Jeremy Rosen
Failed and False Messiahs

Jeremy Rosen - Failed and False Messiahs

- It’s appropriate that we’re going to talk about Messiahs today because it’s the lead-up to Hanukkah next week, almost next week, not this coming Sunday, the following Sunday. And it’s interesting because you will not find any of the Maccabee family of Judah, and his brothers recorded in the Talmud. The Talmud seems to have a little bit of a problem with the Maccabees. They celebrate Hanukkah, of course, they do, and they’re delighted that Judah Maccabee rededicated the Temple, but they seem to have a problem, and it’s not just because the Maccabee dynasty turned into a not-very-nice collection of rulers. The fact is that the opposition to the Maccabees came because of the issue of the Messiah, and this is the topic of today’s lecture. I’ve mentioned previously the idea that in the Torah, the term mashiach, which means Messiah, is used only when anointing Aaron, the high priest, and his son. So, mashiach literally means to pour out oil. After the Torah, this ceremony was applied to the king. So, when Samuel appointed the first king, who was Saul, he anointed him. He poured oil over his head and down his beard. David was anointed as well, while Saul was still alive, because Samuel knew that Saul’s dynasty was going to come to a messy end, and he wasn’t strong enough to be the king he hoped for, and so he anointed David, but David wasn’t known as king when he was anointed. He only became known as king when Saul died, and he became initially the king over Hebron in the south of Judea and Benjamin and only when Saul’s other son, Ish-boshet, died was he the king over all the Jewish people.

And King Solomon was anointed because, at the time of David’s death, there was a dispute over who was going to succeed him. And his elder son at the time, Adonai, grabbed the throne but on his deathbed, David ensured that Solomon would succeed, and he was anointed. But apart from those, none of the other kings were anointed. And therefore, the idea emerged in Babylon. It’s first mentioned in Babylon when the Jews were exiled there in 586 by the Babylonians. The idea that here in Babylon, although the Jewish community managed to establish itself and the exiled king, Yehoiachin, was taken out of prison and raised to a high position in the Persian Empire, in the Babylonian Empire, and then the Persian Empire. Nevertheless, the Jews of Babylon all hoped that one day the temple would be rebuilt and that a leader would arise who would then rebuild the temple. And in fact, the first person to be mentioned there is that Cyrus was going to be the Messiah. Because Cyrus mentioned in the Bible as the Mashiach was going to revive the Jewish people. Mashiach was going to revive the Jewish people. So, in Babylon, the idea that a new king would come and reestablish the Jewish people, led to the idea that Mashiach ben David, the Messiah, the son of the David household, would rebuild the Southern Kingdom of Judea. But surprisingly, there was another claimant to the throne and that was the Mashiach of Yosef. Joseph was a general name of the 10 so-called lost tribes and although they were scattered by the Assyrians, they came, those that survived, to merge with the Babylonian Jewish community under the Babylonians and the Persians, and they hoped their king would come and rebuild the northern state of Israel.

So, two Mashiachs in Babylon whose role was to renew the monarchy. The prophets had raised another issue. We want a leader, they say, who will bring peace to the world, who will end conflict, who will get rid of corrupt government. And it was this idea, the Hebrew term is shibud malchiyot, the corruption that comes from governments, would be ended with this messianic leader. So that this concept emerged in Babylon, but it came at a time when there was no king anymore. And when the leadership of the Jewish people in Babylon and in Judea was by the priesthood, by the Kohen Gadol, the high priest was regarded as the top man. And this was to some extent challenged, first of all by Prophet Ezekiel, then by Ezra, by those who said, we’re not very happy with these aristocratic priests. We’d rather an idea of a meritocracy of people who will emerge as leaders through their own personal qualities. And we prefer the idea of study and prayer to the idea of the temple. And this split between the two ran through the community that was reestablished in Judea, first of all by Zerubbabel, possibly by Shesh-Baza, and then properly by Ezra and Nehemiah. There is a gap in history between this period and the arrival of Alexander the Great, and then from Alexander the Great, we follow through what happened to Hanukkah, that his empire was divided between the generals, the general in the south was Ptolemy in Egypt, the general in the north was Seleucius in Damascus and the north, and these two dynasties ended up fighting with each other.

And poor Judea, caught in the middle, was sometimes under the Ptolemies, sometimes under the Seleucids, and generally had to play a political game. And the sad fact is that because the high priests were the leaders of the community when the temple was rebuilt in Judea, they became the main politicians. And the high priests and the priests all had to interact with the Greek authorities. They acquired Greek names. They were in favour of assimilation. And in fact, it was the priests who introduced the games, the circus, and the theatre into Jerusalem. Now, in general, neither the kings of the north, the Seleucids, nor the kings of the south, the Ptolemies, minded what the religion was. You could keep your religion, whatever like, so long as you’re loyal to us. If you’re not loyal to us, we’ll hammer you. And in the battle between the north and the south, Israel was hammered. In 178 a king of the north, Antiochus, and there were six Antiochuses just as there were six Ptolemies down in Egypt, He arose, he went down to Egypt, he attacked Egypt, but was defeated. He came back out through Jerusalem in a foul mood because he thought that the authorities in Jerusalem had favoured the Egyptians. And also, he was insecure about the Jews of Persia, who are the biggest Jewish community, that their loyalty was not with him. And so initially he attacked Judea, and he attacked Judea as the political enemy rather than the religious enemy. But something happened to him at some stage. He went gaga, and as a result of this, he attacked the religion.

He insisted on denying the right to practise Judaism, and that led to the revolt of Judah Maccabee, started by his father, Matityahu, which led to Hanukkah being celebrated when Judah Maccabee was able, even though he didn’t completely defeat the Assyrians because they had their own political problems, but he was able to re-get hold again of the temple, although not the military garrison, and rededicate it for the eight days following Solomon’s rededication, and that was the original Hanukkah. No mention, by the way, in the text of that time of the eight lights. That’s going to come a bit later. But one of the reasons why the Maccabees got into trouble is that although the Syrians recognised Judah and then Jonathan as the high priests, or Jonathan as the high priest rather, recognised their role now to take charge of religious matters. When Jonathan died, the final brother, Simon, was officially appointed high priest and king. And this became the biggest problem, because the king and the high priest were supposed to be two separate roles. The Maccabees justified their dynasty by saying, we are the Messiah, we are the new guides. And that’s why in fact they went around beating up any of the enemies of the outlying nations around about them, and they in fact did get rid for a period of time of political oppression.

Unfortunately, as you go down the list from John Herkines down to Janaius Alexander through to the lovely magnificent Schlantzion the Queen who was the best of the Maccabee leaders because she brought peace. She had one fault which was she was a Jewish mother and she handed over control to her two sons, Aristotle II and Hercules II, and they made such a mess that the Romans had to step in and take control and that was more or less the end of independence, although they did allow King Herod to function under their control and under their thumb until, eventually, his successors made the mess that led to the destruction of the temple. Now, I mention all this because talk of Messiah came into the currency of somebody who would re-establish the monarchy, of somebody who would get rid of political oppression, and so this is where the idea entered into Judaism. But it wasn’t defined in any way. And if you look at the actual text of the Talmud, the Talmud talks about a Messiah who is going to come and follow the words of Isaiah and bring peace on earth, and is going to get rid of government conflict, and corruption and disorganisation, and chaos and we will all live happily ever after. And in the Talmud, there is a debate, and the debate is this messianic figure, is it an idea that we have to believe or is it an option? One of the rabbis, Hilal the Elder, said no. This idea of the Messiah was only meant to refer by Isaiah to King Hezekiah. There’s no such thing in the future. He was talking about Hezekiah because Hezekiah was the Judean king.

He renovated everything. He was moral, and ethical and brought peace after the Assyrians left, and so he was the Messiah. So, don’t think there’s going to be another Messiah. But most of the other rabbis wanted to be more optimistic. They wanted to think in terms of a better future to come and they divided into two groups. One group said a Messiah from the house of David is going to come when the world is, so bad it can’t get any better, any worse. And the other said no, the Messiah will come because we can bring the Messiah. When we make things better, we can improve the world. And these two different versions co-existed, co-existed throughout the debate about what we understand by the Messiah. So, Maimonides, for example, writing a thousand years ago in Egypt said, the only difference between the Messianic era and this is when there won’t be corrupt government. Well, we still have corrupt government today. So much for that. I came out of the subway on 72nd Street yesterday. And as I came out, there in front of me, it was a big poster saying the Messiah is here now with a picture of the Chabad Lubavitcher Rebbe. And as we know today, Lubavitch is very keen to say, we want the Messiah now. And some of them say the Messiah is the Rebbe. And if he didn’t come first time, rather like Jesus, he’s going to come back a second time. So, what exactly do we understand by this and why am I going to talk about these failed or false, however you want to put it, messiahs?

The first one who we recognise as a kind of failed messiah, as Jews, I’m not talking about Christianity here, Christianity have their own idea of messiah, the Muslims have their own idea of messiah, of the Mahdi, famous for Khartoum and killing Gordon at Khartoum, but they believe in various variations. There are the 12ers and the seveners who believe in different kind of imams who are going to come, but they all believe in the same thing, that the world’s going to be a better place and our guys are going to achieve it. And all I say is good luck to them. I want to tell a very, very heretical joke. The Talmud itself says, whatever you do, don’t try to predict the coming of a Messiah. If you try to predict the coming of Messiah, says the Talmud, and the Messiah doesn’t come, people will lose faith, they’ll get disillusioned, and it’s a disaster. So don’t try to calculate when, but that’s never stopped people trying to calculate when the Messiah is going to come. And so, my heretical joke is this. There’s a donkey, an ass in the field, and the ass goes up to the horse, the other side of the fence, and says, you know, you’re so lucky, horse. You have a nice stable to live in. You’re fed the best quality food. You are brushed down and looked after. You’re inside when the weather is bad. The vet comes to see you when you’re ill. You have such a wonderful life, me I’m out in the field all the time, nobody cares about me, I carry burdens, my life is terrible.

And the horse turned to the ass and said yes, you’re right, but you know when the Messiah comes, you’ll be in front, he’ll be riding on an ass. To which the ass replied, do you have any idea how many asses there are waiting for the Messiah to come? So, that little heretical thing doesn’t imply that I don’t think the messianic era and idea is important. I think it’s very important to be optimistic and to strive for a better world. And I imagine that when a Jew is sitting in the concentration camp, he can have no conception that he can help make the world a better place. And therefore, his concept of the Messiah is going to be things are so bad, really, God has to intervene, in which case, why didn’t he? That’s a problem. But the other side of the coin is the way we are in our more open societies. We do think we can make the world a better place. We do think we can work towards climate change. We do think we can improve things, but it’s going to take a long, long, long, long time. It’s not going to happen overnight. And I think it’s important for us to be optimistic. And that’s why, for me, the idea of the Messiah does have some value. But that’s the case for the defence. Now let’s look at the record. The record on Jewish terms is that the first failed Messiah was Bar Kokhba. Bar Kokhba, he lived, he ruled actually from 132 to 135. He managed after the Roman destruction of temple, to set up his centre at Betar. He rebelled against the Romans because a new generation of Roman generals were oppressing the Jews. They were banning Judaism. They were selling them into slavery. They were making life hell.

And he rose and said, we’ve got to fight these bastards. We can’t just take this lying down. And he then declared himself as the Messiah because he was able for three years to get rid of the Romans. He brought peace and he brought a government that wasn’t made up of corrupt people. Some of the rabbis like Rabbi Akiva, notably supported him and said, you will, you are. And the other rabbi said, Akiva, grass will go out of the palm of your hand if you think this guy’s the Messiah. So, you see the divisions were there too. And of course, as we know, Bar Kokhba was defeated, Masada came, and all these terrible disasters, which emphasised why the Jews stopped wanting a militant Messiah and moved over to a non-militant version. But there were, after Bar Kokhba, not immediately, but several hundred years later, as the Christian world, particularly the Byzantium world, began to oppress Jewish life in the Middle East, and made life hell, a new generation of messiahs suddenly appeared on the scene. And really messiahs came in waves. There were messiahs actually in the Dead Sea sects that had nothing to do with Bar Kokhba. But in the first, the period of about 500, 400 of the Common Era, during the Byzantines, you had a messiah in Crete, Moses of Crete.

You had Ishak ben Yaakov, I have to read this because I can’t remember all the names by myself by heart, in Istahan in Persia. You had the famous Abu Isaw in Yugadan. You had a messiah in Cordova in Spain, you had a false Messiah in Morocco, and you had the famous David Al Roy who Disraeli made famous, and he in Persia for a long time had many, many followers until unfortunately in the end he was got rid of. And he was followed by a Yemenite messiah who Maimonides had to write a letter to the Jews of Yemen saying, don’t listen to these false messiahs. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Then there was the famous Kabbalist in Spain, Abraham Abulafia, who in his writings on mysticism borrowed a great deal from both yoga and meditation from the East, and also was considered by some as a messiah. There was a famous Joseph Dicatilia, who was known as a thinker and a philosopher. There was Nissim ben Avraham in Avila. There was Moshe Boterel, I’m not confusing with Boterel the artist, that would be a mistake. And then there was the famous Solomon Molchal, who was together with David Rubeni, two partners in crime. David Rubeni came at the time of the expulsion, after the expulsion of Spain, he appeared before the kings and the Pope and tried to say, I come from Africa and I have a whole Jewish army south of the river Sambation, and I’m going to help and get rid of all your enemies and enable you to conquer the east, but I want you to enable me to be the king of the Jews and lead them to freedom.

And Solomon Molchor too appeared before the Pope and before various dukes in Italy and tried to persuade them that he was the Messiah and he was going to bring all the Jews back home, re-establish the Temple, and bring peace on earth. And both of them ended up badly. Molchor was burned as a heretic, Rubeni disappeared and apparently was murdered somewhere and never discovered what happened to his body. So, those two in the 15th and early 16th century was Rubeni and Molcho. And then there was the most famous one of all called Shabsai Tzvi. Shabsai Tzvi, he lived, he was born in Smyrna in the 17th century, 1626. And he managed to persuade almost half the Jewish world that he was really the Messiah. So much so that in London in the stock market they actually took bets on whether the Messiah was actually coming or not. Of course, what happened with him, although he managed, he aroused a lot of anger towards him and hatred and opposition, but nevertheless, even Gukul of Hamelin in a famous book, talks, a diary rather, talks about preparing and salting meat to take on the journey to Israel because the Messiah was coming. Everybody thought this was the Messiah. He was a charismatic man and a great mystic, a weirdo into the bargain too, which is hardly surprising.

But nevertheless, he went, he wanted to persuade the Sultan of Constantinople to allow him to open up Judea again, which was a God forsaken dump by and large, and bring the Jews back home and establish a state. There’d been some Jews in Safed, of course, in the North, but it wasn’t a Jewish state. Under the protection of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Emperor allowed him to come to all Constantinople. And when he did, he threw him in jail and said, listen, your life, you convert to Islam. He converted to Islam. And the shock of that system really, in a sense, led to the suspicion of messianism and of the idea of a messiah for until almost in some communities to this very day. But throughout his period, he stuck with, until he converted to Islam, the Jewish faith. And even afterwards, he persuaded some of his followers, you know, I’m only joining Islam in order to get them to come over to my side, but I’m still the Jewish guy. And when he died, several of his relatives carried on trying to say he is the Messiah. And one of his nephews actually set up a group called the Donmeh and the Donmeh were actually a combination of Muslims in Turkey and people who supported the idea that Shabsai Tzvi, was the Messiah, and he’d come back and he would rescue them. Unfortunately, after Shabtai TZV, there was another false messiah called Jacob Frank. Jacob Frank was a notorious character because he took an idea from the Kabbalah for mysticism. And the idea was essentially that you have to know evil before you can overcome it.

So, it was something called in Hebrew, Yerida Letzorech Aliya, you have to go down before you can rise. And he took this to mean more than Shabsai Tzvi did. Shabsai Tzvi said, look, you sin a bit, you eat the wrong food, you’ve got to taste sin in some minor way in your life before you can overcome it. Jacob Frank went further. Jacob Frank said, listen, if the experience of God is the most passionate experience you can have, what’s the most passionate experience you can have on earth answer sex, so the only way to reach God is by having orgies, now this was very popular for a lot of people and Jacob Frank gathered around him a lot of people, and he had these orgiastic celebrations in Europe during the 18th century. And this obviously was a massive problem, both for the Jewish community and the non-Jewish community. The non-Jewish community didn’t want to have this raving lunatic running around, and so they pressurised him, and he converted all his followers to Catholicism and became Catholic, and for a while carried on the same thing within the Catholic Church, but they were able to put him down and that was the end of Jacob Frank. So, you can see why with both Jacob Frank and Shabsai Tzvi claiming to be messiahs, clearly neither on either account, either spiritual or temporal, gave the idea of mysticism of Kabbalah a bad name. And that led to a generation of rabbis going around Europe witch-hunting, trying to root out any of these crazy mystics. And why in effect mysticism in Europe only survived with the rise of Hasidism.

And, well, wrong to say only survived. There were small little groups in Lithuania who studied Kabbalah very seriously, but it wasn’t a popular movement. It became a popular movement under Hasidism, and Hasidism in fact borrowed both its format of prayer, and many of its customs from the mystics in Safed, particularly Yitzhak Luria, the great mystic there. And so, Hasidism became the standard bearer of mysticism. And in fact, most Hasidim study a little bit of the Kabbalah all the time. Only a few go in greater depth to it, but nevertheless, it is an integral part. And not only that, but thanks to Hasidism, many of the stranger customs and ideas of mysticism coming from the great book the Zohar have become part of the mainstream to this very day. But this also explains why Chassidism adopted the idea of messianism full-blown, and every rebbe, every leader, mystical leader, was a potential Messiah. And because of this, this explains why, although all Hasidic movements regard their leaders as holy in one way or another, regardless of whether they were just born into the job, or achieved it in some other way, or whether they’re good, bad, or indifferent, they’re all holy, they’re all called Kaddosh, holy, and some of them are regarded as messianic.

So, there are, for example, the Bratislava Hasidim, who are very well known in Israel, and their Rebbe died in Uman, and there’s never been a Rebbe since from Nachman of Bratislav, he is considered by many to be the Messiah. And Lubavitch also, Chabad, many of them believe the Rebbe because he was such a great spiritual person, and he was, and I would agree, one of the greatest religious leaders in Judaism of the past hundred years. Nevertheless, this, I would say, over-preoccupation is counterproductive because each year they say this is the year the Rebbe is coming. And why do they say it? Because they say, look, it’s a mitzvah to wait for the Messiah. We should wait for him. And even if the Messiah tarries and doesn’t come, we should still hope. And hope is something that you’ve got to try to actuate and activate. And that’s why they push all the time for the Messiah. As I say, I don’t fall into that. and so, it doesn’t bother me that people say, this year the Messiah is coming because I’m prepared to take bets it’s not going to happen, although I’m not a betting man. And of course, this happens in Christianity too. There are many sects in Christianity who forecast the arrival of Jesus. He’s going to come back a second time and they wait, and they predict, and it doesn’t happen, and it hasn’t happened yet, but who knows, miracles are possible. There are some people actually who believe that Herzl, who founded or at least was the initiator of the steps that led to the Jewish state, that he too is considered something of a messiah.

But again, it depends how you understand what a messiah is. So, if you understand that the messiah is a leader who will emerge and then disappear, well, there have been plenty of them. If you believe the Messiah is somebody who is going to repair the world, change it for better, and make it peace on earth for everybody, then clearly the Messiah hasn’t yet come. And so, we are constantly having to deal with claims to this day of messiahs of one kind, or another coming from Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. And the question is, how do we deal with it? Well, the answer we know is that when somebody has religious faith, in other words, when somebody’s feelings have come about, not through logic or through argument, but through feeling, it’s only through feeling you’re going to be able to persuade them. So, sitting down with a jihadi is certainly trying to have a rational argument on any issue is not a get anywhere. The same thing goes with our own extremists and the same thing goes with Christian extremists, and therefore it seems to me there’s absolutely no point in trying to argue the case as to whose messiah is better than the others, or whose has a greater chance of coming than the others. In the end, it depends essentially on us. But we ourselves have succeeded in producing the total number, and I’ve only read out the most well-known ones, of over 50 messiahs over the last thousand years who have claimed to be the messiah and in fact, have got nowhere.

So, I would say don’t knock it, I would say interpret it and see if we can find something valuable in this and I think it is such an important idea, because, at this moment in time, we are experiencing a rise of anti-Semitism. And this rise of anti-Semitism, which has lain dormant to some extent, but only under the surface, is both there in Christianity and there is in Islam. And this suddenly now is coming back out into the open for all kinds of political and social reasons. And our reaction when this happens is to withdraw into our shell. You know, you hit somebody in the solar plexus, they tighten up, and so we tighten up as a defensive mechanism. And we have this idea that is expressed in a midrash, and I mention this is in a midrash because it’s not part of the official Gemara or Mishnah, which says, I want you to know it’s a well-known fact that Esau always hates Jacob, which was interpreted to mean that the non-Jewish world and Esau, because he was red for a while, was the cover for Rome, and then transferred into Christianity and during since that period Esau has been another way of talking about anti-semitism wherever it comes from and that Esau always hates Jacob. The fact of the matter is there are plenty of other sources both in commentaries, I mentioned Rush’s grandson Rushban, one in the Talmud and elsewhere, that say nothing of the sort. And what they say is there are goodies and baddies everywhere. And you should concentrate on trying to support the goodies and try to avoid the baddies.

One of the reasons why, in a sense, conversion in Judaism stopped or was discouraged was because Judaism didn’t feel it had a need to convert other people because it always believed other people can find the truth. They can find God, they can find spirituality, they can find a place in the world to come. And so, because of this, and because of this recognition of this famous phrase in the Talmud, that there are 36 tzaddikim, pious Jews, who keep their world alive, there are 42 non-Jewish saints who keep the non-Jewish world alive. So, there are good people everywhere. We don’t call them saints, we call them tzaddik. A tzaddik is a righteous person who behaves in a righteous way and does the right thing. So, because of this, I think it’s important for us to stress that messianism does not mean defeating the others. It doesn’t mean a monopoly on we’ll be top dogs. It means making the world a better place by supporting all those people who in their different ways, whatever their religion or no religion, whatever their position, are trying to improve humanity and improve the human condition. Because if you genuinely do want to do that, the last thing you will do is to hate or to cause hatred, or to despise another person simply for who they were born. So, on that note, I will end the lecture and turn to the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: And the first one is, Karen asked me, is there any significance of your playing the Prokofiev before class, or do you just like it?

A: I’m going to hearing it all day. The truth of the matter is, I have a very wide taste in music, very, very, very wide. I’m not a scholar in any way, I’m not an expert in any way, and I ignored my father’s request that I should learn to play an instrument because I wanted to play soccer instead. He said I’d regret it, and I do, but I like all kinds of music. I’m not very keen on modern classical music, on discordant. I’m not, I’m afraid, a great fan of some of the modern composers, but otherwise, I love so much and what I pick is quite random in any particular week of something that I was listening to, and I thought, ah, that might be a nice thing to play.

Q: Jean Anderson, I very much miss your Wednesday letters in the Bible. Will you offer those again?

A: This is at the moment in the hands of Trudy, who Trudy Gold, wonderful, magnificent, fantastic Trudy Gold, who runs the programme. When I last heard there was a chance it would be re-established in the spring, but I don’t know if you want it, let her know.

Q: Elliot asked, dear Rabbi, then forgets maybe you’ll come back again, was Saul anointed twice?

A: Shelley, that’s a good point. Yes, he was. His kingdom was renewed. And it was renewed because he was initially anointed by Samuel, but people were not altogether convinced he was the right guy. He came from one of the smallest tribes, the tribe of Benjamin. He was a tall guy and a strong guy, but they weren’t convinced he had the right character. And in fact, they were proven right because he showed himself to be unstable, unreliable, and very bad temper. He tried to kill David several times. So, he was confirmed by Samuel because God told Samuel, just go ahead, this is the guy, give him a chance to prove himself. And of course, he proved himself wrong and as God said, you know, it’s not your fault, it’s my fault, so try again.

Q: You mentioned Saul coming to a messing end, is that a contrast to a messianic end?

A: That’s a good point. I didn’t have that in mind, I must confess.

Q: Elliot, to what extent have you interacted with missionaries, Jews for Jesus, and other variations of that brand, possibly well-meaning, but not very well informed about the reasons that countless rabbis over the centuries have rejected their claim, Messiah?

A: Yes, I think these Jews for Jesus and these other variations are very dangerous. I think when somebody tries to convert other people, they are, how can I say, taking it upon themselves the certainty that they are right and everybody’s wrong. And I’m sure you’ve heard all these examples of the steps they take. And there was one famous case recently revealed in Jerusalem of a messianic Jew who completely trained as an ultra-orthodox rabbi and loyal and this, that, and the other. And his purpose was to convert, and it was only revealed accidentally. So, this idea of trying to persuade somebody to leave a religion, to leave a religion and go to their religion, I find a disaster. However, there’s another side to it. A lot of people, a lot of Jews, have no religious life whatsoever. They know nothing. They don’t know why we will not accept Jesus as a Messiah, because he didn’t achieve any of the things our concept of a Messiah requires. He did not become king, and he didn’t change the world. If other people want to believe it, that’s their right, and I’m perfectly happy for them to believe whatever they want. But somebody who tries to convert, I find it offensive. It’s like going up to somebody and saying, I know you are wrong. And as the great scientist, a philosopher Isaiah Berlin said, “Whenever you come across anybody who says, I am the sole possessor of the truth, he meant politically, but I say religiously, run away as fast as you possibly can, because that is dangerous.” And so, I believe anybody who tries to convert Jews is offensive, offends me, and they should try to convert other Christians who are not, or other, who had no religion, and focus on men instead of trying to focus on the usually the insecure and the weak and the uneducated from amongst the Jewish people who they managed to win over.

Q: You didn’t answer in his questions how was Hanukkah originally celebrated during the Hasmonean period, when were the eight lights in the menorah instituted?

A: No Yisrael, I didn’t mention that. Let me just say this. Hanukkah was celebrated with the establishment, the rededication of the temple, an eight-day celebration of it, echoing the eight-day celebration of Solomon’s temple, and also echoing the eight days of the festival of Sukkot. You will know that one of the reasons we light eight lights in a particular order is because there was a debate between the House of Hillel, and the House of Hanukkah about lighting the lights, which does seem to imply that it dates back to that period which was towards the end of the Hasmonean dynastic period. And the question was do you start with one and go up to eight, or do you start with eight and go down to one? And the argument of Beit Shammai is you start with eight, and go up to eight or do you start with eight, and go down to one? And the argument of Beit Shammai is you start with eight and go down to one because, in the festival of Sukkot, the eight-day festival of Sukkot, they started with 70, sorry, they sacrificed 70 bulls, and these bulls were sacrificed for the sake of the nations of the world. We were praying for them and sacrificing for everybody because we wanted everybody to be happy and good and successful.

And they started by going down in number from the maximum to the minimum. So that’s why Beit Shammai said we start with eight and we go down. Beit Hillel said no, in religious matters, we always rise, we always try to be a bit better, and so we start with one and we go up. When the story of the oil lasting for eight days came in, it appears that this was during the rabbinic period, and it appears that the rabbis were very eager to continue celebrating Hanukkah, particularly after the temple was destroyed, but to celebrate it for keeping the spirit, the light of the Torah alive. Because thanks to that, there was a period during the Hasmoneans when the rabbis gained power, gained control, and became the dominant influence in Judaism to replace the high priests. That was a great victory. It’s thanks to them we have survived, and we have not assimilated into the Greek and Roman world. And so, to celebrate that, they wanted to put the emphasis on the spiritual, and that’s where the lights of Hanukkah came. Now, there’s a lot of debate. We debate about all kinds of things. We debate about the Hasmoneans, and we debate about the people of who came after. But that is where, in my view, the light menorah instituted came in at that stage.

Dear Rabbi, you joke about the horse from the ice in California brewery called He Brew, and their signature product is called the Messiah. I’m not a great beer fan, but although I was in my student days. But thanks to that I must look it up. I read the story of the eight camels invented by the rabbis didn’t want to honour the Maccabees because they invited the Romans to the land of Israel and truth of the story. Well partially yes yes, I mean the time was right and it’s also true that Judah Maccabee, just before he was killed when the Syrians sent their main army, because most of his victories were against smaller armies, he wrote and asked Rome to come to his help. And Rome always used that as the excuse for saying, you are a Roman state under our protection, and therefore you do as we require. And so there was this ill feeling, some on the part of some, that this link to the Romans goes back to Judah Maccabee.

A God was in Auschwitz, the Orthodox rabbis say this because he was hurt by his own people, including my family who treated, so he agreed to shed free for the souls. I prefer their explanation. First of all, anybody who says they know how God works, as far as I’m concerned, are mad. How can any human being claim to know how God works? Now I’ve heard people say God went allowed, or Auschwitz to happen because the non-Orthodox world was assimilating. Well, in which case, why punish most of the Orthodox? They were the ones who built the brunt of it. That doesn’t make sense in any way. And it depends which Orthodox rabbis you’re talking about. It’s not fair to say all Orthodox rabbis, even amongst the very Haredi you can’t say all. There are a few, I hate to say this, crazy rabbis on the internet who make stupid comments. One notorious one was that it’s because the women were naked when they were going into the ovens and the lack of modesty as if they had any choice on it. So yes, there are a lot of crazy people out there playing crazy things. As far as I’m concerned, Auschwitz happened because we humans have been given choice, and the choice to do evil as well as the choice to do bad. And if every time we were about to do bad, God would intervene and say, Jeremy, don’t do that. And would intervene with every one of the billions of people on earth to stop them doing bad. It would be strange.

And in fact, the rabbis say, we were not created to be angels. We’re not angels and we make mistakes. And if you ask them, well, you know, wasn’t Auschwitz a greater mistake than any one previously? There is an argument that to say the numbers of people who over time have been raped, and murdered, and killed and slashed through hatred of one kind or another, by one empire or another, has been horrific. More people were killed by the Marxists than were killed by the Nazis. It’s a horrible thing. The question is not why didn’t God intervene in Auschwitz, it’s first of all where were humans in Auschwitz? And of course, they had more technology than the Romans or the Greeks, and they had better equipment and they had better means of transport so they could do more damage. Look what Russia’s doing now in Poland, in Ukraine. I’m not comparing it to the Nazis, of course. But nevertheless, it’s the fact that humans are of potentially awful as much as they are potentially good. And I don’t think you can give an explanation for Auschwitz other than to say it was a failure of humanity. And then you have to answer the question of why doesn’t God intervene and that becomes another theological issue altogether. Ben-Gvir and Smotrych want to purify Judaism. Are they not a subconscious messianic state of mind? Yes, yes, I think they are. And I think they’re crazy too. And I despise a great deal of what they say. Some of what they say I agree with, in the sense that I agree we have to protect ourselves against people who hate us. And we have to try and find peace. But if we can’t find peace, there’s no point in lying over and lying people just to kill us.

Q: Would it be true false messiahs are reincarnated Jewish souls?

A: Well first of all I don’t believe in reincarnation. I know reincarnation is mentioned in the Zohar and it’s something that some Jews believe in. I don’t, it doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not mentioned, reincarnation isn’t mentioned in the Talmud or in the Midrash, so it’s not for me. So, don’t ask me about reincarnation. You’re going to have to ask somebody who does believe in it. Sorry.

Q: Is there a tradition of a divine Messiah in Judaism? If so, where?

A: Well, divine Messiah is a concept of God intervening, God intervening. And I can find no evidence in the Bible where it says God intervenes in creating a Messiah. We do have leaders who emerge. A divine Messiah, I don’t know what that means. It sounds to me like a Christian idea that maybe Jesus is divine because according to Christians, he’s the son of God or part of God or what of God. Within us, we talk about people like Eliyahu, Elijah, coming and making things better, but he’s not divine. We thoughts talk about the son of David coming to make things better, but he’s not divine. So, I don’t think divine Messiah is a term that we can usefully use in Judaism.

Ruth says, I see the concept of a size and encouragement to be better to aim at perfection. Yes, indeed. That’s exactly what I think too.

Q: Shelley, do you believe Mashiach can be an age instead of a Messiah?

A: Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. I do think it can be an age and I think that is what Maimonides really believes. And he believes that maybe it takes some people to bring this about. But he also possibly believes it may come through divine intervention. But divine intervention would bring about an age and a period, and they call it Yimei Mashiach, the days of the Messiah. Thank you,

Q: Clara, Clarissa. Why was Bar Kokhba was considered to contemporaries as a possible Messiah, except into Jewish hagiography and lexicon, but Jesus, who lived only a short time previously, was reviled?

A: Very simply, because for a while their definition at the time of a Messiah was somebody who would get rid of oppression, and Jesus didn’t get rid of oppression. So, how could he be? He was neither a king, neither did he get rid of the Romans, neither did he make a world a better place. For a while, Bar Kokhba looked as though he was doing it and that’s why for a while they thought he was. But the moment he died, that was the end of it. Thank you for your thank you.

Q: Gloria, do you mean Esau and Isaac, not Esau and Jacob?

A: No, I do mean. So, I do mean, the phrase is, Be'adua she'esev sona et Ya'akov. The idea that Ya'akov is the name for Israel, Esau is the name used generally for the non-Jewish world, and that’s why we say the phrase applies that way. But nevertheless, it’s a very good question. Thank you for this, you explained it very well.

Q: Thank you, Abigail. What about the concept that dead will rise?

A: Ah, dead will rise. That’s another very interesting issue. It’s such a big issue. I very briefly will say this. When the Prophet Ezekiel talks about the dead bones, he’s referring to the Jews of Babylon. And when he talks about them coming back to life and being brought back to life, he is talking metaphorically that the Jewish people will rise from exile and come back home. And there are indeed those in the Talmud who say we don’t need to take this literally that there is such a thing as resurrection, but we need to take it as symbolically as an idea. But there are people who think within Judaism that resurrection means to explain the fact that potentially anything can happen. Dead people can come back. There’s a famous debate in the Talmud in which Cleopatra, the famous Egyptian queen, says to Rabbi Yochanan, she says, I can understand that dead people come back to life because, you know, sometimes people do come back to life. We give them up to dead and they come back in some way. What I want to know is when they come back, will they come back with their clothes or without their clothes on? She was very worried how she would appear, and this is one of the big questions. If you take resurrection literally, you come back with your false teeth, without your false teeth, with your amputated limb, or without. At what age, at what stage? With a beard, without a beard. With a wig, without a wig. So, I think there’s a great problem in trying to take the idea of resurrection literally.

Thank you, Carla. The big advantage of Christ is his super miracles, but we are told not to listen to miracles. We’re told in the Torah itself, if a prophet arises and does miracles, don’t pay any attention to the miracles. So, all we’re told is the message counts, not the miracles. If miracles reinforce the message, fine, but we don’t trust miracles. After all, we see us every day about how David Copperfield and others perform miracles, walk through walls, do all kinds of tricks. Don’t trust miracles. That’s the lowest form of religious commitment.

Q: Carol, what about the very focused, smart, and enticing ways the Chabad movement have developed the aim of converting Jewish secular population to religiosity?

A: They’re wonderful. I know I love Chabad, their dedication and their involvement, and the fact they respect everybody no matter what their background and welcoming in. Their work is fantastic. That doesn’t mean to say I have to agree with every one of their ideas and I don’t. You can love them, but not love some of the crazy ideas.

Okay, that’s it. Thank you everybody. That ends this session.