After reading chapter four in JCM, I'm still unclear about the place of Messianism within Judaism. The chapter explained the history of messianic views and some messianic movements, but how do Jews today respond to this? Are Jews still waiting for a Messiah?
Perhaps modern Jews take the Messianic promises of the Bible to mean the people of Israel or as something less concrete, as JCM says, "...the title of Messiah is ascribed to King David...the term also refers to all descendents of David's line who sat on his throne" (78). Can anyone help clarify what the state of Messianism is in Judaism today? Or is it different for all people and denominations?
Friday, February 15, 2008
Messianism in Judaism
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On page 80, the text explains the required criteria of a messiah. just a quick couple questions for anyone to answer: has no one met these simple criteria? And, Who is to make judgment as to whether the criteria have been met?
Messianism in modern Judaism is a complicated subject. On the whole, classical Judaism and modern Judaism has been wary of Jews claiming to be messiahs (because as R. Steinsaltz says, "we are a hard-headed people") with some very notable exceptions - i.e., R. Isaac Luria in the 16th c., Shabbetai Tzvi in the 17th century, among the Bratslaver (19th c.) and Lubavitch Hasidim (20th-21st c.), as well as some of the religious settlers on the West Bank in Israel. On the other hand, messianic hope is a very important part of "the Jewish myth." There's a deeply ingrained hope for a better world, but at the same time a reluctance to apply the "simple criteria" to particular individual claimants. I think on some level, Jews feel they got burned badly by previous messianic movements, i.e., those surrounding Jesus and Shabbetai Tzvi. Also, for many modern Jews, the pie-in-the-sky supernaturalism of a messianic personality who is magically going to make the world all better is embarrassing and implausible. Hence the Reform movement changed prayers that hope for a "redeemer" (go'el) into hope for redemption (ge'ulah.
Personally, while I think there are very good reasons to be suspicious of contemporary Jewish messianism especially in Israel (the Jewish assassin of Yitzhak Rabin and various plots to blow up the Dome of the Rock were inspired by such messianism), the conscious or unconscious modern Jewish efforts to play down the traditions about a messianic redeemer do not do the tradition justice. Jewish speculation about the messiah and messianic times fills much of medieval Jewish religious literature, and I think has a function similar to other utopian literature. It's a way of imagining how the world could be different and better, and such creative, imaginative visions of the future are necessary to inspire social change. Certainly it has been argued that Jewish messianism has been secularized into modern Marxist and socialist utopian visions of a more just society.
Thanks. That cleared it up a little bit, as did the end of Chapter four.
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