify, on that basis, committing prohibitions, say. Not prohibitions, but somewhat dangerous things. What means somewhat? Yes, fine, there is no line; it is hard to draw the line. It’s not… I don’t know, maybe. In any case, the claim that you describe things in light of the verses—well, the Christians too offer descriptions in light of the verses, and they are descriptions that all in all, from what little I saw—yes, a little also online—from what little I saw, sound not bad. For someone who is not a great expert in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—at the edges those verses do not appear—but fine, let’s say it sounds not bad, no worse than what Rabbi Kalner would show me in his verses. I was not convinced that it is worse. And once that is the case, it means I do not believe either this or that. Meaning, I do not believe them not because I do not believe the prophets, but because I have no way—the text tells me nothing. I do not know what to extract from it. It is so flexible, so elastic, so moldable into all sorts of forms, that I do not know what I can do with it. Therefore in general—I once spoke about this when we discussed Torah study—I spoke about studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in general, not only deriving signs for the Messiah, that I see very limited value in studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). What is there to learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)? What do you learn from it? In my opinion you learn nothing from it. You learn from it only what you already knew before. That is the basic point. Meaning, what you learn from it is how to be a righteous person, fulfill commandments, and repent. That is what you learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). You will not learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) anything that a priori you do not already agree with. Because if it appears in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), then you will extract it from its simple meaning and explain… I have never in my life seen someone change his position because he read a chapter in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or verses in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)… never, I have never seen such a thing, it has not happened. There are those who study Talmud too. Hm? There are those who study Talmud too. No, I don’t think that’s true. That is, to me, a common accusation, but I don’t agree. Meaning, in the Talmud, since it deals with law and not morality, the initial intuitions are less strong. You say: this is the simple meaning of the Talmud, and accordingly this is the law, so “migo” carries argumentative force. What did I come to do, force the discussion against the logic? I say: I will force it only where I have strong logic, then I will force it. But there is some game here, because usually it is not about morality but about Jewish law, and my view is that these are two different things, so I come to a passage and they prove to me that “migo” has argumentative force. It would never have occurred to me that “migo” has argumentative force; “migo” looks like a lie to me. So now I have been persuaded. I now understand that there is argumentative force—meaning I learned something new. Since they did not innovate for me something immoral and call it moral—that is not… The intuitions here are logical intuitions, legal intuitions, so the Talmud teaches you that halakhic jurisprudence is built differently. Fine, then I learned something new, okay? But in the moral context it simply does not happen. Even among those… I mean there are some for whom maybe it does happen, “The King’s Torah” and things like that, so there… there maybe it does happen, although I don’t know what their initial intuitions were. But let’s say their initial intuitions were like those of any person—that there is morality and people and one has to take this into account and so on—but it says otherwise in the Torah. There at least you see that mode of thinking, that in conclusion they really go with what comes out. In that sense they are honest people, meaning they go with what comes out, and that is the conclusion. And once the conclusion is a halakhic conclusion, I am prepared to accept it. One can argue whether halakhically that really follows or not, but in my opinion the identification they make between morality and Jewish law is problematic, because in Jewish law there is another layer, and that is the moral layer, and one has to take that too into account when making practical decisions. But why, with regard to Jewish law there, why was the initial assumption that what one learns from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is specifically morality? What else will you learn from there? Jewish law? What? You’ll learn morality or history, fine. I’m talking about Torah, I’m talking about what… what is it supposed to teach me. I’ll learn history, that Josiah did such-and-such. Okay, very good. What about faith? Prophecy? Providence? What prophecy and providence? You’ll learn that there is prophecy and there is providence. Okay, I got it. Is there Torah study in that, just for fun? Here I am, who does not believe, and I extracted it from its simple meaning and now I get along with it despite the fact that there isn’t any, in my view, so what? Providence? Providence, of course. So one can also understand the Talmud by extracting it from its simple meaning; the question is—but someone who doesn’t believe this, then… No, I’m saying, the point is that the Talmud is a text with a more binding meaning on the interpretive level than the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), we shape it however we want; this happens every day, just look. The Talmud is not like that. There are disputes, true, everything is true, I once spoke about this. There are disputes and everything, and someone looking from outside thinks that people do whatever they want with the Talmud, but that is not true. Someone inside knows there is… there is a discipline. You argue, sometimes you are persuaded and sometimes not, but there are arguments, there is right and wrong, you cannot do whatever you want with the Talmud. The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is also like that. Hm? I was not impressed that way. There the interpretive space… I may be looking from outside, but I tried to look from inside and did not succeed. But this is simple. First of all, that thing you said about Christianity, that it interpreted verses there—there is precedent for that. That Rabbi Hillel you brought as a case, he says the Messiah already came and was consumed in the days of Hezekiah, and he interpreted all the verses and said it already happened and is over. Meaning, one can do that. So now what do you do with all the Sages? It is not certain that they told him your interpretation is wrong. They probably say… I think they say… that there is a tradition, or I don’t know exactly what. It could be they say that perhaps, as they sometimes say, the prophecy had the potential to be fulfilled in that situation and it did not work, so it will be fulfilled another time. But in practical terms he interpreted it, but not correctly. And that Hezekiah was a genuine messiah is fine, but why were the future messiahs not? That is where he erred. There? Hillel. Rabbi Hillel. Yes—what did he err in? It may be that he was right that Hezekiah was the messiah, yes, but he erred in saying there would not be one afterward. נכון, but still, in the end—okay, he erred—but what you said that this happened: it is written in the Sages that it can be interpreted about someone, so to speak, incorrectly. But still, I think even when reading the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), you cite certain boundaries that you did learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). That there will be a Messiah—that comes from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Where did it appear from? That there will be a Messiah, that there will be redemption, that there will be a return to the Land, that there will be a shoot from the stump of Jesse, that there will be… I can explain to you easily that this is not… easily—far less speculative than other things people do with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). What? What? That the world will be better, that’s all. Who says Messiah is a person, that he will arrive? The world will be corrected—indeed, yes, the world has become more moral, today people are more enlightened. Everything is fine—there, the coming of the Messiah. Wait—even that, I assume that if we sit a bit more and sharpen it a little more, but even that is something learned from the Torah. It’s not—you can say according to the Torah, according to someone who understands very deeply, that the end will be apocalypse and the world will be only evil and then a good end. If you are talking about that level of interpretation, then that I already know. From where do you know? I know it from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Fine, but what more is there to learn there? On the basic level, clearly—I also learn the revelation at Sinai from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), I learn that too from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). I learn a few basic things from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), okay, I understand. But to study the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) means to study every verse, to analyze precisely, to make contradictions. I am not talking about studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in order to understand the world it introduces me to. Okay, that is on the level of general knowledge, like all of us. We are all there. To study the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) means to invest effort and time in it, to study it the way we do with the Talmud. I do not mean the general ideas. Fine, there is God—I learn that too from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Okay, I’m not talking about that. The ways of divine governance. For example, the relation… when one sees, for example, how Ezra and Nehemiah establish the kingdom here, actual building. Doesn’t that also give inspiration for how it is supposed to happen? Only if I would have thought so on my own. Otherwise I would say that was a different period, and there it worked that way, and don’t apply it to our period. By the way, people do that. They do it in places where it doesn’t fit, so they do; and in places where it does fit, they don’t. And that is exactly the interpretive freedom there that bothers me, meaning it frustrates me. The Talmud is far more—you can cut it to pieces. There are people who are experts in that; I don’t understand it. In scholarship they can’t? No, scholarship will come and cut chronologically, whatever. I mean conceptually. I don’t care if it was formed over different periods; I also think it was formed over different periods and not all at once. But yes, in this corpus there is a certain worldview, within which of course there is room for many shades and disputes, but the discourse is clear. In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), even the discourse is not clear. However you come to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), that’s what you’ll do with it. It is so open that I don’t know what the point is of dealing with it at all. Again, maybe that’s just a personal taste. I don’t know what to do with it, but I find no value in it. It teaches me nothing, so I don’t deal with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Fine, that was the Christians. The second example—I still want to—the second example is Bar Kokhba. With Bar Kokhba again there are different sources in the Sages and one can collect various matters. But one thing is fairly clear with Bar Kokhba: there was no transgression of Jewish law there. No change of religion or things like what happened with Christianity or Shabbetai Tzvi. There was no transgression of Jewish law of the active and blatant kind. There may have been something, supposedly… Fine, yes, but some mutilating of the young men of Israel. Okay, there is a prohibition of wounding. But that’s not what I mean, that’s not the point. By the way, in one of the sources it says that the Sages suggested he do that, meaning to train with horses and uproot cedars, a suggestion of the Sages as to how to do it. The Sages suggested it to him? Why? What I remember is that at first he mutilated them, and then the Sages told him: don’t mutilate them; instead have them train with horses and uproot cedars. But what does that mean? It means that basically they suggested the… In the end these things too require some… clearly people were injured by that as well. And that is not mutilation in the sense of… So he was a more extreme trainer. Okay, but still, again I say, fine, neither this nor that is called transgressing Jewish law. I don’t think so. Formally yes, but that’s not what we are talking about. Because he thinks this is the right thing to do when preparing people for war. In Sayeret Matkal they do things that, if I were there, would not count as mutilation—I would die. Fine, so is it permitted to do that or forbidden? People are harmed. Even the supermen there get hurt. They were not all born ministering angels. Yes, there is a difference between me and ministering angels. They are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. So what does that mean? Is it permitted or forbidden? It is permitted because it is necessary; the needs of war require it. What can you do? That is not called transgressing Jewish law; here it is common sense. So what is it then? There are several things. First, forcefulness. Meaning, he went out to war against an empire that, at least one could argue, he had no chance against. You, against the Romans who conquered the whole world? You go out with your brave riders who uprooted cedars to war against the Romans? Come on, really, that’s not serious—that is delusional forcefulness. Not forcefulness but lack of realism. Yes, lack of realism, that’s what I meant. The number of Jews in the world was not that much smaller at that time. What? The number of Jews in the world—in the Land there lived at least two million. Yes, but don’t compare that to Rome; don’t compare it to Rome plus all the legions they recruited from all their colonies. Their army was not an army of Romans; after all a large part of the Roman army was not Roman, and still they fought the great battles when less than 50% were from the… Scipio defeats Hannibal with an army in which less than 50% are… Scipio and Hannibal was much earlier. What? Yes, when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power; now, when there are emperors, it is steadily declining. Yes, I don’t know. I’d have to check that historically; I’m not a historian. As far as I am at least impressed, there is the book by Harkabi, “Vision, Not Fantasy,” and others who claim that the balance of power was simply utterly hopeless. But I don’t know, I’m not a historian. Maybe that’s wrong. It’s like what Uri Milstein claims about the War of Independence. Uri Milstein claims that we were actually more or less equal in power to those who came out against us. All the great miracles people make out of the War of Independence are all myths. That’s what he claims. Well, he does bring numbers, by the way. How many weapons and so on. Uri Milstein claims every provocative thing, he claims it. Yes. Fine, but you know, sometimes just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. I mean, he brings numbers. One has to check where he uses numbers and what exactly his interpretation of the matter itself is. Okay, in any case, there was here, let’s say, unrealistic use of force. There was messianic hubris here, which in hindsight turned out not to be, but then the question is what he himself thought, and that is not clear. And in several places in the Sages it is written that he said to the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the Universe, neither support nor hinder. Don’t help and don’t interfere. We don’t need You; we’ll manage on our own. And again, this is mentioned as criticism by the Sages of Bar Kokhba, and it seems to me that this falls into category 3b that I mentioned earlier—the problem of… This is not transgressing Jewish law. There is no transgression of Jewish law here. But there is something here that contradicts accepted beliefs, accepted worldviews. The opposite of messianism; that actually seems to me like something anti-messianic. Why? Once someone says something like that, it means he is not… he comes from a conception of this world, of forcefulness. No, he declared himself the Messiah. What do you mean? He would bring redemption. The Holy One, blessed be He—wait, I will bring redemption; You come afterward and do what You need to do for us. I’ll manage here with the Romans, leave it to me, just don’t interfere. That’s what he said. Once someone says that, then he is completely… So maybe arrogance, maybe he is unrealistic. If he is unrealistic, then he is unrealistic because he is arrogant, not because of messianism. He is unrealistic in a messianic context, but not because the messianism causes his lack of realism. Meaning, it’s not that he says I am taking irrational risks because the Holy One, blessed be He, will help. That is usually what happens among forceful messianists. Correct, but still there was some unrealistic forcefulness here in a messianic context. Okay? And in the book by Hamburger that I already mentioned, he hangs everything on Bar Kokhba, of course; he makes a whole stew out of it. Because the Zionist movement relied on Bar Kokhba, and he is a very fundamental part of the ethos—yes, “We carry torches,” the famous song. How does it go there? No miracle happened for us. No miracle happened for us. In short, the Holy One, blessed be He—neither hinder nor support—that is, don’t help and don’t interfere. Meaning, we manage by ourselves. Basically this is part of the Zionist ethos, and he immediately makes the comparison. More than that, he is very tendentious there, so he also established the Bar Kokhba Association, which was a sports association. Like Hapoel and Maccabi, there was a Bar Kokhba sports association. What? The Hashomer organization at first, or the group itself, Bar Giora, or guys… Yes, no, there was a sports association, Bar Kokhba sports clubs, that engaged in physical development. And Hamburger writes there in the book: physical development is false messianism; we should only sit in the study hall all day. That is nonsense again, of course. Bar Kokhba’s men also wore pants; so should we therefore not wear pants? What is the connection? The question is whether the forcefulness was the problem that turned the movement into a messianic movement. Who says? Excessive forcefulness or unrealistic forcefulness, I understand. But the fact that they engaged in physical development—fine, when you prepare for war you need training. Why is that called false messianism? That is just tendentious interpretation. This context of relying on one’s own power and leaving the Holy One, blessed be He, aside also comes up in contexts of… Yes, after all Bar Kokhba’s uncle, Elazar of Modi’in. So the Talmud says that he used to pray in Beitar and thus he protected the city from the Romans, and then they managed to sow conflict between Bar Kokhba and his uncle, and he stopped praying, and that is how they managed to enter the city. Immediately a heavenly voice came forth and said: “Woe to the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock! A sword shall be upon his arm and upon his right eye; his arm shall wither away, and his right eye shall utterly darken.” You killed Rabbi Elazar of Modi’in, the arm of Israel and their right eye; therefore the arm of that man shall wither away, and his right eye shall utterly darken. Immediately Beitar was captured and Ben Koziva was killed. Yes, that is a quotation from the Jerusalem Talmud in Taanit. So again, I think this point—I am not sure how much the description is historical—but it comes again to express the idea that spirit is supposed to do the work here, not military power or ordinary physical power. Okay, so also in this matter it seems to me that this midrash or this Talmud passage is also saying that. Maimonides writes about Bar Kokhba: “Rabbi Akiva, a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah, was the armor-bearer of King Ben Koziva, and he would say of him that he was the King Messiah, and he and all the sages of his generation imagined that he was the King Messiah.” By the way, not everyone agrees with Maimonides on this matter; in the Talmud itself it says there was disagreement about Bar Kokhba. But Maimonides claims that Rabbi Akiva and all the sages of his generation thought he was the Messiah, until he was killed because of sins. Once he was killed, they knew that he was not. “And the Sages did not ask from him any sign or wonder.” That is only to say that one does not need sign or wonder; in that sense it is actually positive. Meaning, they did not ask him for sign or wonder because one does not need sign or wonder, meaning they correctly evaluated him as the Messiah. That was a correct evaluation. Where did they err? After all, Rabbi Akiva did not exit the fold of Israel as part of a messianic movement, certainly not the other sages of that generation. Why? Because they were mistaken, because they did not know. Afterward, when it became clear that he did not succeed, the consequential test proved that he was not the Messiah. Maimonides understands that with Bar Kokhba one really could not diagnose him while it was happening. Only the consequence made it possible to identify him as a false messiah. By the way, not everyone agrees with this. Why can’t we assume it was like Hezekiah, who in the end did not succeed because the generation was not worthy? Fine, maybe it even was that. Maimonides says nothing. Maimonides says nothing, but I don’t know, that could certainly be. Maimonides—I do not recall at the moment any statement that Bar Kokhba was not okay. But clearly, in the end, he was not the Messiah in actuality. It may be that he was worthy and we did not merit it—all good—but he was not the Messiah in actuality. So the test is a consequential test. Meaning, in Bar Kokhba’s own conduct Maimonides apparently sees no essential flaw. In the behavior of Rabbi Akiva and all the sages of Israel there is no issue that—okay, he rebels against Rome, what makes him a messiah by that? And how does he drag everyone along? What I am saying is that here too there is some forcefulness, and even rebellion against the Holy One, blessed be He—yes, this “don’t interfere and don’t help.” And even that is apparently not enough, in Maimonides’s eyes, to determine that there is something problematic here. It became problematic only when the results became known. But not with respect to Bar Kokhba—I’m asking with respect to Rabbi Akiva and the sages of the generation. Yes, because they saw a man who was succeeding against… after all, at first he succeeded. So he rebelled, he brought all Israel, he united them under his banner, he succeeded in driving the Romans out of here, he wanted to build the Temple, so he said apparently this is the Messiah. Here comes a king; after all, he conducted himself with royal customs. By the way, that too is a messianic feature—you conduct yourself with royal customs, you mint coins. Today in archaeology they found coins that Bar Kokhba minted like a king. That is the custom; that is how you express that you are king: you create your own coins. There was some kind of conduct here. But you adopted that same approach that says that when you go with force that is unreasonable and in an unrealistic way… I offered suggestions, what? I offered suggestions, I didn’t say. No, so I’m saying I give enough credit that Rabbi Akiva too may have thought this had some chance. No, that’s what I’m saying—I’m trying to show that each of the suggestions I offered above, now I’m testing against the facts. So I show that at least according to Maimonides it seems that this is not enough—that you use some unrealistic force—unless he did not think it was unrealistic. Maybe he did, like Yossi said, I don’t know. And the fact that he said to the Holy One, blessed be He, “don’t help and don’t interfere”—even that apparently was not enough to make the diagnosis. Only the results, only the consequential test in the end. That is Maimonides. I’m saying there are others who learn differently and definitely criticize Bar Kokhba for his conduct. In the Talmud itself there is criticism of Bar Kokhba’s conduct not only according to the results. These midrashim are critical midrashim that say “don’t help and don’t interfere”—yes, they connect that to his downfall. Meaning, his conduct while it was happening was problematic conduct. But Maimonides—in fact I am showing the spectrum of possibilities—from Maimonides’s perspective even that is apparently not enough, although in the Talmud and in other medieval authorities (Rishonim), and certainly in later authorities (Acharonim), one does indeed see that it is certainly enough to determine that this is a messianic movement in the… Maharatz Chayes, for example—yes, he says that they will not restore the crown of Israel “by their power and the might of their hand”—“my power and the might of my hand”—that was basically the false messianism, which is also very much what Zionism is accused of. These things can be very applicable in a contemporary way. Rabbi Yaakov Emden has a book called Biraat Migdal Oz. Rabbi Yaakov Emden is very interesting, and also connected to Sabbateanism—more on that later. Not connected in the sense of belonging to it, but he fought against Sabbateanism in Rabbi Yehonatan Eybeschutz. But in his book Biraat Migdal Oz, there he gives—he is one of the few who really made some broad, systematic treatment of the phenomenon of false messianism. And he claims—he classifies them into several types. The seventh type: he has a really systematic discussion there—“deceived fools, like Ben Koziva, like David Almosar, Rabbi Solomon Molcho, and Rabbi Asher Lemlein.” Notice, the last two he still calls “Rabbi,” after he determines they were false messiahs. Meaning, but they are “deceived fools and others, who use adjurations and practical Kabbalah, suddenly transgressed and were punished, even though their intention was good, and they did not violate the Torahs,” meaning they did not depart from Jewish law, “and did not cast off restraints,” they did not depart from tradition. I think “Torahs” means Jewish law, and “tradition” means the second category, that is 3a and 3b. Okay. “Nevertheless, they violated the oath by which the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel not to force the end.” Which I understand to mean that he does not understand this as violating tradition, but as acting unrealistically. Do not force the end, do not rebel against the nations, do not do unrealistic things. “They were a stumbling block and a rock of offense to the children of Israel, arousing against them the jealousy and hatred of the nations.” The problem is not the Holy One, blessed be He, whom you rebelled against through the oaths; rather, these oaths are practical guidance. That is how he sees it. The oaths are practical guidance that one should behave realistically. And when you behave unrealistically, the problem is not that you violated the oaths; the problem is that you did not behave properly, because one ought to behave realistically. And that is what he says: the problem was the jealousy and hatred of the nations, “to distance from them the wondrous providence of the blessed God, which did not cease to show its power in this bitter exile, to set our feet upon the rock against all who rise against us in every generation to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us. And how can a prisoner free himself, to conquer the kingdom by twisted and rash counsel, by foolish counselors?” Meaning, here he really gives a definition for this kind of false messianism, saying: you did not cast off the yoke, you did not leave Jewish law, you did not cast off restraints, perhaps you did not even abandon tradition—but there was unrealistic, forceful behavior here, provoking the gentiles, and that is how he understands the Three Oaths. And from his point of view, the Three Oaths are a source for false messianism. Whoever violates the Three Oaths is diagnosed as being part of false messianism. Not because there are oaths in the formal sense and you violated oaths that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposed on us, and that is your transgression. The transgression is not the violation of the oaths; rather, the oaths tell you how to behave properly, and if you did not behave that way, you behaved improperly. Okay. “Regarding these sects and those like them it was said: ‘And some of those with understanding shall stumble, to refine among them, and to purify, and to make white, until the time of the end, because it is yet for the appointed time.’ Happy are the believers, children of believers, in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who will not hasten and will not break through to go up as a wall, but will seek the peace of the city to which they were exiled, and beseech the Lord to restore their captivity.” That the Holy One, blessed be He, will save them, and not they themselves. “They will give Him no rest; they will plead and ask, and He will answer them and heal them, to gather their dispersed ones one by one, and bring them to the land that He swore. Happy is the one who waits and reaches.” So that you did not wait. Sometimes it already sounds as though not only excessive forcefulness is a problem, but that in general the Holy One, blessed be He, has to do this; you should do nothing. As in the background there probably still is the concern about excessive forcefulness. Later we will see further treatments by Rabbi Yaakov Emden of other types of messianism. This is the seventh type. There are other kinds of messianism—he already brought several names here, Solomon Molcho, David Almosar, Rabbi Asher Lemlein, all sorts of people—and we’ll also talk about them, because they too basically join this type of messianism.