Jeremy Rosen
False Messiahs

Jeremy Rosen | False Messiahs | 06.22.21

- Okay, so Jeremy, it’s lovely to see you. Welcome back.

• [Jeremy] Thank you.

• [Wendy] Yeah. Is it still so hot in York?

• It’s raining.

• Oh, it’s raining, okay.

• English weather.

• Yeah, a little bit of home from home, but I bet it’s not dark.

• It is quite dark actually, yeah.

• Oh, it is dark, okay. In South Africa when it rains, you always have, yeah, the thunderstorms and the lightning.

• Yeah, that’s proper tropical stuff. Yeah, we tend to drizzle.

• Well, so I’m going to hand over to you now and thanks. Lovely to see you again. And today we’re going to be talking about the false Messiah or false Messiahs, right?

• Lots of them. 35 of them in our tradition.

• Perfect. Okay, good. I’m looking forward. I hand over to you. Thank you.

• So ladies and gentlemen, first of all, those of you who will have heard me talk a couple of months ago about Jesus will know that I went over the origins of the Messianic idea in Judaism. And please forgive me for going back over that a little bit because I think I need to put everything in context.

Messianism, in one form or another, exists in every religion. There’s a Messiah in Christianity, there’s a Messiah in Islam, the Mahdi, there is the Messiah in Hinduism, and in a way in Buddhism. They all have this element within them of, we’ve got to make the world a better place somehow or other. But when you look at the origin in Judaism, it’s a very, very different kind of concept because the term mashiach, Messiah, in Judaism, essentially simply means to anoint somebody with oil and this was a way they gave somebody status by anointing them with oil and so the term Messiah comes from the Hebrew word mashiach which means to anoint.

And the first example of anointing was Aaron. Moses wasn’t anointed. Aaron was anointed as the high priest. And then later on there was Samuel who anointed Saul as the first king. And from that moment onwards anointing, by and large, was when there was a break in dynasty. Then, a new king came in and had to be anointed. And so the idea of what we call Messianism begins in Judaism with the Babylonian exile. And in the Babylonian exile there were two parts of the Jewish community.

There was the Judeans where we get the name Jews from. They were all descended from the house of David. And there were those from the house of Joseph, the 10 Northern tribes. And in Babylon, both of them had a Messiah, the mashiach ben David, the Messiah of David, and the mashiach ben Yosef, the Messiah of Joseph. And all it meant to them was one day we’ll go back, get our countries back again, and will be led by our kings or governors, whoever they’re going to be. It didn’t have anything more or apocalyptic than that.

Later on, coming under the influence of the Greeks, the oppression of the Judean tradition by the northern kings who took over the empire from Greece and became the foundation of the Roman Empire, they began to challenge the right of Jews to carry out their religion. The Persians never had a problem with that. It was the Greeks and the Romans who began later on to have a problem with this. And at that moment, the idea of a Messiah became more an idea of somebody who’s going to free us from this kind of religious oppression.

During that period, there were Maccabee kings, not very good, most of them, and people looked forward to a better model of a king. But by and large, all it meant at that moment was a leader who would free us from imperialism, which in a way means that at the time, when shall we say Christianity begins, the only example of a Messiah that they had would’ve been a political Messiah, which means if there was any opposition, it would’ve been because somebody was standing up as a political threat, not as a religious threat.

At the same time, the Dead Sea sects had their idea of a Messiah as the teacher of righteousness. He was a spiritual leader, not a political leader, but they didn’t call him a Messiah because to them Messiah simply meant politics. So this was, if you like, the period that existed about 2,000 years ago and the rebellion of the famous Bar Kokhba revolution, which was opposed to Roman authority in Judea 132 to 135, you first of all get somebody saying, “This guy is the Messiah.”

And Bar Kokhba actually had coins printed to say he was the Messiah because he promised to get rid of the Roman rule. Of course, he failed disastrously. That led to even more oppression. And so for the first time, Jews no longer had any control of their external political affairs. They were granted, whether it’s by the Persians or the Romans, some degree of autonomy similarly under the Christians and under the Muslims, but they were never completely in control. The Talmud therefore starts to discuss in this second century, what do we mean by a Messiah? And they split first of all into two groups.

One group which says, “Look, we’re not talking about political authority. We’re not talking about David and bringing David back. We’re rather talking about spiritual independence and we rather like the message of Elijah the prophet. We look to Eliyyahu Ha Navi to be the person who will revive our religion and give us religious independence.”

So you have two contradictory ideas, both of them expressed in the Talmud, in the Mishnah, and then in the Gemara. And so on an issue like this, as with all theological issues, our darling forebears, our rabbis argue all day long. So when you look then at what they mean by a Messiah in the Talmud, they split into two different broad categories. Those people who say, “We want this world to be a better place and the only way we’re going to make this world a better place is if we work very hard at it and if we improve as human beings and if we are committed to our tradition.”

The other point of view said, “No, the Messiah is only going to be some sort of divine intervention because we humans, we are such a mess. There’s no way we can make this world better.” On the one hand, those who say we can make the world better also divide between those who say this is going to make the world better as it is now and those who say no, it’s going to make the world better. It’s going to change the world totally. All fruit is going to grow off the trees all the time. One opinion is that women will have children all the time, not very appealing to women I would’ve thought. And another says, no, there’s absolutely no distinction whatsoever. We’re simply talking about the world as it is today without what we call , without government oppressing us, getting in the way of us fulfilling our potential.

So the idea was to be able to fulfil one’s potential. The other side of the coin comes up with this idea. This is a spiritual state that we must reach and to reach this spiritual state, even though we can work towards it ourselves, sometimes we’re in a situation where it’s absolutely impossible and we can’t deal with it. And that’s where the idea of God as Superman or the Messiah as Superman coming in to solve our problems emerges. So all these ideas are to be found in the Talmud, particularly in the last tome, the last chapter of the Book of Sanhedrin, the Talmud Sanhedrin. You have all these different opinions.

You even have an opinion which says there’s no Messiah in the future, attributed to a man called Rabbi Hillel. And he bases himself on the fact that in the books of the prophets, in Isaiah, when they talk about this wonderful time where people will beat their swords into plough shares, where people will get on with each other, there will be a fair and a just society, he was always referring in the short term to a new king that would live within a short period of time, maybe a couple of hundred years, usually King Hezekiah. None of the prophets of the Bible as we understood them were predicting for thousands of years ahead and certainly they were not predicting things like second comings.

So if you have in the Talmud this range of views, you have options. Nobody turns around and says, “You are a heretic if you don’t believe in my version of what the Messiah’s going to be.” And this plurality of ideas is what sparked off this incredible explosion in Messiahs that we call false Messiahs. And why do we call them false Messiahs? Simply because they preached hope and their hope did not come about. They had an agenda, they did not fulfil their agenda. In theory, if they fulfil their agenda, then that would make them a Messiah. If they don’t, they don’t.

And so 2,000 years ago, for example, the Jews were suffering both religiously and politically. There was nothing that had happened at that time that made them think that the Messiah had come. Christianity, of course, turns the idea of Messiah into Jesus and they take the idea away from the political side and they move it to the religious side. Then they have a problem with the fact that nobody hitherto had spoken about a second coming, so they add the idea of a second coming and that will sort out their problem.

At the same time under Islam you have the emergence of the Mahdi, the man who’s going to come back and defeat all the enemies and make Islam the universal world religion where everybody will live happily ever, ever after. And under Shia Islam you have this argument about the 12ers, the 12 successors of leaders who the final one, the 12ther, is going to be the one who’s going to sort the world out and solve all our problems. And similarly in Hinduism and to some extent similarly in Buddhism.

So as soon as we reach this period of time, you find after Bar Kokhba, a series of men emerging, all of very different characters, colours, backgrounds, who are all saying, “We are going to solve the Jewish problem. We’re going to stop all the persecution. We’re going to take them back to the holy land where they will live, every man and woman under his fig tree and under his vine, and be happy ever after.” And some still saying, “And everything will be taken care of. You’ll be on social security for the rest of your life,” and others who say, “No, the world will still be problematic, but it’ll be much easier to get on and progress.”

The first, interestingly, false Messiahs appear after Christianity under Islam. In Isfahan in the eighth century, you have a man called Yitzchak Ben Yaakov Ovadia of Isfahan. And he started gathering the Jews of Persia and said, “Guys, we’re going to invade the holy land and take it over.” Well, of course, the Muslims weren’t very happy about it. They got their army together and it was better than the one that poor Yitzchak Ben Yaakov Ovadia managed and the poor guy was killed and strung up in a tree and that was the end of his great idea. Couple of hundred years later, you have Maimonides sitting, great rationalists in Cairo.

And in Cairo he gets a letter from the Jews of Yemen. There is a Messiah here in Yemen who is telling us that we are wrong in not trusting him. We should follow him and he will lead us, first of all to Israel and then to Islam. And Maimonides writes this famous letter of him, his letter to the Yemenites saying, “Don’t believe them. Anybody who comes and tells you to stop being Jewish or tells you that he is a Messiah, don’t trust them because this is something,” according to Maimonides, “which goes beyond the rational.” This is not something rational. And if somebody comes along and tells you practically they’re going to solve the problems, don’t trust them.

Now after Maimonides, you have the sudden coming together both of Kabbalah mysticism in Southern France and Spain and, at the same time, the rise of the anti-Jewish mood in Iberia which will lead to the expulsion of the Jews. And under this sort of pressure, mysticism suddenly comes forward and says, “Guys, the only solution, the only solution is to look to the mystical, is look to God to come and directly save us.” And they give this idea of the mashiach, of the Messiah, who’s going to come and intervene this new powerful, if you like, re-imagination of the concept.

Because at that time when everything’s closing in on them, Islam’s closing in on them, Christianity is closing in them, who’s going to think that we can make this world a better place? We’re struggling to survive ourselves and we’re being kicked out from one place to the next. How can we possibly believe there is such a thing as a Messiah? And interestingly, one of the great early mystics, a man called Abraham Abulafia, he lived in Spain between 1240 and 1290 something or other. He himself, great mystic that he was, said, “I can lead you to the Messiah and I will make him come through my magic and through my mystical practises, I can bring the Messiah down to earth to get you out of this mess.”

Poor Abraham Abulafia died, the Messiah still hadn’t come, and he was left where he was. Soon after him, during the period of the expulsion, you had a remarkable rabbi called Abarbanel or they sometimes call him Abravanel, born in Portugal, very, very wealthy. He became the top tax collector for the the king of Portugal and he made a a tremendous amount of money. But then the king died, the new King John came in instead of Alfonso and kicked out the Jews and poor Abarbanel moved on to Spain. Actually, he was an advisor of Ferdinand and Isabella who ultimately expelled the Jews from Spain and he tried very hard to get them to change their point of view, didn’t succeed.

And as a result he had to move across to Naples, eventually died in Venice. But Abraham Abulafia who was a diplomat, who was a very wealthy man, who wrote an amazing commentary on the Torah, one of the best commentaries out in my opinion on the whole of the Bible, most of it, but also on the Torah, he wrote a series of books about the Messiah and he wrote a series of books. He said, “The Messiah’s coming, He’s coming. I’m telling you He’s coming. He is around the corner. He’ll get rid of all these problems. He’ll do it.” Poor old Abraham Abulafia, he died. So, oh sorry, Abraham Abulafia died without a Messiah. Abarbanel died without a Messiah. They all died without a Messiah.

No sooner they’d finished when another strange couple appear on the scene. The first guy is a man called David HaReuveni. David HaReuveni was a brilliant, crazy man from somewhere in Arabia. He was very small, but he was very, very charismatic. And HaReuveni said, “I come from a tribe, one of the 10 lost tribes. I have a brother who is king of a massive Jewish army south of the river Sambation, this mythical river somewhere in Ethiopia that runs all week long but stops on Shabbat. He’s there. He has a massive army and if you allow me, I will bring his army from there to help you deal with all your enemies.”

This was the magic story. There have been lots of stories before about missing kingdoms. In Christianity there’s the myth of Prester John. Prester John is a powerful leader of Christians somewhere beyond the pale or beyond the borders. And if you manage to make contact with him, he’ll come and win everything you could possibly wish. Well, what happened with poor old- I say he’s poor old ‘cause he didn’t meet a very nice end, was HaReuveni managed to get an audience with the Pope and persuaded the Pope that he could bring his soldiers to come and wrest the Christian holy places from Islam.

Not only that, he got an interview with the kings of Portugal and Spain who were also going to fund him. He also made contact with Emperor Charles V, the Holy Roman empire, and said to him, “Look, I want you to stop persecuting the Jews. Stop persecuting the Muranos. And I’m telling you, I am the Messiah. I’m the second coming of the Messiah.” And for a period, people seem to take him seriously until the Pope got fed up with him, shoves him in jail, and that’s the end of HaReuveni. HaReuveni also inspired another weird character called Molcho, Shlomo Molcho who started life as a murano and was so impressed by HaReuveni that he suddenly became very inspired by religion.

And he too made his way to Rome and went to the Pope and said, “I am the Messiah and I am going to do two things. I’m going to save all the Jews, I’m going to bring them all to land of Israel, and I’m going to make sure that you get all the holy places back from the Muslims.” The Pope didn’t have much time for Molcho and he declared him a heretic and he burnt him at the stake. So a bitter end to both of those two.

But those two, and none of those earlier ones were a universal as a man called Sabbatai Zevi. Sabbatai Zevi was born in 1626, died round about 1676. And he has come at a time when the Jews from Spain are being kicked out and they’ve harried from one place to another. They’re under pressure in Europe, they’re under pressure from the cossacks in Russia and Ukraine. The world around them looks so black, it can hardly get any worse.

So here’s another case of some saying, you know, “You’re not going to be able to make this world a better place, but I’m telling you I can do it.” He was born in Izmir. He was a brilliant, charismatic man, without any question. And very soon he showed that he was different to most of the people in the communities that he had interaction with. He liked to do things his way. For example, he went on kind of journeys into Greece to meet non-Jews and find out more about them. He moved in with mystics, Christian mystics, Jewish mystics, and he brought this mysticism, the Kabbalah, back to Izmir.

And in Izmir, he set himself up as the person who was going to change Judaism. Judaism, he thought, had got too stuffy, too rigid, not exciting enough. He wanted to turn it into a much more dynamic movement. But he also desperately wanted and he believed the solution to the Jewish problem was to return the Jews to the land of Israel. And as a result of this, he started travelling, first of all to Egypt and then to Israel in order to get support for his dream of reestablishing the Jewish state in Israel under him as the Messiah. And some people thought he was crazy, but enough people took him seriously for him to split the whole of the Turkish-Egyptian Israeli community into those who were for him and those were against him.

He had a guru called Nathan of Gaza, who was also a great mystic. He himself, Nathan of Gaza, didn’t believe that he was the Messiah, but he persuaded Sabbatai Zevi that he really was. And he encouraged him to go back to Turkey in order to persuade the Ottoman Emperor, the halif, that he was able to reestablish Jewish life in Israel. Now he had such an impact that Samuel Pepys, the English diarist, actually comments in his diary about London in the 17th century, in which he said, at Lloyd’s Coffee Shop, they’re taking bets that the Messiah is coming. So they were betting on the Messiah in the London Stock Exchange.

At the same time, there was a Jewish woman I’ve mentioned before called Gluckel of Hameln, whose father-in-law started salting food in Hamburg to start taking on the journey to go to Israel in order to be part of this incredible messianic amazing movement that had swept right through from London, actually from the Caribbean, all the way to Moscow and all the way down to Israel and Egypt and places beyond. He was persuaded, Sabbatai Zevi, to go to the Ottoman Court in order to persuade them that he was legit.

The Ottomans were always worried about uprisings and about rebels and about disorder. They were already concerned that he had caused fights within the Jewish community and were worried that this could spread to unrest throughout the empire. So when he turned up at the court and he said, “I am the Jewish Messiah. I don’t want to take anything away from you lot, but I want to get my lot to establish themselves in the land of Israel.” To cut a long story short, they put him in jail.

At first in jail, they allowed him to be met by followers from all around the world and they were persuaded that, just like Jesus was going to have a second coming, they were going to have a second coming, that this idea that he was imprisoned was part of the mystical idea that before you rise you have to sink. And Sabbatai Zevi, he had always said as part of his mystical tradition, “You have to sin before you can be a saint.”

Well, that really upset the established religious authorities. So they put him in prison and then after a period of time they said, “We have nothing, you guys. You’re going to convert to Islam or we’re going to kill you.” And at that moment, Sabbatai Zevi converted to Islam and the bubble burst or almost, but certainly in the main established communities, the bubble burst. And there were those who said, “Although he’s died, we still think his spirit is alive and he’s going to come back.” And those who said, “The bubble’s burst, he’s gone. He’s fake, he’s not legit.”

And there were battles between famous rabbis in Europe between Rabbi Emden and Rabbi Eybeschutz, one for Sabbatai’s theism and the other against. This was a massive, massive problem. And unfortunately what happened was that Sabbatai Zevi tried to play a double game. He tried to outwardly appear to be a Muslim and he went to the mosque and he prayed and he did all the right things and he started teaching and then in some reason he said, “But I want to teach Judaism too.”

In other words, he said, “I want to be the Messiah for everybody. I want have my cake and eat it.” And, of course, when he did that, the Muslims were not very happy with him and so they kicked him out and they sent it to exile in Albania on the Adriatic Coast where he was in the company of a lot of Christians. And all of a sudden he absorbed Christianity too. And he says, “I want to be the ecumenical leader of the whole world.”

It was a beautiful idea, but nothing worked out. Even when he died, he was succeeded by various supposed sons of his by the name of Querido. There was one called Jacob and the other called Baracka and they actually set up a movement called the Donmes and the Donmes was a movement of people who were outwardly Muslim but believed in Sabbatai Zevi. And to this day, there are still some members of the Donmes in Turkey, not very many of them. And they’re having it tough because Erdogan doesn’t like them because they’re not Muslims and they are not fully Jews and have tried at various stages to come to Israel.

But they are in this limbo, the poor Donmes, but still a couple of hundred of them still survive. And if that wasn’t enough, after Sabbatai Zevi died, there emerged a guy called Jacob Frank. And Jacob Frank was a real weirdo, came from Ashkenazi world. He went into the Sephardi world to learn Kabbalah and mysticism and he came back into Europe and he said, “I am the Messiah. And I’m telling you, in other words, sex is the only way to get to God.” And he started organising all these orgies in the forests of Eastern Europe, and who doesn’t like a good orgy?

And this guy, of course, was regarded as a real problem. And all the rabbis are saying, “You see what happens when you have mystics? These crazy mystics go off in all weird directions. They have a hybrid version of Judaism. You can’t trust them. Avoid them like the plague, whatever you do.” Jacob Frank went and converted to Christianity, to Catholicism. He thought, “Maybe I could win them over. Maybe I can have like Sabbatai Zevi. I can ride two horses simultaneously.”

Didn’t work, poor guy. He was thrown into prison. He even had a daughter called Eva Frank who claimed that she was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary and sex was the way to get back to Jesus. All these weird characters coming out of the same, if you like, environment of mysticism and Messianism thrown together. So it’s hardly surprising that both ideas got a bit of a bad reputation. The one balance to all this coming out of that same period is what we call Hasidism.

Hasidism started in Eastern Europe, but it started as a movement that drew its inspiration from the Kabbalah in Safed, where the great Rabbi Isaac Luria had tried to revive traditional Judaism by bringing in ecstasy, songs, music, singing, pleasurable aspects, and of not differentiating between those who were the elite and those who are not, those who were rich and those who were poor. This movement, Hasidism, started by a man called the Baal Shem Tov, it developed.

Initially, it was banned. There was a harem given by the Vilna Gaon against this movement because he thought it was sabatine. He thought it was going to be the result of this false messianic movement that would suddenly change the life of Jews in the West. Hasidism absorbed the ideas of Luria without going to the crazy extremes of Sabbatai Zevi, and certainly not of Frank. And so over time, slowly more and more people became attracted to it, particularly amongst the poor, but not only amongst the poor, amongst a lot of people who liked the idea of a non-rational version of Judaism, particularly so since Europe, now during the period of the rationalism, during the period of the enlightenment, was moving Judaism away from its Eastern roots and mystical roots towards rationalism.

So they were a reaction, a strong reaction against what was known as the Haskalah, the enlightenment, and part of this mystical tradition was the idea of the Messiah. But also another idea of the mystical tradition that grew up after the Baal Shem Tov was the idea of the Rebbe, of the rabbi being the intermediary between God and human beings, of the Rebbe, as opposed to the rabbi, having supernatural powers, being remarkably different to anybody else, and therefore being the one person who could really bring about change or solve the problems of the world.

So here we are at this particular moment in the Sephardi, world at the same time, there were also a series of false Messiahs, mainly in Yemen. And again, the same thing. They wanted to take the Jews away from oppression under Islam, take them back to the land of Israel, and the more they tried it, the more they got into trouble and the more they were killed. So this is the situation in Judaism during the 19th century, but during the 19th century there is another kind of Messianism that is suddenly emerging and this kind of Messianism is a non-Jewish rational form of Messianism, that is to say, “We can make this world a better place.”

Now some of the people who thought of Messianism in this rational way were people, if you like, like Karl Marx and Karl Marx certainly thought that we can make this world perfect if only we follow my way of making everybody, putting everybody on the same level and getting rid of capitalism and oppression. Of course, there had been earlier ideas about a perfect state going back to Plato’s idea of an early state and there have been all these ideas that we can improve the human condition and the human lot, but it was really, in a sense, Marx who comes with this mystical view of how we can change the world without relying on hocus pocus and magic.

So in the West, you have Marxism. You have these great rationalist philosophers. You have the idea of Bentham and of utilitarianism, all ways of trying to make the world better and fairer. And, at the same time, in the East, you have the ideas that you only do this by tapping into the power of the Messiah. Over the period of the 19th century, as Judaism became more fractured, the hopes that it had from Napoleon enlightenment were shattered, you have the emergence of somebody else who was regarded as a Messiah, didn’t call himself that himself, but that was Herzl. Herzl was regarded by many people in the Sephardi, in the Ashkenazi world as a Messiah. He was going to bring the Jews back to the land.

Didn’t matter, he was religious or not religious. That wasn’t relevant. What’s relevant is, do we go back to the land? Can we get back there? And following after Herzl’s death, you have one of the greatest rabbis of all time, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of the Palestine, not yet of the state of Israel, and a man who died in 1935. He believed that Israel was the beginning of the arrival of the Messiah. The Ikvot Meshicha. We’re going to bring the Messiah in and bring Him back home and bring you all back home. And then, at the same time, you have within the Hasidic world the idea that there is a Rebbe who is the representative of the Messiah on Earth and he will bring everybody back.

What’s also interesting is that there was a theory, an interesting theory in Islam, to do with the Mahdi and to do with the idea of the Muslim Messiah of what we call occulation. Occulation means this holy man is with us, but he’s hidden. He’s hidden within society, and hidden within society, his spirit is there, and he will come back and reveal himself as the final Mahdi. Now, I don’t know whether Chabad Lubavitch had any knowledge of occulation or took it very seriously or whether they borrowed the idea of a second coming from the Christian tradition of Jesus’s second coming, but what is clear is that within Hasidism, not just within Chabad, you have this idea that the Messiah is a very, very important phenomenon and it’s become more important in recent years because, as I said at the beginning, there are two ways of looking at the Messiah.

One of them is this idea of optimism, the idea that we can make the world a better place. Now that’s behind, of course, utilitarianism, behind Marxism, behind the idea that we can make the world a better place. We can sort out climate change, we can sort out unfairness that exists within the world if we work hard at it. And on the other hand, the point of view, it says no way. Humans are just too self-interested, too arrogant. No way that you’re going to be able to get them to come on board and to change.

So imagine, imagine you are in a concentration camp. You are about to be killed. You are not going to be able to believe I can make the world a better place. Maybe you can if you’re sitting in Manhattan but not there when you are surrounded with enemies who outnumber you, when you are hated and this hatred is growing and it’s getting stronger and stronger. You are more inclined to think we can’t change this. How can we few, a couple of million, possibly change world opinion, the United Nations, American academia, the whole of the left. There’s no way.

And so that is when it becomes more likely that you are going to start saying, “I prefer the other version of Messiah, somebody’s going to get us out of this mess. God got us into this mess. God’s going to get us out of this mess. That’s the only way I can see a resolution of the situation we’re in at the moment.” So in effect, the truth is that we create our own image of what we understand the Messiah to be. I do believe that its importance in the Jewish tradition is symbolically to persuade us never to give up, to persuade us in however bad things get, there is a resolution. “Please God, Elijah come.”

We have said it at the Seder. We say it when a child is born. “Please God, the Messiah will come. The Messiah’s coming now.” Yes, He’s been coming now for the last 2,000 years. And if anybody wants to bet the Messiah’s coming this year, I’m prepared to bet the other way because I don’t think it’s very likely. So this becomes a matter of which version you prefer.

But it’s clear, for example, in Chabad, in Lubavitch, they really believe that the Rebbe, or at least many of them really is the Messiah. He came to earth. He’s hiding somewhere in space. He will come back and you see these notions all around New York. When people either with a kippah embroidered with a slogan or with buses embroidered with a slogan saying, “May the kingdom, the Messiah, the Rebbe live and is alive.” Not all of them take that view, but a lot of them do.

It’s a very popular and convenient way, if you like, of conjuring up enthusiasm. We want mashiach now. Whereas what I really want is us to behave better now and people to be nicer to each other now and, in fact, that is what the Mishnah says about Eliyyahu. Elijah the prophet, it says, is come to get fathers alienated from sons back with them, sons alienated from fathers back with them, to bring peace and understanding and kindness to the world. That’s what Elijah’s going to come and do and that’s what we want.

Unfortunately, there are some people who say, no, we’ve got to go out there. We’ve got to destroy the mosque of Omar and rebuild the temple and that will solve all our problems. Well, you know, if you buy that, you’re welcome to it. Now I want to end my presentation with, in fact, a naughty joke. And I’m sorry if I offend anybody here, but remember I am saying, I’m not making fun of the idea of the Messiah at all. I’m making fun of those who take the idea too literally.

After all, the Talmud says, the Talmud says black and white in Sanhedrin, “Anybody who tries to work out the end of days or when the Messiah’s going to come is an idiot and their bones should rot.” Now that’s a quote from the Talmud. The joke goes like this.

There’s a donkey, an ass, in the field and a horse in the stable and the ass turns to the horse and says, “You know, horse, you’re so lucky. You live in a nice warm stable. You have a vet who comes to you whenever something’s wrong. You have a groom who grooms you all the time. You get the best food possible. When you are not well, the vet comes along and you’re even put in a swimming pool in order to recover. You have such a wonderful life. And look at me, I’m stuck in the field, an ass. I’m here all year round. They never take me. I have to eat off the grass. It’s cold and it’s wet and I’m stuck in my field.”

And the horse turns to Messiah. He says, “Ah yes,” he says, “but remember when the Messiah comes, he’s going to come riding on a donkey. You’ll be that right there in the front before everybody else.” And the ass turns to the donkey and he says to the donkey, “Do you have any idea how many asses there are in this world waiting for the Messiah to come?”

And at that point, I will now turn to any questions that you may have.

Q&A and Comments

• Good one, Jeremy. And well told. That is funny.

• So Elizabeth Britain:

Q: To what extent do you feel “The Life of Brian” might characterise the rise of false or even perhaps not false Messiahs? A: Well, you know, I love “The Life of Brian”, one of my all-time favourite films. And I particularly love the Line which says, “No, he’s not the Messiah. He’s just a very naughty boy.” Now I want you to know that when I was headmaster of a school and I allowed them to watch this movie at the time, 'cause I thought it was very good. I got a lot of Christian teachers who were very, very upset. They felt their idea of the Messiah was being made a fun of.

But I believe in humour. I believe in humour in Judaism. I believe in making fun of Judaism sometimes. After all, even the Book of Psalm says God sits on high and laughs at us 'cause we are so stupid sometimes. So I think humour is very necessary to stop people taking themselves too seriously. I thought “Life of Brian” was brilliant as it was in describing all the splits between the PLO and the Fatah and Hamas and all the variations, the liberation and the non-liberation. I thought it was just a brilliant film, but you shouldn’t take it too seriously.

Romaine:

Q: It seems a difference between a Messiah as a means to an end, a journeyman who directs and an end in itself like Superman. Do you agree? A: Yes, indeed. These are two very, very different ideas and they’re different ideas and you could combine them both if you like. One is proactive and the other is, well, you know, I believe in miracles. Miracles might happen. It’s always possible. It might happen, but I’m not relying on it. I’m not selling all my goods and going off to follow Sabbatai Zevi because I think he’s the Messiah. I’m going to keep a bank account somewhere else just in case. So yes, these are the two different versions.

Lawrence Kelvin:

Q: Where do Jews for Jesus fit into this? Why are some Jews so insecure they see this group as a threat? A: Well, I don’t see it as a threat. I think it’s rather silly. I mean, if you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, in other words, you must believe in Christian theology, then be a Christian. If you want to keep Jewish commands, then by all means do that. There are plenty of Christians who do keep the Sabbath and other festivals, but don’t claim that you are Jewish because Judaism does not recognise that Jesus was a Messiah. He didn’t have any characteristics that would persuade us He is the Messiah. So you don’t believe. Where do you fit in? You’re certainly not Jewish.

Now there’s a third category of Jews who say, “Look, I keep everything 100% and I am Jewish. I’m a Messianic Jew.” But again, you know, I don’t object. I don’t see it as a threat. But I think it’s rather ridiculous to try to have your cake and eat it. Make up your mind. If you believe in Jesus, accept Christianity and accept you’re a Christian and you can keep whatever mitzvah you want. Good luck. Next one is Arlene Greenbirth. Thank you very much, Miriam.

Q: What’s the Jewish story of Maimonides? My name is Avi Maimon and I’m six years old. A: Well, Maimon is an ancient Hebrew name going back thousands of years. There are different interpretations as to what the name comes from. It could be from a combination of Hebrew words that say Mayanei Hayeshua, from the fountains of salvation. Maimon is somebody who believes in the future. In Greek, he is translated, his name is turned into Ides. They add on Maimonides at the end of it. But Maimon was one of the greatest rabbis, scholars and Jews of all time and it’s a wonderful, honourable name to have.

There are a lot of people who are not religious who have that name too. Various people. And, you know, I know personally who are not religious with a name like Maimon. It’s become a very common name in Israel. But the Maimonides lived in Cairo, born in Spain, was kicked out, kicked out from all over the place, ended up in Cairo where he was a great philosopher, great rabbi, a physician who earned his living by being the physician to the court and nobody’s quite like him since then.

Q: When did the meaning of Messiah change from liberator to heavenly interpretation? A: Well, I think all this happened, all these changes began to happen during the first century when Judaism went through such a cataclysmic destruction and such upheaval that the idea of a leader coming to solve the problem appealed to lots of people, as it appealed to Christians, as it appealed to Muslims. And so I think the idea of the Messiah as we have it now is basically a product of the last 2,000 years, roughly.

Q: Any agreed criteria between various factions about what a Messiah should possess? A: Well, no. We can’t agree about anything. And as I said to you, the Talmud in Sanhedrin has endless permutations of different opinions as to when the Messiah will come, who the Messiah will be, how the Messiah is, what family comes back, what His role will be. Then we have Esther about the 36 holy people. He’s talking about the idea of Lamed Vav Ẓaddikim. These are the 36 pious people that the Talmud say keep the world alive. We don’t know who they are. In other words, a real pious person is anonymous. He doesn’t broadcast himself. He doesn’t say, “I’m the Messiah.” And these 36 people are the source of good, of positive in the world.

It’s a mystical idea, but it’s mentioned in the Talmud. What’s interesting is that Talmud, same Talmud says there are 42 non-Jewish saintly people who keep the world alive. In other words, we need good people to stop us killing each other and we believe that anybody can become a holy person. You don’t have to be Jewish. And this all contributes to the amount of good positive energy that exists in the world but that’s nothing to do with a Messiah. That’s a different concept altogether, but we have so many different ones. We’re an encyclopaedia of so many different ideas. And in a sense, as I’ve said many times, we choose the ones that make sense to us.

Q: What was good about Jesus that made Him a successful Messiah? A: Well, in my opinion, what’s good is He had a very good public relations man. He had St. Paul, Paul, the Saul of Tarsus who didn’t actually ever meet Jesus. And I think it was he who made a point of making Judaism much more accessible, less complicated, and popularising it for the masses. Some people would say he was the first reform rabbi trying to make life easier. But it’s also because it was a matter of good fortune. In the second century, it’s so happened- Third century rather. It so happened that there were Jews and, shall we call them, Christians believing in Jesus around the Roman Empire and they all had equal rights, but it was Constantine who decided to convert to Christianity and make Christianity the only religion of the Christian empire.

Now even he was faced at the Council of Nicaea of all these different versions of Christianity he didn’t like. Some who said Jesus was just a good man. Some people said Jesus was God. But he was the one who introduced the idea of the Trinity and the idea that Jesus is God and he killed off all those Christians he could get hold of who disagreed with him. So this of what made Him a good, so successful relative to Judaism was, A, the circumstances of having somebody like Paul who went round to synagogues and say, “I’ve got an easier version for you.” And the emergence of Constantine and the fact that, had Constantine lost the Battle of Milvian Bridge, had the other emperor been lucilius and he was very pro-Jewish, it’s possible that the Roman empire might have been Jewish, in which case the situation would’ve been entirely different. Those are the accidents of history.

Thank you, Fran.

Lawrence Kelvin: Well, some people who claim to be the Messiah and they’ll be able to bring back a better world if they receive sufficient dollars. The moment anybody asks you for money, you know he’s a fake. I mean, I’m not stopping people donating to other people. But whether it’s a, well, you know, whether it’s a genuine, whether it’s a mystic, a Kabbalah or anything else, the moment somebody asks you for money, run as fast as you can in the other direction.

Q: Who has brought more good into the world? Communism, Stalin or Schneerson and his group of Hasidism? A: Rabbi Schneerson was all about increasing kindness and goodness via Torah practise. Yes, I think that’s a very, very good question. If you ask me who brought more good to the world, Stalin or Schneerson? Of course Schneerson. Didn’t kill anybody to my knowledge. Communism has killed millions and millions and millions and look how terrible the left wing is now in its extreme form of antisemitism. So sure, you bet. I put my money on what Rabbi Schneerson has done any day of the week. But you don’t need to be a Messiah to do that.

Q: Was there ever a woman in Messianic thought? A: Yes, there were. There were a couple of women who claimed that they were Messiahs but they didn’t gain much traction, unfortunately. I mentioned Eva Frank. I’ve mentioned before the Maiden of Ludmir, and there have been, but none of them had any significant impact. I think they were wise.

Thank you, Sharon.

Q: Are you saying Kabbalah is not rational? A: Oh absolutely. It’s totally not rational. It is nonsense. That’s not the same thing as saying it’s rubbish. It’s not nonsense, but it’s definitely not rational. There’s nothing rational about Kabbalah. There are a lot of great mystical, lovely ideas, great things, and I study it and I love it and I adore it, but it is definitely not rational.

Q: Can you comment on Maimonides’ perfect faith in coming of the Messiah? A: Good point. Maimonides created the so-called 12 Articles of Faith. And he did this about the year 1000. There’d never been such a series of articles of faith ever before. And although the idea of believing in the mashiach was important, an important idea, it was never an article of faith. It only became an article of faith when Maimonides was faced by both Christianity and Islam saying, “What kind of religion are you? You are only interested in religious practise and you have no theology.” And he says, “No, we do have a theology. We have certain important ideas.”

Now most of the contemporaries of Maimonides were content to leave them as important ideas. But Maimonides had to speak to the ordinary common person. And the ordinary common person was not going to be somebody indulging in philosophy, which was why he wrote his famous book of philosophy, “The Guide To The Perplexed”, in Arabic so that only the intellectuals could read it or understand it. But his books of Jewish law, he wrote in Hebrew so that everybody could understand it. And it was in that context that he composed that principles of faith as guidance of important principles that Jews should consider, not necessarily dogma, but should consider and take seriously.

There’s a very good book, if you’re interested in this, by Rabbi Dr. Mark Shapiro called “The Limits of Orthodoxy” in which he shows how many, many great authorities of Maimonides’ time didn’t agree with him making these 12 principles of faith and saying you have to believe. Okay.

Myra: I can buy your farm in Oxford Street. Anybody interested? Well, it can’t be very big if it’s in Oxford Street, so you won’t be able to draw up horses there. So I won’t be a customer, I’m afraid.

Q: Please discuss Rabbi Schneerson and those who are still convinced he’s the Messiah. How do you explain the world is no better for his existence? A: Well, like Jesus’ second coming, they say, “Well, he is coming another time. He will come eventually.” You can believe whatever you want to believe. It’s up to you. The joke was a fitting epilogue.

Thank you, Eleazar. Thank you very much. My Haredi nephew who lives in Israel doesn’t celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut, I think waiting for the Messiah to come. They told it’s a conflict with the government. Look, there has always been since the 19th century, a group of Hasidim, not all of them, a group of Hasidim who believed it was wrong to return and set up a Jewish state in Israel. You have to wait for the Messiah. And the idea of this was based on the fact that there is one solitary midrash which says that when God sent the Jews into exile, He made them take an oath and He made them take an oath that He would protect them in the diaspora provided they never went back to Israel armed to recreate the state, so to speak.

But at the same time, He also said, “If you keep this, I promise you they won’t oppress you.” So the truth of the matter is that midrash doesn’t make sense because we’ve been oppressed ever since. But there were two major Hasidic dynasties and there were hundreds of Hasidic dynasties in Eastern Europe and most of them were pro-Israel and pro-going to Israel, but there were two dynasties. One was called Munkacs from Hungary, the other was called Satmar and their two Rebbes were violently anti-Zionists. They hated the Zionists.

Now, many other Rebbes didn’t like the Zionists because they thought it was secular and they were religious, but they did believe that going to Israel could be a good thing and they encouraged, some of them, encouraged people to do it. And the Hasidic movement itself, from immediately after its founders, started sending rabbis to Israel and people to encourage them to go and live there. And they did. And they continued to go long before Zionism. So Hasidism was pro going to live in Israel, but the Satmar animal culture were opposed to the state.

They refused to recognise it. And in his book justifying it, the Satmar quotes this Midrash I mentioned that almost every other rabbi says it doesn’t mean that, you don’t take it literally. So you do have these people. Now in Israel amongst the Haredi world, you have different groups. You have samrabbas, whether it’s bells or whether it’s geer, and others who support the state and who participate in politics in the Knesset. Not always nicely, I must say, but they do. And they’re part of it even though they are very Haredi, very Hasidic.

There are others who say, “Look, we don’t like the secular state. We don’t celebrate your or we don’t like seeing the Tikva, but we’re living here. We’ve got to abide by the law of the land and we do.” And then you get the Satmar, and I have to control myself from using the expertise that I would like to use, who fall into two camps. The majority of them say, “We’re anti-Israel, we’re anti-Zionist. We believe in waiting for the Messiah, but we’re not going to interfere what’s going on because actually we do quite well out of living in a Jewish state.”

But within Satmar you have a group of lunatics called Neturei Karta. Neturei Karta is a small group of people who are, it’s a political party within Satmar. It’s not official Satmar policy, but, by and large, they tolerate them. And these are the idiots that go to Iran and say, “We’re on your side.” These are the idiots who turn up at demonstrations for Israel waving Palestinian flags and saying Israel Zionists are murderers. You’ve got nutcases, unfortunately, in every society. You’ve got your lunatics.

I can’t help it. They embarrass me. They’re an embarrassment to everybody, but there they are. So the straight answer is, the Haredi position, by and large, is not a secular Zionist position. But that doesn’t mean to say they don’t pay taxes. Those who do, they don’t contribute. Those who do. And they are positive. As for Neturei Karta, I think they really believe that if the walls are breached and Hamas invade, they’ll stop everyone at the street and say, “Are you Neturei Karta? Oh you are? Okay, dear sir, do please carry on on your way. You are a free man.” They’ll slit his throat as much anybody else’s throat. Ah, sorry, I really ventilated on that one. ‘cause they do annoy me very much. But you can’t say all Haredi are like that. It’s a very, very, very small section.

Q: Doesn’t the Messiah live within us? A: Well, hope lives within us. You know, the optimism as opposed to the pessimism. And I think that’s a nice idea.

Maimonides was always known as Rambam. That’s correctly because Rambam stands for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. It’s a name based on Moshe ben Maimon, is Rambam. Yeah, Janet Barris.

Q: So what do you think about progressive view that our responsibility to bring about the Messianic age rather than waiting for the individual Messiah? A: Yes, I believe that very strongly. I believe we should try our best to make the world a better place, to get on with people. I don’t think we should sacrifice our identity for it. I don’t think we should give up the right to have our own land for it. But I certainly believe we do have, we have orthodox conservative reform and obligation to make the world a better place and to be a light to the nations. The trouble is the nations very often don’t want to accept our light.

In the beginning of third century, you’d be killed for being a Christian. At the end of the same century, you’d be killed for not being Christian. That’s absolutely right. That’s what happens. And then depends where you live.

Thank you, Denise.

Kabbalah seems similar to the Knight’s Templar belief. Oh, that’s too complicated a subject to go into. But there is a lot in common, all mystical traditions, whether it’s the Cathars, whether it’s the Kabbalists, whether it’s the Sufis, wherever they are, they have a lot in common. All mysticism has certain common roots, just as you can say all religion has common roots. All religions believe in loving your neighbour as yourself. In theory, not so much in practise.

I would describe Kabbalah as fantastic, imaginative, spiritual system which amplifies traditional Judaism. Yes, I would definitely agree with that definition. I would certainly agree. Amplifies it, but not in a rational way. But yes, 100% you’re right.

Best camps ever had. That’s so sweet of you, Harriet. After all my years, I’m in retirement now. Happy retirement.

The Jews of Tiberius did not disappear and continued after Romans. Yes. Not only Tiberius, but also there were other settlements in the galil who did, they kept on going and they kept on coming back and not all of them left. There was this constant fluidity within the Roman Empire. That’s absolutely true. But the religious leadership that moved from Jerusalem, first of all to Yavne and then to Tiberius, and then to Zippori in the end left. And it was only Safed in the 17th century, 16th century, that really revived Jewish life in the galil in the north. But Peki'in, by tradition, this town in the north, always had a Jewish family living there.

Q: Were there not competing Messiahs at the time of Jesus? A: Yes, there were lots of them. There were doubting Johns as well. So yes, there were tonnes of people. You know, it’s fashionable.

Not a question, just to say thank you. Thank you very much, Eleanor. That’s very sweet of you.

Difference between Messiah is a means to an end. Yes, I think that’s correct.

Oh, going back to the same place now. They seem to be going back to the same place. Can’t do that. Let’s go on bit further down to see where I am.

Moses ben Maimon. In the beginning, you said, yes, that’s correct. Hold on, I’ve gone back up again. I didn’t mean to do that. Let me just get to the last couple of questions. I think I have covered everything. I don’t see anything else on my final look down to see anything.

Anything else? Tiberius? No. Competing, not a question. Thank you. Always a nice thank you. No, I think that is, that is it. And so everybody, thank you very much and I will see you in two weeks time.

• Thanks so much, Jeremy. That was excellent and very, very interesting.

• Thank you. Thank you very much, Wendy. Take care. I hope things get easier for you. See you.

• [Wendy] Life, thanks. Bye.

• [Jeremy] Bye.