Is the Messiah simply a nice dream or will it really happen?
Ask the rabbi.
MASHI’ACH – DREAM OR REALITY?
Rabbi Raymond Apple
Q. Is the Messiah simply a nice dream or will it really happen?
A. The word “Mashi’ach” means “anointed”. Biblical kings were anointed. They formed a dynasty with David as their ancestor and role model.
Messiah was a king descended from David and fulfilled the role of a political liberator who would bring the people back from exile and restore the dynasty. With the restoration would come peace and prosperity. By extension, the Messiah would bring redemption to the whole of humanity.
This role is described in the prophetic books – especially Isaiah – in lyrical, inspiring terms.
Christianity tended to see the Biblical prophecies as fulfilled in Jesus, whilst Judaism was adamant that the Messiah was yet to come.
The sages said that Messiah’s coming would be when all the world was blameworthy – or blameless: in a terrible or a terrific state. Rav Kook said these descriptions would not be alternatives but partners. It would be the best of times and the worst of times.
Rav Kook is right when we look at our generation with its breathtaking achievements – and its colossal failures. People live better and healthier and less troubled lives today than in the past – but they also have gigantic problems when all seems lost.
Whether this is the messianic age or not, people need hope and faith and have the means of bringing utopia to be.
Mashi’ach is not yet here but we can make the world ready for him.
CELEBRATING THE MIDDLE OF THE MONTH
Q. Why do we make a fuss of the first of a month when there is a much more impressive moon in the middle of the month?
A. The Jewish calendar has twelve divisions, the days of which add up to about 354. These divisions, based on the phases of the moon, are the months.
For some purposes, however, we also need to take account of the solar months.
Pesach, for instance, has to be a spring festival, and if we adhered strictly to the lunar months we would lose roughly 11 days a year and it would end up in the wrong season. Therefore we adjust the lunar calendar to the solar by adding an extra (“leap”) month seven times in 19 years.
There are many explanations of why we attach significance to the beginning of the month. The phases of the moon symbolise how man’s perception of God waxes and wanes; when the moon is small we have a keen sense of aspiration to encounter God, and when it is full we rejoice at a moment of spiritual fulfilment.
The moon’s phases also represent the Jewish experience, alternating between times of hope, times of fulfilment and times of growing darkness.
Rabbi Raymond Apple served for 32 years as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australia’s oldest and most prestigious congregation. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem where he answers interesting questions.
I am more than uncomfortable with the idea of the Messiah. A man is a man, a woman is a woman. G-d is G-d. Each of us direct ourselves straight to G-d, there is supposed to be nothing in between – hence no human images to be depicted in synagogues or places of worship. Our Rabbis are teachers, not anointed ones. No human should be considered in this more holy light, a Messiah.
Jesus was also a man, a man with some fine things to say, but a man nevertheless, and no more the son of G-d and a saviour than any other man. As a Jew, I dislike intensely the notion of a Messiah.