Rescuing the Identity of the Messiah

Excerpted and adapted with permission from the book "The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference," Littman Library, September 2001.

This book is a memoir, a history, a religious tract. It is an indictment, a lament, and an appeal. It records the shattering of a core belief of a major faith, and the remarkable equanimity with which the standard bearers of that faith have allowed one of its key pillars to be undermined.

Since the religion in question is my own, I do not write as a dispassionate observer. I write, rather, with the hope that this account will awaken believing Jews from their torpor, alert them to the catastrophe that has befallen their faith, and inspire them to take the simple yet difficult steps needed to transform this moment from a turning point into an episode. If we do not seize this opportunity, a nearly irrevocable transformation will have been effected.

As I write, two propositions from which every mainstream Jew in the last millennium would have instantly recoiled have become legitimate options within Orthodox Judaism:

1. A specific descendant of King David may be identified with certainty as the Messiah even though he died in an unredeemed world. The criteria always deemed necessary for a confident identification of the Messiah--the temporal redemption of the Jewish people, a rebuilt Temple, peace and prosperity, the universal recognition of the God of Israel--are null and void.

2. God will finally send the true Messiah to embark upon his redemptive mission. The long-awaited redeemer will declare that all preparations for the redemption have been completed and announce without qualification that the fulfillment is absolutely imminent. He will begin the process of gathering the dispersed of Israel to the Holy Land. He will proclaim himself a prophet, point clearly to his messianic status, and declare that the only remaining task is to greet him as Messiah. And then he will die and be buried without redeeming the world. To put the matter more succinctly, the true Messiah's redemptive mission, publicly proclaimed and vigorously pursued, will be interrupted by death and burial and then consummated through a Second Coming.

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