Messianism, Lecture 5
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Table of Contents
- Defining a messianic movement and the possible criteria
- Prohibition, tradition, lack of realism, and the Three Oaths
- Repentance initiatives, resulting breakdown, and campaigns like two Sabbaths
- Christianity as a messianic movement, Gnosticism, and dependence on the consequential test
- Maimonides, Modena, and the Tashbetz on Jesus: what counts as decisive
- Miracles, the “other side,” and the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides
- Charisma, interpretation of scripture, and criticism of studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) as proof
- Bar Kokhba: without uprooting Jewish law, with militancy, and with a consequential test
- Contemporary implications and a Zionist ethos through Bar Kokhba
- Rabbi Yaakov Emden: a systematic classification of false messianism and forcing the end
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the difficulty of defining a “messianic movement” in the negative sense, because there is no clear halakhic definition, and it proposes possible definitions based on a practical attempt to bring the messiah, on forbidden or unconventional actions, and on unrealistic actions that rely on religious certainty. It examines Christianity and Bar Kokhba as test cases and asks whether identifying something as negative messianism is mainly consequential, or whether it can be recognized in real time. It presents the positions of Maimonides, the Ritva, the Tashbetz, and Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, and emphasizes that the interpretation of the sources and the historical facts is vague and at times speculative. It then presents Rabbi Yaakov Emden, who classifies “false messianism” into types and defines one type in which there is not necessarily any uprooting of Jewish law, but there is “forcing the end,” provoking the nations, and lack of realism, using the Three Oaths as practical guidance.
Defining a Messianic Movement and the Possible Criteria
The text states that there is no clear halakhic definition of a messianic movement, and therefore the distinction is mainly sociological or part of the sociology of religion. It suggests that an extreme approach in the style of Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz sees a messiah who has arrived as “not messiah,” so that messiah is only a future hope that is not supposed to be realized. It presents an approach according to which the very attempt to “bring the messiah” turns a group into a messianic movement, because the messiah is supposed to come from above, from the Holy One, blessed be He, and not as a result of deliberate human activity.
The text illustrates this through Nachmanides’ interpretation of Joseph, who acted to bring about his dreams and therefore did not tell Jacob that he was alive. It brings the criticism that even a dream sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, does not place an obligation on a person to “help” bring it about, certainly not when the means used are themselves problematic. It distinguishes between natural, unobjectionable action that can be seen as contributing to redemption, and action that gets its justification only from a messianic goal and therefore becomes invalid or improper.
Prohibition, Tradition, Lack of Realism, and the Three Oaths
The text suggests that a definition of a messianic movement in the negative sense can focus on particular modes of action. It proposes one possibility in which the actions involve a halakhic prohibition, another in which the actions contradict what is accepted in tradition even without a formal prohibition, and another in which the actions are not justified by realistic thinking and are done מתוך the assumption that “the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us,” so risks are ignored. It cites the Three Oaths as a possible guide to what one is “not supposed” to do, and notes that there are two versions in Rashi that change the meaning.
The text emphasizes that these criteria overlap, and that sometimes people justify departures from tradition and even outright transgressions by claiming that bringing the messiah justifies it. It cites the Rabbi of Brisk, who says that the messiah will not come even if it involves violating a rabbinic prohibition. It addresses the claim that there is no tradition about “how to bring the messiah” and argues that the problem is precisely the justification for deviating from ordinary modes of conduct in the name of bringing the messiah, so that the claim “tradition does not apply to this case” is itself a sign of negative messianism.
Repentance Initiatives, Resulting Breakdown, and Campaigns Like Two Sabbaths
The text gives the example of initiatives to bring the messiah by encouraging the public to perform commandments, such as a “campaign to keep two Sabbaths,” and defines this as, in principle, “completely fine,” since it is simply encouraging observance of commandments. It warns that even such an initiative can create a consequential problem if the messiah does not come afterward, because this may lead to a major breakdown and disappointment, and one can always say that “someone didn’t do what they were supposed to,” making the initiative unfalsifiable. It links this to the “consequential criterion” of a messianic movement and to the ability of such moves to lead to problematic results even without any transgression.
Christianity as a Messianic Movement, Gnosticism, and Dependence on the Consequential Test
The text presents Christianity as the first prominent case of messianism and places it within the mystical Gnostic movements that arose before the destruction of the Temple and continued afterward, some of which introduced new writings or new interpretations and changed Jewish law to some extent. It explains that gnosis means “knowledge” or “hidden knowledge,” distinguishes it from agnostic, and notes that Christianity fit into a broader set of movements that sought to advance redemption.
The text asks whether the problem could already have been identified in Jesus’ own time, or whether history alone decided it, and emphasizes that Christianity’s historical results included abandonment of commandments, persecution of Jews, and pogroms. It notes that Jesus, at least at the beginning of his path—and some say until the end of his life—was an ordinary commandment-observant Jew, and that even around the crucifixion there are contradictory descriptions in rabbinic sources regarding the role of the sages and of the Roman authorities.
Maimonides, Modena, and the Tashbetz on Jesus: What Counts as Decisive
The text quotes Maimonides in the Laws of Kings: “Even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the messiah and was executed by the court,” and emphasizes that Maimonides describes a consequential stumbling block in which Christianity caused “Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be scattered and humiliated, the Torah to be altered, and most of the world to be led astray to worship a god other than the Lord.” It presents this as a clear consequential measure and remarks that the methodological question is not “what really happened” but “how the sages saw” what happened, because that is what defines negative messianism for them.
The text cites Magen Va-Herev by Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, who argues that Jesus “is found to have acknowledged not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah,” and explains that this raises the difficulty of distinguishing when deviation from the Oral Torah counts as heresy and when it is just interpretation within a discourse of dispute. It presents a principled claim that if a deviation from the Oral Torah was identified, then this is a false messiah, but questions how practical that criterion really is, because even changing something “from the Torah” almost always happens through interpretation. The example of “an eye for an eye” meaning monetary compensation shows just how much the gap between plain meaning and interpretation complicates the decision.
The text cites the Tashbetz in his pamphlet refuting Christian belief, where he argues that the incarnation, the trinity, and the divinization are later ideas unrelated to Jesus himself, and describes a claim that Jesus’ execution served as a test: if they succeeded in killing him, he was a false messiah, and if they did not succeed, he was the true messiah. It presents this as a kind of Russian roulette based on an unproven thesis and asks, “Where is it written that a true messiah cannot die?”
Miracles, the “Other Side,” and the Dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides
The text raises the possibility, including through Rabbi Kook in Ma’ayan Nevukhei Ha-Dor, that miracles did in fact occur, and presents a common view among medieval authorities (Rishonim) that miracles can also be performed from the side of impurity, whereas Maimonides and those influenced by him deny that such a power exists and view sorcery and idolatry as nonsense or sleight of hand. It mentions a long responsum by Va-Yashev Ha-Yam (Rabbi Yaakov Hillel) that expands on this dispute, and brings a principled halakhic discussion about alternative medicine and the status of “being healed through idolatry,” including a claim attributed to Maimonides that the basis of the prohibitions is “a prohibition against being stupid,” as against the other side’s difficulty of how, in practice, one identifies the source of a power and whether the practitioner’s mistaken explanation proves anything.
Charisma, Interpretation of Scripture, and Criticism of Studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) as Proof
The text attributes to the Ritva a characterization of Jesus that includes charisma, performing wonders, distorted quotations from sacred scripture, an appeal to the common people, and bringing “proofs” from scripture for his messianic status. It points to similarities between such phenomena and other movements in which people begin “within the halakhic world” and then gradually slip, whether as a cynical maneuver or as a sincere development that becomes excessive.
The text expresses broad reservations about relying on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) for contemporary or messianic decisions, arguing that the text is “flexible” and can be molded so that one can derive “both a thing and its opposite,” and therefore “the moment you can get everything out of it, get nothing out of it.” It gives an example attributed to Rabbi Kalner, who said that if the State of Israel were destroyed he would take off his kippah, and argues that even if such a scenario actually happened, most of the public would not change their beliefs and would still manage with the verses. Therefore, verses are not a basis for decreeing exceptional steps, certainly not forbidden or dangerous ones.
Bar Kokhba: Without Uprooting Jewish Law, With Militancy, and With a Consequential Test
The text presents Bar Kokhba as a case in which there was no conversion to another religion and no systematic abandonment of commandments, and emphasizes that the problem is not a halakhic crossing of lines but questions of militancy and lack of realism in a revolt against the Roman Empire. It brings rabbinic traditions according to which Bar Kokhba said, “Master of the universe, do not help and do not shame,” and presents this as criticism of a conception that contradicts accepted beliefs. It also cites from the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit, the story of Elazar of Modi’in, whose prayer protected Betar, the conflict that was stirred up between them, and the heavenly voice: “Woe to the worthless shepherd who abandons the flock… you have killed Rabbi Elazar of Modi’in, the arm of Israel and the light of their right eye… immediately Betar was captured and Ben Koziva was killed.”
The text quotes Maimonides: “Rabbi Akiva was a great sage among the sages of the Mishnah… and he said 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 wonder,” and interprets this to mean that Maimonides presents the decision mainly as a consequential test and not as an essential defect in the conduct while it was happening. It notes that there are other sources that see criticism already in real time, but emphasizes that Maimonides presents a possibility in which even problematic signs are not decisive without the final outcome.
Contemporary Implications and a Zionist Ethos through Bar Kokhba
The text notes that in Hamburger’s book a comparison is made between Bar Kokhba and the Zionist ethos, including use of the expression “do not help and do not shame” as “no miracle happened for us” and as an emphasis on relying on one’s own strength. It also notes that sports associations called Bar Kokhba and the HaShomer organization under the name Bar Giora serve, in Hamburger’s presentation, as critical material against physical training, and defines this criticism as tendentious and a false question, because training for war is not necessarily false messianism.
Rabbi Yaakov Emden: A Systematic Classification of False Messianism and Forcing the End
The text quotes Rabbi Yaakov Emden in Birat Migdal Oz, where he classifies “deceiving fools like Ben Koziva, like David Almosnino, Rabbi Shlomo Molcho, and Rabbi Asher Laemmlein” as a seventh category, and describes them as people whose “intentions were for the good” and who “did not violate the Torahs and did not cast off the yoke,” yet “nevertheless transgressed the oath… that they should not force the end.” It explains that for him the Three Oaths function as realistic guidance against provoking the nations and against militancy that brings “the jealousy and hatred of the nations,” and quotes his language: “How can one who is bound free himself in order to conquer the kingdom on the advice of reckless madmen, counselors of foolish counsel?”
The text concludes by emphasizing that for Rabbi Yaakov Emden the very fact of not waiting—“that you did not wait”—and the view that the Holy One, blessed be He, must save “and not they,” are central components in the distinction, and that further on additional types of false messianism will be presented through the figures mentioned.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The topic of messianism. I said that basically there are several possibilities; I’m just summarizing where we stand. There are several possible ways to define a messianic movement, since there is no halakhic definition and it’s very hard to decide this from clear sources. It’s more of a sociological phenomenon, or sociology of religion, but not really Jewish law, at least according to most views, aside from some exceptions today. So one can raise, a priori, several possibilities for defining a movement as messianic. And again, “messianic movement” in quotation marks—that is, a messianic movement in the negative sense of the term. You could say a messianic movement is just a person who hopes for the messiah. Fine, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. So I began with an approach that probably shouldn’t really be brought into the discussion, and that’s Ben-Gurion and Leibowitz: a messiah who has arrived is not a messiah. So the messiah only needs to come in the future; you’re supposed to hope for him, but he isn’t really supposed to materialize. A less extreme approach says that the very fact that you’re trying to bring the messiah—that itself turns you 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 the result of our activities. So any practical involvement whose purpose is to help bring the messiah—like the example I mentioned from Nachmanides about Joseph, who acted in order to realize his dreams, and therefore didn’t tell his father that he was still alive, and Nachmanides explains in one of his explanations that this was because he wanted to realize the dreams. And many have already commented on this explanation of Nachmanides: even if that dream was sent by the Holy One, blessed be He, the job 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 it. And that’s certainly out of place—and this connects to what comes next—certainly in a case where the activity meant to realize that dream is itself problematic. Meaning, were it not for the motivation of realizing the dream, the action would be problematic. And here, when he doesn’t tell his father that he’s still alive, that’s a problematic act. So at least in that kind of context, one can say that this is not imposed on you. Even if, naturally, you just dream that in some place, if you go there and settle in a certain community, redemption will come to that community—fine, you can go settle there and do your part to contribute to bringing redemption, and that still isn’t included in the criticism I mentioned of Nachmanides. But if you do something that is problematic in itself, and its whole justification is only that you’re realizing 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. So that’s the second definition. The third definition is that—well, really I already included it in what I just said—the third definition is the question of the ability to bring redemption, but there are certain types or certain 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 when these actions somehow contradict what is accepted in our tradition or something like that, let’s say, even though there may be no formal halakhic problem here, but that’s just not how one acts, it’s not accepted to act that way. I mentioned within that perhaps the Three Oaths with which the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel: that they should not ascend as a wall, that they should not rebel against the nations, and that they should not force the end, and that they should not delay the end—there are two versions in Rashi there that, of course, completely reverse the meaning. So even if one doesn’t treat this as a halakhic prohibition, there is still some sort of guidance as to what we are supposed to do, and someone who acts otherwise is not a halakhic criminal, but he acts in a way that is not how one is supposed to act, and maybe that can be defined as a messianic movement. Of course, you can say this even without the Three Oaths or some specific guideline, just that we are supposed to—properly, throughout history, people did not act this way, even though it isn’t a halakhic prohibition, and that already might raise doubts about this matter. Later on I may bring some examples. What?
[Speaker B] Tefillin stands. Tefillin stands.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, although tefillin stands are about giving Jews the opportunity to put on tefillin; I’m not sure the goal has to be specifically bringing redemption. It could be that around that too there is discourse about bringing redemption, but that can also be justified without any connection to redemption. And besides, I don’t know if trying to get people to put on tefillin is against tradition. Personally I don’t think it 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,” and so on.
[Speaker C] Is it allowed in the afternoon? What? Is it allowed to put on tefillin in the afternoon? All day.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are those who say it’s obligatory, not merely allowed. In principle, they used to wear tefillin all day. Today we don’t do that.
[Speaker C] In the Old City of Jerusalem there are some who do.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there are some who do. The third possibility is when we’re talking about actions that are, let’s say—actually also in the second possibility I mentioned, when Joseph didn’t tell his father that he was still alive, let’s go back to the example I brought from Nachmanides—how would we classify that action? Well, you could say there’s a halakhic prohibition here of honoring one’s parents, neglecting the positive commandment of honoring one’s parents, I don’t know, maybe. But you could also classify it differently: that basically it is simply not fitting to act that way. I don’t know if there is a halakhic prohibition in the formal sense, but clearly it isn’t right and it isn’t fitting to act that way were it not for the consideration of realizing the dream. So in a case where, without realizing the dream, the action is problematic, then realizing the dream also doesn’t justify it—that is, 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 not realistic. You take militant actions, you take risks, you do things that according to realpolitik considerations are not right to do, but you say: look, the Holy One, blessed be He, is with us, we are on the safe track to redemption, and therefore you are not troubled by risks of that sort. That too can be defined as an indication of a messianic movement. Again, there is a connection between these things, and very often they come together, at least some of them, and sometimes all of them. We’ll see examples, because doing things that are against our tradition—even that is often justified in the context of bringing the messiah. Meaning, fine, it’s true that usually people didn’t do this, but here there is some important goal, so that justifies it. There are people who would justify even outright transgressions this way. Fine, so I quoted the Rabbi of Brisk who says that techumin, yes, above ten handbreadths—he says that even if it involves a rabbinic prohibition, the messiah will not come even if it requires violating a rabbinic prohibition. But in the second category I mentioned—actions that are against accepted thinking or accepted tradition, but are not a halakhic prohibition—here you may not be able to accuse the person, he’s not a transgressor in the halakhic sense. And still you’ll hear from him justifications of the sort: okay, I understand that this isn’t the normal way we were educated to act, but bringing the messiah justifies it. So the line between these things is not always sharp; they overlap.
[Speaker B] Messiah and tradition are almost contradictory. What? There’s no tradition about how to bring the messiah, like every—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone who talks about messiah will be speaking against—no, tradition doesn’t say how to bring the messiah; tradition says how one ought to act. What? Tradition doesn’t relate to messiah. That’s what I’m saying. Tradition says how to behave in general.
[Speaker B] So anyone who talks about the messiah is basically in a place where there is no tradition about it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly the claim. No, that’s exactly the claim—that someone who says that in order to bring the messiah one may act in ways we did not receive through tradition, that itself is the problem. Tradition did not deal with the messiah; tradition dealt with how one ought to act. But the claim is that even in the means you adopt in order to bring the messiah, you are forbidden to deviate from the ordinary ways that, messiah aside, one ought to act. The very fact that you argue that tradition does not apply 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 about how to bring the messiah, but that is exactly the point—meaning that you don’t need a tradition about how to bring the messiah, because not necessarily.
[Speaker B] It’s almost impossible to escape that. What? It’s almost impossible to escape that definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, maybe to say that a person brings the messiah because he brings all of the Jewish people back in repentance and causes them to do commandments, or launches a campaign to keep two Sabbaths. I once heard of such a campaign: if Israel is redeemed when everyone keeps two Sabbaths, then someone tried to launch some initiative—come on, let’s all observe two Sabbaths and that will bring the messiah. In principle, there’s no problem with that; that’s perfectly fine, you’re causing people to observe. It could be that even there there would be a problem, because if the messiah doesn’t come after those two Sabbaths, there will be a big breakdown. And we talked about breakdown.
[Speaker D] There’ll always be some one person who didn’t keep it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then what’s the point of the campaign? Meaning, your campaign assumes that such a thing can happen. So it’s a kind of campaign that cannot be refuted. Meaning, you undertake some initiative while knowing that if it doesn’t work, the excuses are already in my pocket—document and receipt side by side. Yes, you just didn’t do what was supposed to be done, and therefore he didn’t come—that’s the… And still that won’t prevent the breakdown, and to some extent justifiably. Therefore, in the consequential sense—I spoke about the consequential criterion of a messianic movement—maybe even such a situation can be problematic, because it can lead to problematic results. Okay, so these are the possibilities. And at the end of the previous session I began to describe a bit how Christianity is treated. The first messianism that can be examined in this context, or the first prominent one that can be examined on this issue, is Christianity. Last time I described a bit that it was apparently part of the Gnostic movements, meaning movements that existed in that period and even predated 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 kinds of behavior, but not necessarily in order to bring the messiah, rather for various reasons, each movement and its own reasons. At the same time, among them there were also messianic movements, meaning they said that this is indeed how redemption is advanced. And Christianity was part of that. What were the Gnostic movements? These were mystical movements of that kind that arose somewhat before the destruction of the Temple and continued afterward, even before Christianity. Christianity is considered part of them. Here in the Land? Yes, yes, here in the Land, among the Jews, various kinds. They tended toward mysticism, they presented various new sacred writings or new interpretations, scrolls. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually belong to sects of this kind. They often dealt with the hidden, as I said, mysticism; they changed Jewish law a bit, or quite a lot at least—they changed the accepted Jewish law—although some say that actually the Pharisees changed the accepted Jewish law and that this had originally been the accepted Jewish law. Fine, there are all kinds of speculations about this. But there was a very strong Gnostic awakening in that period.
[Speaker D] Is “Gnostic” and “agnostic” the same thing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. I don’t really know what the word means. The literal meaning is probably related, yes, 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.
[Speaker D] Yes, but earlier the Rabbi said agnostic movements.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Gnostic movements.
[Speaker D] Ah, that’s what I heard.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But agnostic means he is a-gnostic, meaning there is some connection in meaning.
[Speaker D] Gnosis means knowledge, or hidden knowledge…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Something like that, and agnostic means I have no knowledge about hidden matters or something like that; I don’t know exactly what the literal meaning of that term is. So Christianity is almost a model of a messianic movement, the first important one. Now the question is: by virtue of what did it earn that label or that treatment? The question is whether one could have seen it while it was happening, or whether it is only because of the later results—and certainly the later results played a role here, because in the end Christianity led to complete abandonment of the commandments, not to mention the persecution of Jews and pogroms. Fine, there we are already dealing with situations where explanations are no longer necessary. But the question is whether the judgment of Christianity as a messianic movement is only because of the consequential consideration, because of what happened over the course of 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: here there is something problematic. And I mentioned that Jesus, at least at the beginning of his path, and there are those who say until the end of his life, was a commandment-observant Jew like anyone else.
[Speaker D] The evidence from that time—I mean his life… the very first stage, up until the crucifixion? I didn’t understand. When the Rabbi says that one could have—if there are things that define it as a messianic movement already then, or whether it’s only the results—what is the time frame?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, until the results arrived.
[Speaker D] No, what counts as the results for this purpose?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You decide. You tell me what, for you, is a sufficient consequential test to determine that Christianity is a messianic movement. After you tell me that, I’ll ask whether one needs to wait for the results or whether one could have asked the question earlier too. I don’t know how to draw the line there. But still the question is whether it’s consequential or not, and whether I can see things beyond the consequences of the matter.
[Speaker C] No, but was it considered a messianic movement even before Jesus’ crucifixion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—that’s the point. Yes, even about the crucifixion itself there is a dispute even in rabbinic sources. I think I mentioned this: there are sources where it seems the sages killed him, there are places where they said to the Roman authorities that they should kill him, there are all kinds of contradictory descriptions in this context. And even if the sages killed him, it’s not clear whether that was a formal death sentence, because capital law was no longer in force at that time. The Sanhedrin was no longer in the Chamber of Hewn Stone and the regular capital laws were no longer practiced there, and then one has to understand, even if the sages killed him, what exactly the background was, what exactly the problem was there. So I mentioned Maimonides in the Laws of Kings, where Maimonides writes: “And even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the messiah”—yes, of course this was censored in later editions—“and even Jesus the Nazarene, who imagined that he would be the messiah and was executed by the court.” Do you hear? Maimonides adopts the tradition—there is such a tradition in rabbinic literature too, though there too there are different descriptions—that he was executed by the court. “Daniel had already prophesied about him, as it says: ‘And the lawless among your people shall raise themselves up to establish the vision, but they shall stumble.’ And is there any greater stumbling block than this? For all the prophets spoke of the messiah as redeeming Israel and saving them and gathering their dispersed and strengthening their commandments, and this one caused Israel to be destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be scattered and humiliated, the Torah to be altered, and most of the world to be led astray to worship a god other than the Lord.” And again, here it seems the criterion is consequential. Meaning, I don’t think that in the time of Jesus—again, I don’t know how Maimonides saw it, because the question is whether we have to examine this in light of the history of what really happened there. Today I think we have more knowledge about this than Maimonides had.
[Speaker D] What additional knowledge do we have today about what happened, beyond the Christian writings? Christian writings which I assume were not all known to Maimonides—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, things like that. Because they weren’t known to him, I believe. No, I don’t think he knew the Christian writings; he knew Muslim writings. I don’t think he knew the Christian writings.
[Speaker D] Even the Muslim writings, I’m not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether that means the Qur’an or only Muslim philosophers.
[Speaker D] I think he writes that he read every book of idolatry of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sabeans, from the Sabeans. I don’t think every book, it seems to me. There’s some unclear issue about who 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 before too—when we try to examine how sages view a messianic movement, do we examine what happened historically and then say that the sages said it was a messianic movement? The more correct test is to ask how the sages saw what happened there, not what really happened there. Because sages living later, or sages at that time, saw what happened there—in that sense that is of course a relevant measure—but later sages who write about it, we have to look at what they write about what happened there, not what really happened there, because that will give us the criterion of what, from their perspective, was perceived as a messianic movement. So here Maimonides says that the test was a consequential test. I quoted Magen Va-Herev of Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena, who writes: “It turns out that Jesus acknowledged not only the Written Torah but also the Oral Torah.” Yes, basically he acknowledged the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, as was accepted in his view. Meaning, it seems there were deviations there in the Oral Torah and at some point that stood in his favor for a while. Meaning, it’s already hard to distinguish exactly what the issue was. Meaning, here too one sees something else: if there is heresy even in part of the Oral Torah, if that is already clear-cut—if not, then you can say it’s merely a dispute. He interpreted differently, and one can always dispute in the Oral Torah; the Oral Torah is full of disputes. Therefore it is very hard to determine when a person deviates from the Oral Torah and when he is simply offering a different interpretation, even if he is mistaken, but still within the discourse. Meaning, he is arguing, he has his own position, that is how he interprets. So it is hard to distinguish, but at the level of principle he is saying something here. Once you have identified that the man deviated from the Oral Torah, then he is a false messiah—that is clear. I’m not sure how practical this test is, but the principle itself is clear. Because otherwise, if he had publicly expounded changing even one minor thing from the Torah, no person 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 clearly identify that he was— even if in the end the sages killed him, and even if not—I said there are different sources about this—but clearly it took time before they were ready to judge him in that way. He says that 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 does it mean to change something from the Torah? There is almost no such thing as changing something from the Torah without mediation through the Oral Torah. What are you going to say—what does it mean to change something from the Torah? To say that tefillin are round? Fine, I’m proposing this interpretation in the Oral Torah for the verse “and they shall be frontlets between your eyes.”
[Speaker B] What? About vows versus gentiles? What is that? Why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where is that written in the Torah, that there is—
[Speaker B] “The Torah Moses commanded us is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about that?
[Speaker B] “The Torah Moses commanded us is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”—and not of a gentile. And where is that written?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the exposition of “inheritance.” Ah, always, always the interpretations of the sages are involved here, even in Torah-level laws, that’s clear. Therefore only something that even the Sadducees acknowledge, what is called in the language of the sages—that is, something written explicitly in the Torah: “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” Fine, that is written. Again, if I already take the sages completely seriously, the sages did draw verses away from their plain meaning. “An eye for an eye” means money. So what is that? Is that not called uprooting something from the Torah? So here I say: the moment the sages left something in its plain meaning, then you can say that if a person takes it away from its plain meaning, he is uprooting something from the Torah—not denying the Oral Torah but the Written Torah. But that isn’t entirely precise, because he too can present it as an interpretation of the Oral Torah, because the sages too uproot a matter from the Torah through their interpretation. So it’s not entirely clear to me to what extent… It seems clear to him that if he had uprooted something from the Torah, then there would be nothing to discuss—obviously they would not have gone along with him. Rather, he accepted part of the Oral Torah and part of it he did not accept, and therefore it was hard to diagnose and it took time before they understood that this man was outside the boundary. I’m not so sure this criterion also stands up to scrutiny, as I just said.
[Speaker C] But maybe the interpretation that “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation—that’s not uprooting something from the Torah; they say this is the Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not uprooting.
[Speaker C] No, if he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean that if he gets clever and says the Torah says “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it,” and I say “Desecrate the Sabbath day to sanctify it.” Not that I am proposing an interpretation that “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it” means going to the beach, which would be an Oral Torah interpretation, but he would say no, no, the Torah means the thirty-nine primary categories of labor, only I say not to observe the Torah. Fine, but then really, okay, that’s trivial.
[Speaker B] I think that’s what Maimonides says in the principles of faith, that since the father came before all the Jewish laws—he means the Christian religion, right? That no one can contest Jesus. So from that I understood that what Jesus claimed was that he could overturn Moses our teacher—that was exactly the line.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I’m saying: here you see that Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena says he did not challenge the prophecy of Moses, not the Written Torah, but rather a certain part of the Oral Torah. Again, there are some disputes about this, and again I don’t know what these disputes are based on. Meaning, to what extent did they really have knowledge of what happened there, or is this simply how they understood the sages’ attitude toward Jesus—later interpretations. The fact is there are different interpretations. Scholars too have different interpretations, so even if we have the information, that still doesn’t mean we entirely know what happened there.
[Speaker B] In any case he didn’t change a commandment, but what is the New Testament? The New Testament means that, as it were, the story with the Jewish people is over and it begins—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the New Testament is not Jesus. The New Testament is certainly the apostles, the twelve apostles and his disciples, and that is already afterward; it has nothing to do with him at all. These are later things. So this confusion—I insist on this, I sharpen the point—because this confusion is very typical of messianic movements. It is very typical. Meaning, all the false messiahs, some of whom I’ll also describe later, start this way. They begin within the halakhic world, they fully accept everything—on the contrary, they come to bring all the Jewish people back in repentance and to awaken, yes, the awakener—and they operate within the framework. And slowly there is some sort of slipping. And by the way, it’s not always clear that this was the process from the beginning—that it was some cynical trick, that they were really hiding and then slowly revealing; it could be a development. They really did begin from some sincere place. In some of them this is probably certainly true, probably certainly true; in some it seems true, that it began innocently. A person really thought he could bring redemption—not in that sense, but bring the Jewish people back in repentance, meaning do what is incumbent on every one of us. And slowly it spread and became somewhat excessive and he starts going wild, throwing things around once he succeeds.
[Speaker D] Then he doesn’t succeed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. You’re saying the direction of the correlation here is not clear. Okay.
[Speaker D] Or the opposite: if he succeeds, then he isn’t perceived as part of what is false in Judaism, but as some kind of—no, obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, but I mean someone who succeeds and then afterward it comes out. So the question is whether the revelation is because of the success or the success is because of the revelation. Meaning, the condition—yes, obviously. So the question is what is the cause and what is the effect. So for example the Tashbetz also describes things very similarly. He writes in Refutation of Christian Belief, he has a pamphlet like that, Refutation of Christian Belief—he lived in Algeria, so he could write it. 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 divinization, all these kinds of things, are entirely later ideas and have nothing to do with him at all. I mentioned that story about Rabbi Shach’s son, right? Last time. So it’s the same thing too, yes. Okay. In any case…
[Speaker B] What? That happened after the life of who… of who? What? Of Jesus?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Deification? Yes, yes, of course, I’m only bringing it as a metaphorical example. It’s not a comparison. Yes. No, I’m saying that in this sense, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was a greater false messiah than Jesus. Because he contributed to the process in a real way—not that it was created after him, yes, that’s fairly 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 succeed in killing him, then he’s apparently a false messiah. Again, an outcome-based test. Because if he’s a true messiah, there’s no chance we’ll be able to kill him. So what difference does it make? Either way, we can do it and see what comes out. That itself was the test. Okay, an interesting claim.
[Speaker B] Where does it say that a true messiah can’t die?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I already said that—alternatively. Meaning, let’s say this is Russian roulette. It’s Russian roulette when you build it on some thesis that isn’t grounded. Meaning, if the thesis were grounded, then really there’d be no problem. You wouldn’t succeed. But who says that’s actually true? Who says you can’t kill a real messiah? Fine, I don’t know. In any case, you can see again how much one can at least be impressed by this: to what extent medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) who deal with this issue are in the same darkness as we are. Meaning, relying on medieval authorities (Rishonim) on this issue comes with very limited warranty. I mentioned once, a long time ago, also regarding the interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded. I wrote various things in that context, and I wrote against medieval authorities (Rishonim). So people told me: Tosafot is against you, Rashbam says otherwise. I said okay, so they say otherwise—so what? They themselves say they don’t understand the interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded. So they offer their own speculation, and I offer my speculation—now decide which is better. There’s no reason to give authority to someone who himself says he doesn’t understand and is only trying to understand. Not from tradition, but from his own understanding. So maybe what he says is right, but now I’ll check whether it holds water or not. And if not—here’s a better idea. So I’m offering a better idea, and check who’s right. You can talk about authority—I don’t accept the authority of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) in full; we already talked about that. But I’m saying, even the authority of weight—I do give them some weight. But even weight I don’t give them in this context. What weight do they have? They don’t have data that I don’t have. They tried to construct an interpretation; either they succeeded or they didn’t. Meaning, they’re not relying here on some tradition such that I can say they’re closer than I am to the source, so I’m willing to accept that they’re more likely to be right than I am. In a place where they themselves say, we don’t understand, but this is our suggestion. The fact is, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) did not derive interpretations through the thirteen principles. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) write explicitly: it has been lost to us, we can’t do it. We don’t know how to do it. Fine—so if there’s an admission against interest, then what room is there for a claim of authority here? So I’m saying here too, you can see that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are also shooting in the dark. They’re trying to construct some theory of what happened there in order to explain this whole business, but basically this is not the result, I think, of tradition, but of one conjecture or another. Exactly what we hear today from historians, by the way; many times it’s not even any better. Fine, and I can also come up with conjectures. Okay then, we talked about that. Now there’s also—there’s actually another characteristic he writes, the… Is that actually true? Meaning, was this already the case in his own time, or was this myth created only after the fact? Maybe it really even was so? Rabbi Kook raises the possibility that it really was so, something like Perplexed of the Generation. Fine, maybe. What did Rabbi Kook say?
[Speaker D] What, in Jewish writings from the period, from around the time of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), more or less, it seems they were confronting Christians. I didn’t study it deeply, but I skimmed a bit, and it seems that many of them assume that it really happened.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Miracles really happened.
[Speaker D] Of course, it was through sorcery or the Other Side. No, about that—that’s true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here—I mentioned that there’s a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim), and this may depend on that dispute—that according to Maimonides and those who follow him, also Sefer HaChinukh, though in Sefer HaChinukh there are a few contradictions on this matter, there’s no such thing. Meaning, there is no other power, no Other Side. Meaning, if you perform miracles, it’s by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He. There’s no such thing. Even about miracles, Maimonides says various things—we once talked about this in the series on miracles. But even there, there aren’t really miracles in the sense people usually understand. But there is no power from a side that is not holy, from the side of impurity. There’s no such thing. But Nachmanides and other medieval authorities (Rishonim), who are closer, let’s say, to mystical kinds of conceptions, argue that it is possible to perform wonders also from the other side. Because a false prophet performs wonders, and nevertheless you must not follow him, because you have various indications—it doesn’t matter right now how—but you have indications there. So the claim is that genuine wonders can in fact be done even if they don’t come from a pure source. A very interesting dispute. There’s a very long responsum about it in VeYashev HaYam, by Rabbi Yaakov Hillel of Jerusalem, head of the Kabbalists’ yeshiva Nahar Shalom, if I’m not mistaken. So he has a very, very long responsum on this dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), about half a book, more or less.
[Speaker C] How does that connect to reality, though? What? The question is about reality. What? The question is whether such powers exist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you doing? One is right and one is wrong, but I don’t know—I don’t know who is right and who is wrong. Okay. So, a dispute. Once a question came up when I was on Atzmat Machshava—I hung around on that forum—so a question came up there, someone asked practically speaking: some Jew from the United States who had a dangerous and incurable disease. Medicine as we normally know it had no idea what to do with such a thing, and he was going to die. Meaning, within a limited time—I don’t remember how long, but roughly speaking he was going to die. Now he heard that there’s some Indian sorcerer in Bolivia—I don’t know exactly where in South America—who does various things, and in fact he succeeded with certain people. How many people? All of them? I don’t know—something. There are testimonies of success. The question was whether one may go and do that, and he uses all sorts of his idolatrous practices, some kind of shaman. So the question is whether one may use such a thing. So I argued there—there was some debate there, and Mordechai Halperin actually had to answer that question; he also participated in that debate. I argued there that according to Maimonides, certainly it is permitted. Because if it works, then it’s probably real medicine. Because Maimonides says that something which is not real cannot work. So either it’s placebo or it really works. Fine? One of the two. But if you have no other treatment, if you have nothing else, then do it. Meaning, just—you yourself don’t believe in the idolatry involved, you’ll do the medical practice, and he’ll do the medical practice. You don’t believe in the idolatry or any of that. But according to Maimonides, in principle, if it works then it probably isn’t really connected to that. It really raises the question… fine, this is all just in parentheses, really. What?
[Speaker B] What about the fact that it’s forbidden to be healed through idolatry?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s forbidden to be stupid according to
[Speaker B] Maimonides.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what he says. It’s forbidden to be stupid—”You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God”—all these prohibitions are a prohibition against being stupid. There’s no such thing as: don’t be healed. It’s just that if you come to believe in idolatry because of placebo—in modern language, that’s what I’m saying now—then you were healed, but not because of the idolatry; rather because you believed in the idolatry, so you’re stupid. And that is the prohibition. And this really is… according to Maimonides, the prohibition is a prohibition against being stupid. It’s a bit strange that it sounds from the Torah and from the Sages that the prohibition is a prohibition against being stupid. From there it sounds like the prohibition really is to resort to other powers, despite the fact that they really exist. But the other side of the coin is also not free of problems, because according to Nachmanides, the question is how do I know that this is idolatry?
[Speaker D] What do you mean? If he whitens something according to the things involved in it. If you see that he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s involved? What do you see? So that shaman dances around the fire while using the Holy One, blessed be He. But he has idols.
[Speaker B] No, but
[Speaker D] if it’s something according to how he describes it—if, for example, he says that it’s…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does he say? So what—what of what he said? So what if he said it? But if he… it could be that this thing is actually based on some holy force and he is making
[Speaker D] use of it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the person himself—I don’t know. In a certain period, when people managed to drag me there, I was sick, they managed to drag me to one or two alternative healers, and once I was even with Rabbi Elazar—I confess my sin today. I don’t know how they managed to do that, but already on the threshold I told them it was the last time that was happening. I was young. What? In the end I wasn’t sick after all. So that’s how powerful it wasn’t—that originally I wasn’t sick, meaning. So once I was with some guy—I don’t know—who started explaining to me about energy lines and all kinds of things like that. I told him, leave it, leave it, no explanations. Just tell me what you want me to do. And that’s all. I said why? Because I’m saying, if you’ve had successes, then maybe you have good intuition and you hit upon some method that works. But your explanations—you understand them as well as I do, meaning, more or less you’re talking nonsense. So leave it, spare me your explanations, just tell me what you want me to do, let’s try it and see whether it works or not. It didn’t work, of course. What I’m bringing here is only so you’ll understand that even if you ask the person, he’ll tell you there are meridians and energy lines, he’ll explain it to you, he’ll give you a whole general lecture on the subject—basically a two-year bachelor’s program in some kind of medicine or whatever—it’s all nonsense, there’s nothing there. He himself has no idea what he’s talking about. So I’m saying: that shaman can tell you that he’s really acting on behalf of some idol that appeared to him in a dream and told him to do such-and-such. Now that changes absolutely nothing. He’s actually using the powers of holiness—maybe, I’m suggesting. Maybe he’s actually using them; he simply doesn’t understand himself. He thinks he’s acting by the power of—I don’t know—Baal Peor. Fine, so he’s an idiot.
[Speaker D] But that assumption is not—meaning, you’re assuming that the use of holy powers or impure powers is like the use of natural things, but it seems to me that someone who holds that way doesn’t assume that. Meaning, it doesn’t make sense to use holy powers when you think it’s idols.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Do you know how holy powers work? I don’t know how they work, I have no idea. How do you know?
[Speaker D] To me it sounds
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] plausible, I don’t know what.
[Speaker B] But there are halakhic / of Jewish law definitions of idolatry—what appears in the halakhic definitions of idolatry…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, we’re not talking here about worshipping idolatry. Worshipping idolatry is forbidden—even not for its own sake, it is a Torah-level prohibition as far as I remember, even though there is no death penalty—but out of love or fear, the famous Maimonides, we’ve talked about it more than once. But I’m talking about being healed through idolatry, not in the sense that you are worshipping idolatry, but that you are using the context of idolatry in order to be healed. You are not committing an act of idolatry.
[Speaker B] But it’s a kind of idolatry if
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you use it for yourself. It may be that this is the act of… But I’m saying: if it has healing properties, then it heals. I’m not worshipping idolatry here. Why? I’m not worshipping idolatry. I’m being healed. That’s already another issue—the question is what it means to be healed through idolatry. There are those who say that accessories of idolatry are also under the rule of martyrdom rather than transgression, but not everyone agrees that accessories have the law of the prohibition itself. And there is no martyrdom rather than transgression for accessories, not even Torah-level accessories. There is the Ran on rabbinic-level accessories, but even Torah-level accessories—it’s not certain that martyrdom rather than transgression applies there. And then it could be that if I am not worshipping idolatry myself, but the healing takes place within a context of idolatry, then what is that? Saving a life. If it works, then it works. Wait,
[Speaker D] and if it’s the prohibition of sorcery, then why would that be… the prohibition of sorcery… Maimonides says that sorcery is a subsection of idolatry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The laws of sorcery appear in Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry. Martyrdom rather than transgression? Where is that written? In Maimonides, in the Laws of Idolatry all this appears: “you shall not practice divination,” “you shall not practice soothsaying.”
[Speaker D] The fact that it’s in the Laws of Idolatry doesn’t mean
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that it is martyrdom rather than transgression.
[Speaker B] No, it’s martyrdom rather than transgression—I don’t remember whether he
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] writes it explicitly. If not, then the commentators write that this is all idolatry. It seems to me a bit like the practices of idol worshippers, like side-locks and… I don’t know, going to theaters, no? Sorcery isn’t exactly idolatry. Again, even regarding that, many halakhic decisors say there is martyrdom rather than transgression. But that of course belongs to accessories. But again, Torah-level accessories, not rabbinic-level accessories, which is the innovation of the Ran, but Torah-level accessories, which is the more common position. Understand? But regarding sorcery itself, in my opinion it’s more than that—it’s not only that this is their way. Because understand, idolatry itself is nonsense according to Maimonides. So there’s no real difference. Rather what? You do what those idiots do, you’re stupid like them—that’s called the prohibition of idolatry according to Maimonides. It’s fundamentally an intellectual prohibition. You need to make a practical enactment of it, yes; thought by itself is not the prohibition of idolatry—you need worship, one of the four forms of service or according to its specific mode of worship. But still, fundamentally it is an intellectual prohibition.
[Speaker C] Why is there no coercion exemption in idolatry?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the big question is why there is no coercion exemption in idolatry. Maimonides apparently held—or he held that there is no coercion in matters of belief.
[Speaker D] But if he knows, then he’s not violating the prohibition according to what the Rabbi said before? What? Meaning, according to what the Rabbi said before…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He may not be liable to death. The question is whether he is liable to death, not whether he is not violating the prohibition. He is not liable to death. The question is how a person becomes liable to death for idolatry. There it is apparently simple, because if you worship out of impulse, you are even liable to death.
[Speaker B] And regarding belief in idolatry, there is also accepting it as a god—does that also violate idolatry? In what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you need one of the four forms of service, but there is a condition of accepting it as a god.
[Speaker B] Isn’t that considered worship?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, accepting it as a god is heresy, it’s an error in conception. The prohibition of idolatry is a practical prohibition. It is not apostasy or heresy; it is not the prohibition of idolatry. Believing in the Trinity is not the prohibition of idolatry. Believing in the Trinity is an error in faith. And that is denial of a fundamental principle?
[Speaker B] Fine, denial of a fundamental principle, but it’s not idolatry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The prohibition of idolatry is a practical prohibition—you do something. And Maimonides writes there: either by a service specific to it, like Peor to Peor, or by one of the four forms of service even if it isn’t specific to it, meaning slaughtering, receiving the blood, carrying it, and sprinkling it. Okay? Burning incense? What? Burning incense? He says one of the four, I think.
[Speaker C] I don’t remember,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because slaughtering really is not a service… we’d have to look there, I don’t remember. In any case, there are four such forms. Okay, so I’m saying here—I return to the characterization of Christianity as a messianic movement. So the Ritva argues that part of this involved performing wonders. And again, performing the wonders through another power, yes? Not through divine power, but from the Other Side. And this of course depends on the question whether that’s possible. According to Maimonides you can still say the same thing—say it was sleight of hand, not wonders from another power. I mentioned Maimonides, who writes: do not imagine that the king messiah must perform signs and wonders and renew things in the world. I think Maimonides here is really referring, it seems to me at least, to Christianity—where it entered our minds that it would be like this, and then what happens? If a person performs wonders, you follow him even though he tells you all kinds of other nonsense. And because of that danger Maimonides says: do not imagine that this is a criterion. It is not a criterion. He does not need to perform wonders. Wonders validate nothing. Maimonides’ view is that wonders validate nothing because there is no such thing as a wonder—he’s fooling you. And the view of other medieval authorities (Rishonim) may be that wonders could indeed be genuine wonders from the other side, but you are forbidden to follow them; the Holy One, blessed be He, is testing you, like with a false prophet or something like that. Okay, now more than that—the Ritva ties the power of Jesus to charisma, which is also something very characteristic of false messiahs, yes? They have some ability to sweep people along. Of course, that also depends on hard times—the period of the destruction, yes? Hard times and persecutions—then messianic movements flourish. We talked about the performing of wonders. Distorted quotations from sacred writings, the Ritva says, yes? He gets close to the simple masses who cannot really criticize what he says. By the way, this is reminiscent of various other movements, yes? Hasidism too basically did something like that, and there is room to discuss this issue; I dealt with it not long ago. And the Christians brought proofs for his messiahship from sacred writings. To this day there are chapters in Isaiah and in various places where, one for one, they show that everything is described exactly as happened with Jesus, everything wonderful. Which of course raises…
[Speaker F] Among us too it’s common to use gematrias and all kinds of things…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, gematria—leave gematria aside. Explicit verses…
[Speaker F] Ten times more than theirs…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying gematrias are not—that’s just embellishment to wisdom. No, they bring explicit verses, not gematrias. The verses describe what happened there: “for he bore sins,” that whole verse there, that whole chapter there in Isaiah. There are descriptions that definitely, let’s say, are no less convincing than the descriptions brought by us. Not gematrias—descriptions written in verses, no less good in my opinion. And therefore I generally am wary of relying on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh); I’ve written this more than once. You can get whatever you want out of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), so in any event you can’t learn anything from it. Meaning, whether it happened or won’t happen, in the end you’ll manage
[Speaker F] either way, and that’s… there is nothing before the Torah… what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is nothing before the Torah—if you make an effort, you can get from there both a thing and its opposite. No, not “there is nothing before the Torah”… “There is nothing that is not alluded to in the Torah.” That’s not the same thing. “There is nothing…” you’re taking it away from its plain meaning. “There is nothing that is not alluded to in the Torah,” you say that one can… and with that I agree. But that is not the original meaning. That you can actually get everything out of the Torah. And once you can get everything out of it, then get nothing out of it. I quoted Rabbi Kalner saying that if the State of Israel is destroyed, then he’ll take off his kippah. That’s what I heard—I didn’t see it written, but I heard it quoted in his name. What?
[Speaker D] I saw it written in some book.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Truth, Fanaticism, and Duality—in an appendix there. Okay, so maybe I heard it from you. Could be, I heard it once from someone, I don’t remember exactly. So the claim is that he really takes it from the prophet and there are signs—not to mention the Sages at the end of Sotah and elsewhere, the footsteps of the messiah and all those matters. I say: let’s suppose, God forbid, that the State of Israel is destroyed, okay? Nothing happens, Heaven forbid, yes? Nothing at all, the messiah doesn’t come, we return to exile, canceled, everything canceled. That’s it, nothing happened, we went back to the same place. Fine? Do you understand that for the vast majority of the public, nothing would change in their faith? I hope so, and I also believe that’s what would happen. Okay? I tend to think that even Rabbi Kalner himself wouldn’t change anything despite what he himself says. I don’t really believe him—meaning, I believe him that this is what he thinks, I don’t believe him that this is what he’d do when it happens.
[Speaker C] Just as if the messiah comes, people also won’t change.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no. And that’s no longer my responsibility to realize such dreams; the Holy One, blessed be He, will have to do that. But do you understand what this means? What this really means is that from the outset, when we understood the verses this way, we also shouldn’t draw conclusions. Since if the whole thing flips around, I still manage with the verses, then the verses are in fact open to both interpretations, so you can no longer derive anything from them.
[Speaker D] No, but maybe—that is, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Maybe there are some interpretations of the verses that are more reasonable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I wouldn’t build on them. If I go back to the criteria I mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t build on them in order to take any step that goes beyond what I would have done otherwise—certainly not a forbidden step. Why? Because I don’t trust them enough.
[Speaker D] But also in most of what we do in life, it’s based on assumptions that aren’t certain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about certainty. I’m saying that once you say that the verses are open to several interpretations, and you’re also prepared to do that, then I wouldn’t build on it.
[Speaker D] I’m saying, probably that’s the case, but maybe we were wrong. What does “probably” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Probably”—I don’t think I’d justify, on that basis, committing prohibitions, for example.
[Speaker D] Not prohibitions, but somewhat dangerous things. Up to what point?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Somewhat” no—there’s no line, it’s hard to draw the line, it’s not terrible. I don’t know, maybe. In any case, the claim that you describe your words in light of the verses—well, the Christians also offer descriptions in light of the verses, and they’re descriptions that, from what I’ve seen at least, as someone who’s no great expert in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—those verses don’t appear in Ketzot, but fine—it doesn’t sound bad, let’s say. No worse than what Rabbi Kalner would show me in his verses. I wasn’t convinced it’s any worse. And once that’s the case, it means that I believe neither this nor that. I don’t believe them not because I don’t believe the prophets, but because I have no way—the text tells me nothing, I don’t know what to extract from it. It’s so flexible, so elastic, so open to being molded in all sorts of ways, that I can’t do anything with it. And therefore, in general—I once spoke about this when we discussed Torah study—I spoke about studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) altogether, not only about extracting signs for the messiah. 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, nothing. You learn from it only what you already knew beforehand—that’s the basic principle. You learn from it that one needs to strengthen the army, go pray, and repent—that’s what you learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). You won’t learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) anything that a priori you don’t agree with, because if it appears in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), then you’ll pull the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) away from its plain meaning and explain why that isn’t what it means; rather, it means what you think. I have never in my life seen someone change his position because he read a chapter of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or some verses from it. Never in my life have I seen such a thing. It didn’t happen.
[Speaker B] There are such cases in the Talmud / Talmudic text too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think that’s true. It’s a common accusation, but I don’t agree. Meaning, in the Talmud / Talmudic text, since we’re dealing with Jewish law and not with morality, the initial intuitions are less strong. You say: this is the plain meaning of the Talmud / Talmudic text, so page such-and-such, that’s the law. Since a claim has force—I don’t feel like it, I came to the passage and pushed toward the side that has a strong rationale, so I’ll push—but… But there’s a kind of game here where, since we’re not dealing with morality, usually we’re dealing with Jewish law, in a situation where these are two different things, so I come to the passages and they prove to me that migo has the force of a claim. It never occurred to me that migo has the force of a claim; migo is a better lie. So I was persuaded; now I understand that it has the force of a claim—meaning, I learned something new. Since they didn’t innovate for me something that is immoral and call it moral—that’s not it. The intuitions are logical intuitions, legal intuitions, so the Talmud / Talmudic text teaches you that halakhic law is structured differently. Fine, so I learned something new. Okay? But in the moral context, it simply doesn’t happen. Even among those—meaning, there are people among whom maybe it does happen, like Torat HaMelekh and things like that—there maybe it does happen, although I don’t know what their initial intuitions were. But let’s say that if their initial intuitions were like any person’s—that there is morality and there are people and one must take that into account and so on—but the Torah says otherwise, there at least you see this form of thinking, that in the end 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 willing to accept it. One can argue whether halakhically that does or doesn’t follow, but in my opinion the identification they make between morality and Jewish law is problematic, because there is another layer—the moral layer—and that too must be taken into account when making practical decisions.
[Speaker D] But why assume that the initial thought of learning from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is specifically about morality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What else will you learn from there? Jewish law? What? You’ll learn morality or you’ll learn history. Fine, I’m talking about Torah study, I’m talking about what is it supposed to teach me? I’ll learn history—that Josiah did such-and-such, okay, so what? Does that tell me anything? What? Wisdom? Worldview? What has to do with worldview? You’ll learn that there is prophecy and there is providence, okay, I got it.
[Speaker C] If Torah has that as an object in itself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There—you see? I, who don’t believe, extracted it away from its plain meaning and now I manage with it despite the fact that in my opinion there is none. So what? Providence. You can teach the Talmud / Talmudic text just as
[Speaker D] you can take it away from its plain meaning—the question is whether that isn’t forced upon it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying the point is that in the Talmud / Talmudic text there is a text with more binding meaning on the interpretive level than the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—we knead it however we want. This happens every day, just look. With the Talmud / Talmudic text it’s not like that. There are disputes, all true, I spoke about this once. There are disputes and everything, and someone looking from the outside thinks that people do whatever they want with the Talmud / Talmudic text, but that’s not true. Someone inside knows there is pilpul, you argue, sometimes you’re convinced and sometimes not, but there are arguments, there is right and wrong.
[Speaker B] You can’t do whatever you want with the Talmud / Talmudic text. It’s the same with the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) too. Huh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wasn’t impressed that way. Maybe I’m looking from the outside, but I tried to look from the inside and didn’t succeed.
[Speaker B] But maybe also something simple. First of all, this whole story with what he said about Christianity, that it stretched out hand and foot—there are precedents for that. That Rabbi Hillel you brought, all in all—he is a real proof: there is no messiah for Israel, for they already enjoyed him in the days of Hezekiah. It’s written in that chapter—an outright departure from the plain meaning and that’s it, meaning you can do that. Now what do all the Sages do? I’m not sure they told him, your interpretation is mistaken. They probably say—I think there was
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a tradition there, or I don’t know exactly what.
[Speaker B] It could be that they say there was perhaps, as they sometimes say, a prophecy that had the potential to be fulfilled in that situation and it failed, so it will be fulfilled at the next stage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in practice, he interpreted it—but incorrectly. The fact that Hezekiah was a real messiah is fine, but why were the future messiahs not? There he was mistaken. Who, Hillel? Rabbi Hillel.
[Speaker B] Yes. Mistaken in what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He may have been right that Hezekiah was the messiah—yes, of course, that’s explicit in the Sages. But he was mistaken that there would be none after that.
[Speaker B] Right. So his mistake, in the end, was simply that he said it already happened and that’s it. And it’s written in the Sages that it can be interpreted about someone, as it were, incorrectly. But still I think that even when you read the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), you sketch certain boundaries that do come from the methods of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). That there will be a messiah is in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—where does it appear? 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 Jesse, that there will be…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can explain to you easily why it won’t be. Easily. Far less speculative than other things people derive from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). What? That the world will be better—that’s all. Who says the messiah is a person, that he will come and do this and do that? It’s some metaphorical description or another.
[Speaker B] That the world will be better—that already seems not to come from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but that’s messianism not in the eschatological sense. The world will be repaired, the world will be more moral—look, today people are more enlightened, everything is fine—there, that’s the coming of the messiah.
[Speaker B] Wait, I assume there are more verses that could sharpen it a bit more, but that too is what one learns from the Torah, it’s not… one can say according to the Torah, according to the prophet, that in the end there will be
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] an apocalypse and the world will be only evil—if that’s the level of study you’re talking about, then
[Speaker B] that I already know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where do you know it from? I know it from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). No, fine. Studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) means studying each verse, making precise readings, creating contradictions. I’m not talking about studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) to understand the world it places me in. Okay, that’s at the level of general knowledge—we’re all already there. Studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) means investing effort and time and learning it as we do Talmud / Talmudic text. I’m not talking about the general ideas. Fine, there is God—I know that from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) too. Okay, I’m not talking about that.
[Speaker B] Suppose, the attitude of God—for example, the attitude when you see how Ezra and Nehemiah establish the kingdom here a second time. Doesn’t that also give inspiration for how it is supposed to happen?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only if I would have thought of it on my own. If not, I’d say that was Ezra and Nehemiah, that was a different period and there it went that way, and don’t apply it to our period. People do that, by the way. In places where it doesn’t fit, they do it; in places where it does fit, they don’t do it. That’s exactly it—the interpretive freedom there is troubling, meaning, frustrating.
[Speaker B] It could be that it’s much harder to cut it to pieces. In my view, really not. In scholarship they can’t?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, scholarship cuts chronologies, whatever. I’m talking conceptually. I don’t care if it was formed over periods and not all at once. But yes, in this corpus there is a certain worldview, within which there is of course 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’s so open that I don’t know what the point is of dealing with it at all. Again, it’s a holy text, I don’t know what to do with it, but I find no point in it. It teaches me nothing; I don’t deal with it that way. Okay, the second example is Bar Kokhba. With Bar Kokhba, again, there are various sources in the Sages and one can collect different points. But one thing is fairly clear about Bar Kokhba: there was no transgressing of Jewish law there. Conversion or various things that existed in Christianity or with Shabbetai Tzvi—systematic and blatant conversion—there was nothing like that.
[Speaker D] There may have been something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, yes, but some mutilating of the young men of Israel. Okay, there is a prohibition of injuring, 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 this—that is, to train with the horses by uprooting a cedar tree. A suggestion of the Sages.
[Speaker D] As I remember it, first he mutilated them, and then the Sages told him: don’t mutilate them, but instead train with the horses and uproot a cedar tree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what does that mean? It means that they basically suggested these things to him. They too demand some kind of… clearly people were also hurt by that. Mutilation—so he was a more extreme trainer. Okay, but still, again—fine, neither this nor that is called transgressing Jewish law. I don’t think so; formally yes, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Because he thinks this is the right thing to do when you’re preparing people for war. You want to be in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit—they do things there that if I were there, it wouldn’t be mutilation, I’d be dead. Fine, so is it permitted or forbidden? People get hurt; even the supermen there get hurt. They weren’t all born ministering angels. Yes? There’s a difference between me and ministering angels—they’re somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. So what does that mean? Is it permitted or forbidden to do this? Permitted, because it’s necessary. The needs of war require it. What can you do? That’s not called transgressing Jewish law; it has common sense. So what is there? There are a few things. First, aggressiveness. Meaning, he went out to war against an empire where one can at least argue that it was hopeless. What, against the Romans who conquered the whole world, you go out with your brave horsemen who uprooted cedars to war against the Romans? Come on, really—that’s not serious, that’s delusional aggressiveness. Aggressiveness and lack of realism.
[Speaker F] Yes, lack of realism, that’s what I mean. The number of Jews in the world then—in the Land at least two million lived there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but don’t compare that to Rome. Compare that to Rome plus all the legions they recruited from all
[Speaker F] their colonies.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They had an army not made up of Romans. After all, most of the army—a large part of the Roman army—was not Roman.
[Speaker F] And they fought the major battles when less than 50% were Romans. Scipio defeated Hannibal with an army in which less than 50% were mercenaries.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Scipio and Hannibal is much earlier.
[Speaker F] Yes, when the Roman Empire was at the height of its power. Now there are emperors and it’s deteriorating.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I’d have to check. They were absolutely hopeless. But I don’t know, I’m not a historian; maybe that’s mistaken. It’s like what Uri Milstein claims about the War of Independence. Uri Milstein claims that we were actually more or less evenly matched with the forces that came out against us. All the great miracles made out of the War of Independence are all myths. That’s what he claims. Well, he does bring numbers, by the way—how many vehicles and how much and so on.
[Speaker C] Fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you know, sometimes the fact that you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Meaning, he brings numbers—it needs to be checked where he is and how he uses the numbers and exactly what interpretation he gives them.
[Speaker F] Fine, in any case, so
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] there was, let’s say, an unrealistic use of force here. There was a messianic pretension that in retrospect turned out not to be so, but then the question is what he himself thought at the time—that isn’t clear. And in several places in the Sages it says that he told the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, do not assist and do not 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, which I think falls into category 3b that I mentioned earlier. Meaning, it’s not a transgression of Jewish law. There’s no transgression of Jewish law here, but there is something that contradicts accepted beliefs, accepted worldviews.
[Speaker D] Aggressiveness—meaning, and it actually seems to me anti-messianic. A person who says something like that means he comes from a this-worldly outlook of force and war.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he declared himself the messiah. What do you mean? He will bring the redemption. He says to the Holy One, blessed be He: wait, I’ll bring the redemption; afterward You’ll come and do for us what You need to do. I’ll manage here with the Romans—just leave me alone, don’t interfere.
[Speaker D] So maybe someone who says that, then he’s completely—so maybe he also isn’t realistic. If he isn’t realistic, then
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he isn’t realistic because he also claims. He isn’t unrealistic in a messianic context; rather, the messianism causes his lack of realism. Meaning, not that he says: I’m taking irrational risks because the Holy One, blessed be He, will help—that’s usually what happens among aggressive messianists. Right, but still there was some unrealistic aggressiveness here in a messianic context, okay? And in Hamburger’s book that I already mentioned, he naturally latches onto Bar Kokhba. Of course he makes a whole fuss out of it, because the Zionist movement latched onto Bar Kokhba, and he is a very fundamental part of the ethos, yes? “We carry torches,” the famous song, “No miracle happened for us,” yes? The Holy One, blessed be He—in short—not “do not hinder and do not assist,” meaning: don’t help and don’t interfere; we manage on our own. Basically this is part of the Zionist ethos, and he immediately makes the comparison. More than that—he’s very tendentious there—he also says that they established the Bar Kokhba association, a sports association, like Hapoel and Maccabi; there was a Bar Kokhba association.
[Speaker F] The Hashomer organization at first, or they called themselves Bar Giora.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, there wasn’t a sports association—there were sports clubs like Bar Kokhba that were involved in physical training, and Hamburger writes there in his book that physical training is false messianism, that people should only be in the study hall, and so on. This is nonsense again, of course. The people of Bar Kokhba also wore pants, so because of that no one should wear pants anymore? What does that have to do with anything? The question is whether the militancy was the problem that turned the movement into a messianic movement. Who says so? I mean, excessive militancy, or unrealistic militancy—I understand that. But the fact that they engaged in physical training—fine, when you’re preparing for war you need to train. So why is that called false messianism? It’s just tendentious interpretation. This context of relying on one’s own strength and leaving the Holy One, blessed be He, also comes up in other contexts. After all, Bar Kokhba’s uncle was Elazar of Modi’in. So the Talmud says that he would pray in Betar, and that’s how he protected them from the Romans, and then they managed to create a conflict between Bar Kokhba and his uncle, and he stopped praying, and that’s 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 become utterly dim.” You killed Rabbi Elazar of Modi’in, the arm of Israel and their right eye; therefore the arm of that man shall surely wither and his right eye shall surely grow dim. Immediately Betar was captured and Ben Koziva was killed. Right, that’s a quotation from the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit. So again, I think this point—or ordinary force, physical force—okay, so in this matter too it seems to me that this midrash, or this passage in the Talmud, is also coming to say that same thing. 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 said 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 point. In the Talmud itself it says that there was a dispute 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 of him for a sign or a wonder.” And that is to say that one does not need a sign or a wonder, in that sense דווקא positively. Meaning, they did not ask him for a sign or a wonder because you don’t need a sign or a wonder, which means that they assessed correctly that he was the Messiah—that was a correct assessment. Where did they err? After all, Rabbi Akiva didn’t leave the Jewish fold as part of a messianic movement, and certainly not the other sages of that generation. Why? Because they erred because they did not know. Later, when it became clear that he had not succeeded, the outcome-based test proved that he was not the Messiah. So Maimonides understands that with Bar Kokhba it was not really possible to diagnose him while things were still unfolding. Only the outcome led them to diagnose him as a false messiah. By the way, not everyone agrees with this.
[Speaker B] But you also can’t rule out that it was like Hezekiah, who in the end didn’t succeed because the generation wasn’t worthy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that it was even that. Maimonides says nothing about it. Maimonides doesn’t say—I don’t know, it’s certainly possible. Maimonides—I don’t remember at the moment any statement that Bar Kokhba was improper, but clearly in the end he was not the Messiah in actuality. Even if he was worthy and we did not merit it, fine, all good—he still was not the Messiah in actuality. So the test is an outcome-based one. Meaning, in Bar Kokhba’s own conduct, Maimonides apparently does not see some essential flaw.
[Speaker C] And in the behavior of Rabbi Akiva and all the sages of Israel, is there some problem in that they—okay, he rebels against the Romans, but what about that makes him the Messiah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And how do they see all that? That’s exactly what I’m saying: here you have some militancy, and there’s even rebellion against the Holy One, blessed be He—yes, that “don’t help and don’t interfere.” And even that is apparently not enough in Maimonides’ eyes to determine that there is something problematic here. It only becomes problematic when the results become known.
[Speaker C] I’m asking about Bar Kokhba—about Rabbi Akiva and the sages of the generation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because they saw a person who was succeeding against—after all, at the beginning he did succeed. So he rebelled, he gathered all Israel, he united them under his banner, he succeeded in driving the Romans out of here, he wanted to rebuild the Temple, so he said: apparently this is the Messiah, this is the king. After all, he conducted himself with royal trappings. By the way, that too is another messianic characteristic: you act with royal ceremony, you mint coins. Today in archaeology they found coins that Bar Kokhba minted like a king. That’s how you express that you are king—you create your own coins. And there was some sort of conduct here.
[Speaker C] But you took some way out here that says that when he rises by means of unreasonable force—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said I was offering suggestions. I offered suggestions; I didn’t say—
[Speaker C] No, so I’m saying, I’m giving Rabbi Akiva the same credit, that he too could have—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, on the contrary, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m trying to show that each of the suggestions I offered earlier—I’m now testing them against the facts. So I’m showing that at least according to Maimonides it seems that this is not enough. The fact that you use some kind of unrealistic force—unless he didn’t think it was unrealistic, maybe he was like Josephus, 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 was apparently not enough to make the diagnosis. Only the results, only the outcome-based test in the end. That’s Maimonides. I’m saying there are others who learn differently, and they definitely criticize Bar Kokhba for his conduct, since already in the Talmud itself you can see criticism of Bar Kokhba’s conduct, not only based on the results. These midrashim are critical midrashim that say, “don’t help and don’t interfere”—yes, that’s not… they attribute his fall to that. Meaning, his conduct during the process itself was problematic conduct. But Maimonides—the fact is I’m showing the spectrum of possibilities—that from Maimonides’ perspective even that is apparently not enough. Even though in the Talmud and in other medieval authorities (Rishonim), and certainly in later authorities (Acharonim), you do see that this is certainly enough to determine that we are dealing with a messianic movement in the negative sense of the term. There is also Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, for example, who says that it was not by their own strength and might that they restored the crown of Israel—“my own power and the might of my own hand,” that in fact was the false messianism, which is also very often the accusation leveled against Zionism. These things can be very applicable in a contemporary sense. Rabbi Yaakov Emden has a book called Birat Migdal Oz. A very interesting Jew, Rabbi Yaakov Emden. Also connected to Sabbateanism—we’ll talk about that later; not connected in the sense of belonging to it, but rather he fought against Sabbateanism. But in his book Birat Migdal Oz he gives—he is one of the only ones who really made a relatively systematic treatment of the phenomenon of false messianism. And he argues that—and he classifies them into several types. The seventh type—he really has a systematic discussion there—“deceptive fools like Ben Koziva, like David Almosar, Rabbi Shlomo Molkho, and Rabbi Asher Lemmlein.” Notice, the last two are called “Rabbi,” even after he determines that they are false messiahs. Meaning, but they are “deceptive fools misleading others, who make use of adjurations and practical Kabbalah, and suddenly they transgressed and were punished. Even though their intentions were good and they did not transgress Torahs”—that is, they did not deviate from Jewish law—“and they did not cast off restraints,” they did not deviate from tradition. If I understand correctly, “Torahs” means Jewish law, and “restraints” means the second thing, tradition—that’s 3A and 3B. Okay. “Nevertheless, they transgressed the oath by which the Holy One, blessed be He, adjured Israel not to force the end.” Which, as I understand him, for him this is not considered abandoning tradition, but rather acting in an unrealistic way. Don’t force the end, and don’t rebel against the nations, and don’t do unrealistic things. “They became a stumbling rock and a stone of offense for the people of Israel, arousing against them the jealousy and hatred of the nations.” The problem is not the Holy One, blessed be He, in the sense that you rebelled against the oaths against Him; these oaths are practical guidance. That’s how he understands them. The oaths are practical guidance that one must behave realistically. And when you behave unrealistically, the problem is not that you violated the oaths; the problem is that you behaved improperly, because one needs to act 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 God, may He be blessed, which has never ceased to show its power in the exile of this host, to set our feet upon rock against all those who rise up 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 on the advice of rash fools, counselors of senseless counsel?” Meaning, here he gives a real definition of this kind of false messianism, saying: you did not sever yourself, you did not leave Jewish law, you did not cast off restraints, maybe you didn’t even abandon tradition, but there was unrealistic, militant behavior here, provoking the gentiles—and that’s how he understands the Three Oaths. From his perspective the Three Oaths are the source of false messianism. Whoever violates the Three Oaths—that is the diagnosis of false messianism. Not because there are oaths in the formal sense and you violated oaths that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposed upon us and that is your transgression. The transgression is not the crossing of the oaths; rather, the oaths say how one ought to behave, and if you didn’t behave that way, then you behaved incorrectly. Okay. “And of these sects and the like it is said: ‘And some of those with insight shall stumble, to refine among them and to purify and whiten them until the time of the end, for it is yet for the appointed time.’ And happy are those who believe”—those who believe in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—“and do not hasten and do not break through to ascend the wall; they shall seek the peace of the city to which they were exiled, and they shall entreat the Lord to restore their captivity”—that the Holy One, blessed be He, should save them, and not they themselves. “They shall give Him no rest; they shall supplicate and request, and behold, He will heal them and restore them, to gather their dispersed ones one by one, to bring them to the land that He swore.” “Happy is the one who waits and arrives.” In short, the problem is that you didn’t wait. Sometimes it already seems that it’s not even excessive militancy, but rather that in general the Holy One, blessed be He, has to do it—you should do nothing. Though in the background there probably still is the concern about excessive militancy. Later on we’ll see more references from Rabbi Yaakov Emden to other kinds of messianism. This is the seventh type. There are other kinds of messianism—he already mentioned several names here, Shlomo Molkho, David Almosar, Rabbi Asher Lemmlein, all kinds of people like that—so we’ll also talk about them, because they too basically join this type of…