Question

As someone who tries to keep his head as much as possible on the ground and do his duties toward the Creator without getting too deeply into mysticism (I’m talking about myself, not the Rabbi), as part of a personal-rational inclination and perhaps also from looking at history and seeing that every movement striving for utopia will probably fail,
the messianic issue—that is, the days of the Messiah in Judaism—sometimes raises a difficulty for me. At first glance, when I look at groups like extreme messianist Chabad followers or yeshivot like Har Hamor that are one hundred percent sure that everything is already prepared and we’re just about there, it naturally makes me doubt them and maybe even mock them a bit, because according to these groups all of Judaism suddenly seems to rest on a promise that in no very long time we will all be redeemed. But on the other hand I tell myself: my friend, in the end, according to the plain meaning of the biblical text, that is what is written! That there will be a supernatural process that redeems us all—and who says it isn’t now?
Personally, I tend to think that supernatural processes do not happen today, and things like the establishment of a messianic kingdom, the return of the entire nation to repentance, and the resurrection of the dead—these are things that will happen naturally, in a slow and non-miraculous way (and probably only in a few hundred years, not now).
 
I wanted to ask the Rabbi’s opinion out of curiosity: do you have doubts about the coming of the redeemer and future mystical promises such as the resurrection of the dead? Do you attach importance to the fact that, according to the plain meaning of the texts, something like this is supposed to happen within at most another 225 years (the seventh millennium and so on)? Do you see the fact that the State was established in a period “close” (relatively speaking) to those dates as evidence?
And one small halakhic-pilpul question to finish with (actually two):
1. Apropos messianic groups—there is a rather amusing and interesting organization called Brit Olam that is preparing for the day when all the nations are just about to go up to Jerusalem, and it is already setting up communities for them and giving them guidance about the Noahide commandments.
In any case, when I once happened across a lecture by Rabbi Sherki on YouTube on this topic, he argued that the view according to which non-Jews have only two tracks—either conversion or acceptance of only the seven commandments—is incorrect. In fact, there are views holding that there exists a kind of “intermediate conversion,” in which a non-Jew can undertake before a religious court to observe a certain number of commandments of his choosing (even most of them), and from that moment he would be obligated in them even though he has not entered the Jewish people.
The strangest and most interesting thing to hear was what he brought from the Talmud:
“But who is a resident alien? It is a convert who eats carcasses, who accepted upon himself to observe all the commandments stated in the Torah except for the prohibition of carcasses.” Indeed, I checked and was reminded that such an opinion exists. What interests me is the meaning of this opinion—does it really mean that according to this very specific opinion in the Talmud there could even be a non-Jew who is a Torah scholar, teaches Torah publicly (that’s my exaggeration), and the only difference between him and a Jew is his permission to eat carcasses?! And what then is the difference between that and a full convert? Is there some common explanation of this difficulty? Some answer? Or is this just another one of those puzzling opinions that appear as minority views in the Talmud and were simply rejected?
 
2. In connection with the issue I raised—my skepticism about processes involving the coming of the Messiah—it reminds me of an article I wrote a long time ago about prayer: that if we do not believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in day-to-day life, then prayer is in practice actually meaningless. According to the Rabbi, would it be possible in the future to change prayers that refer to messianic processes as well, if Judaism’s general conception of this were to change?