Back in Brooklyn

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Back in Brooklyn

Not that anyone really missed it, but the family was in Wisconsin for the past week, hence Brooklyn Jews was blog free.

But what better way to inaugurate the new week than with this story from the Talmud:

Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai used to say: “If you have a sapling in your hand and are told, ‘Look, the Messiah is here,’ you should first plant the sapling and then go out to welcome the Messiah.”

I love this text primarily because I believe it was Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai’s express desire, two thousand years ago, to discourage wacky messianic fervor. Boy, could we use him today. Have you seen this article from today’s Newsday? Thanks to Newsday religion writer Carol Eisenberg (a proud Brooklyn Jew who lives in Queens) we get one little slice of a movement in Judaism that we have only been able to read about in history books. What happens when Jews believe that a specific person is actually the Messiah?

For several years prior to his death and for the eleven plus years since, a large contingent of Lubavitchers believe that their late rabbi was actually the Messiah. And they regularly conduct missionary campaigns to carry forth that message. Many such movements arose among the Hasidim in the 18th and early 19th century; and in 1660s, there was the largest such movement of messianism behind Shabbetai Zvi, a self-declared messianic figure in the Ottoman Empire who eventually converted to Islam, leaving thousands of dejected and confused Jews in his wake.

Alas, a similar event is unfolding today–without the conversion to Islam–as one wing of the Chabad Lubavitch movement continues to support massive PR campaigns, like the billboard above, to encourage belief in the “rebbe” as the messiah.

If the Lubavitcher Rebbe were the Messiah, one may ask, wouldn’t all those fossil fuel burning Mitzvah Tanks run on hybrid engines? Or, may we expect traffic to miraculously disappear from New York City tunnel entrances as a result of his kind visage looking down upon commuters each day? Frankly, I’d take more and better bike lanes in Brooklyn. Let’s start small.

In the meantime, we should concentrate on doing what we can to alleviate hunger, war, and ignorance from our world. Jewish history has had its spasms of false messianism and the one thing we do know is this: they eventually pass.

So, see you among the saplings with Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakai, where change is actually happening.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 11:30 pm and is filed under Brooklyn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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