Wow.
More power to you.

A small note.
Bromberger was mainly looking to mock Chabad. That he did wonderfully, and with that he ends the book.
He tried to do some damage to Zionism along the way. It’s obvious he didn’t invest in that even a fraction of what he invested in Chabad. And the results reflect that.

One more little something.
According to Maimonides, the messiah is not required to perform miracles. On the other hand, he is a prophet, close to Moses in his prophecy. And as a prophet he does need to perform signs. So does he need to work wonders or not? So how can he say that no wonders are required?

The way the messiah is identified is through the signs of redemption, not through specific miracles that he performs. If he succeeds, then it becomes clear retroactively that he was the messiah. You can see the other side of the coin in the above article: the determination that some messiah-claimant is a false messiah is often based on the fact that he did not succeed (like Bar Kokhba).

Forgive me. It seems to me that the honorable Rabbi didn’t answer my question, as far as I can follow your meaning.
If he is going to be a prophet and prophets are tested by signs, then he will perform signs. So how can Maimonides say that he is not obligated to perform miracles?
True, by virtue of being the messiah he doesn’t have to perform miracles.
But by virtue of being the messiah he does have to be a prophet. And the laws of a prophet are that he is tested by signs. So then he would have to perform signs…?

With God’s help, 22 Sivan 5781

To The Breath of Our Nostrils — greetings,

Maimonides’ words in the Laws of Kings describe several stages:

The first stage is “presumed messiah,” and here, according to Maimonides, he need not perform wonders; rather, he must be a king from the house of David, engaged in Torah and commandments, fighting the wars of God, and compelling Israel to walk in the ways of the Torah and to strengthen its observance.

The second stage: after he has gathered in the dispersed of Israel and built the Temple — “he is certainly the messiah.” Then we have certainty that he is the messiah about whom the prophets prophesied.

The third stage is: “Behold, My servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.” At this stage, King Messiah attains wisdom like Solomon and prophecy close to the level of Moses, and then he repairs the whole world to know God and to walk in His ways.

It seems that the high levels to which the messiah will attain at the height of his path are not by his own power, since he did not possess them at first. It seems that the messiah merits rising to prophecy and wisdom by virtue of the people, for whose redemption he struggled and acted. Not for nothing is the anointed of God called “the breath of our nostrils”; the spirit pulsing within him is the spirit of the collective of Israel. (Something like this is said by Maimonides about the king of Israel, that “his heart is the heart of all Israel.”)

As for the first stage — one who was a “presumed messiah” — Maimonides does not say that he is, God forbid, a “false messiah.” Rather, Maimonides says that since he was killed, it became clear that he was not the messiah about whom the prophets prophesied; but “he is like the other worthy kings of the house of David.”

Maimonides builds the “threshold requirements” for “presumed messiah” from Ben Koziba the king, who was not a prophet and did not perform miracles, but was a man faithful to the Torah who fought to free the nation from foreign rule.

In contrast, the Raavad adopts the approach of the sages who disagreed with Rabbi Akiva, and held that King Messiah must already at the first stage be one who “smells and judges,” as in Isaiah’s words, “and he shall smell with the fear of the Lord.” (According to Maimonides, “and he shall smell…” will be fulfilled in the third stage.)

As opposed to what he writes in the Laws of Kings, where messiah begins his path in a natural way, in the Epistle to Yemen Maimonides clarifies to the Jews of Yemen that the man who claimed and told them that he was the messiah is not the messiah, because the true messiah will prove his Davidic lineage by means of the signs he performs.

In my humble opinion, there is no contradiction between what he writes in the Mishneh Torah and what he writes in the Epistle to Yemen, because there there were “two strikes for the worse” in the one claiming to be the messiah: he did not act to bring salvation by natural means, but stirred expectations for a miraculous redemption. For this track, of a “supernatural redeemer,” one needs wisdom, prophecy, and great fear of Heaven, which that claimant did not have.

Moreover, the man also had no reliable testimony regarding his lineage from the house of David. When there is no testimony about his Davidic lineage, we need signs that will testify “to the truth of his descent from David.”

With blessings,
Nehorai Shraga Agami-Pesisovitz

By the way, “the anointed of God” is a term used for every worthy king among the kings of Israel. Thus David calls Saul “the anointed of God,” and thus Jeremiah laments Zedekiah: “The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of God, was captured in their pits.” Even though he was taken captive, the prophet continues to call him “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of God,” as the sages said that Zedekiah was righteous, but his generation was not worthy of redemption.

Ruach, are you asking or answering? I wrote that by virtue of being a prophet he will need to be tested by signs, and by virtue of being the messiah he will not. And perhaps the wonders he will do as messiah (the ingathering of the exiles, etc.) will show that he is also a prophet, and that will be enough.