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How Are We To
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SHLOMO RISKIN
Special to The Jewish News
W
hat is the relation-
ship between the
modern State of
Israel and the Jewish belief in
the advent of the Messiah?
Are all those who pray to the
Almighty on behalf of "the
beginning of the sprouting of
the redemption" guilty of
reckless pseudo-Messianism,
or is this a fundamental as-
pect of our theology?
In the religious world there
are various responses to the
idea of redemption. Some ar-
gue that there's nothing we
can do, or should do, so the
best thing is to sit back and
wait for the Almighty to do
His work. Anything else is
reckless at best, and danger-
ous at worst.
Thus the Satmar Rebbe de-
cried modern Zionism (we
must even wait for God to
bring us to Israel), and Pro-
fessor Yeshayu Leibowitz
claims that the essence of our
messianic belief is to wait for
his arrival. This even seems
to be the view of Lord Jakobo-
vitz, chief rabbi of Britain,
who, in a recent address in
Jerusalem, warned against
the kind of messianic fervor
which characterizes the en-
tire Zionist enterprise, from
David Ben-Gurion to Rabbi
Abraham Isaac Kook. Despite
their obvious differences, they
saw the modern state as
rooted in the prophetic vision
of Israel as a light unto the
nations and directed toward
beating swords into
plowshares.
In sharp contrast to the sit-
tight faction, there were —
and are — those who attempt
to penetrate some kind of
mystical and mysterious code,
particularly after national
Jewish tragedies, and go so
far as to assign calendar
dates for the Messiah's ar-
rival. When these dates
arrive without redemption,
the masses of Jews invariably
are left in confusion and hys-
teria, which is what
happened after Shabbeti
Tzvi's messianic fringes were
traded in for Moslem robes.
Rabbi Jakobovitz's strong-
est words were for those who
look upon the "sprouting
forth of our redemption" as an
irreversible process, as if the
world is moving toward one
ineluctable, messianic path,
and nothing can get in its
way. This can lead to irra-
Shlomo Riskin is rabbi of
Efrat, Israel.
tional acts, he warned, based
on the notion that we have to
force the coming, and nothing
we do can stop the inevitable.
But there is a third way, a
middle-of-the-road, normative
approach, whose basic view of
messianism is that even
though the process may have
begun, it is always reversible.
If our actions — ethical,
moral, religious, political,
military — are askew and fall
short, we can blow the entire
process which began with the
establishment of the State of
Israel.
According to Maimonides,
messianism is built into the
very heart of Judaism. It's
our dream, our hope, our
vision. Yearning for the Mes-
Nizavim-Vayelech:
Deuteronomy
29:9-31:30,
Isaiah 61:10-63:9.
siah, even singing the Luba-
vitcher chant, "We want
Moshiach now" is normative
Judaism — what could be
called "normative messian-
ism." If this yearning wasn't
part of our very fiber, why
would we pray three times a
day for the offspring of David
— the Messiah — to sprout?
And why would Maimonides
make it a part of every Jew's
creed of faith to say, "I believe
with complete faith in the
coming of the Messiah, and
though he may tarry, never-
theless I anticipate his ar-
rival every day."
The Messiah will rebuild
the Temple, according to
Maimonides, and he will
gather in the remnants of
Jews from all four corners of
the world. Learned and fluent
in Torah, he will keep the
commandments like his fore-
fathers, both the written and
oral law. We are warned that
we shouldn't expect a person
who performs miracles or
raises the dead. Nor should
we think that in the days of
the Messiah the world will
change, or that there will be
a change in the order of crea-
tion.
Basically Israel will be at
peace with the nations who
wanted to destroy it. "The on-
ly difference between our
world, and the world of the
days of the Messiah is that
the Jews won't be enslaved to
the rest of the nations," writes
Maimonides.
Maimonides makes it clear
that these concepts are de-