Moshiach as Metaphor

Jewish tradition teaches that the Messiah (Moshiach) will be a warrior and that the reign of peace he will usher in will be preceded by war. What does this belief imply? Why the need for this saving figure? What is he — or she (remember the warrior Deborah) — saving us from? Why is war necessary for the fulfillment of this prophecy of ultimate peace? 

A cursory look at world history in general, and Jewish history in particular, bears witness to the desperate need for a world of peace and tranquillity despite its elusive nature.

The question is whether we have learned anything from our tragic past and murderous history — whether we have realized that the need for peace outweighs the desire for violence and warfare. Certainly enshrined in our institutions and religious celebrations are great ambitions and noble sentiments, but are they fulfilled in any meaningful fashion?

Peace is what Moshiach is supposed to bring. But peace cannot exist amid friction, conflict, hatred, divisions and selfishness. Peace requires openness, generosity, caring and unity.

Peace is what Moshiach is supposed to bring. But peace cannot exist amid friction, conflict, hatred, divisions and selfishness. Peace requires openness, generosity, caring and unity.

In times of dangerous division, great leaders gave voice to the message of unity as being essential for survival. Winston Churchill wrote, “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” But human history has shown itself to be the repudiation of these ideals.

In the Torah, the Flood is brought to destroy the world as a punishment for violence. It is not idol worship that angers God, as one might expect, but rather the violence between men that He cannot endure. The point is that it is what we inflict on one another that destroys the world. It’s a lack of concern for others, an absence of social harmony that makes the world unlivable.

Ancient Israel fell twice, once to the Babylonians and once to the Romans. The Babylonian exile lasted 70 years and the Roman exile 2,000 years. King Solomon built the first Temple. The death of King Solomon and the splitting of the kingdom into Judea and Israel ultimately led to the destruction of the first Temple. Divided and weakened, the Jews were vulnerable. Millennia before Abraham Lincoln’s warning that a house divided cannot stand, the Jews proved his point. 

The second, more punishing exile, occurred after the Roman conquest. We learn, from the historian Josephus, that the Jews in Jerusalem had stockpiles that might have outlasted the Roman siege, but Jewish factional divisions were so intense that one group burned the others’ stockpiles. And so, the Jewish state was lost again.

Today’s Israel, a remedy for 2,000 years of expulsions, pogroms and the Holocaust, and most importantly a return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland, has 31 political parties for 9 million citizens. Not exactly the unity that one would have hoped for. It is even more striking to discover that at the beginning of the return, the Yishuv, established in the early 1900s, had 31 parties as well — for only 100,000 inhabitants!

Substantial differences in outlook and policy constitute a serious challenge, but there have been occasions in the past when they were overcome for the common good. Franklin Roosevelt said that “Human kindness never weakened the fiber of free people. A free nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” 

And yet, despite great achievements and demonstrable success, we lapse into old tribal habits of distrust, lust for political power and brutish antagonism. Not just in Israel but everywhere. The tragedy is that it does not have to be this way.

Jews are taught to pray for the coming of the Moshiach. But what if the Moshiach is not a person waiting for us to merit redemption, but rather a metaphor for the world we ourselves need to create through our own acts of kindness and caring, an embodiment of our best selves? 

Jews are taught to pray for the coming of the Moshiach. But what if the Moshiach is not a person waiting for us to merit redemption, but rather a metaphor for the world we ourselves need to create through our own acts of kindness and caring, an embodiment of our best selves? Perhaps it is what we do in anticipation of the Moshiach’s coming that matters more than the actual arrival.

Another metaphor comes to mind: Jacob wrestling the angel. Jacob retreats in fear of his brother Esau when he is confronted by an angel. They struggle and the angel cannot defeat Jacob because Jacob asserts himself and has confidence in his mission. As a result of Jacob’s newborn self, the angel declares that his name will no longer be Jacob, but he will be called Israel. The Torah is unparalleled in its poetic portrayal of humankind, its shortcomings and its potential. The physical struggle is really an internal one: a struggle for identity, meaning and purpose, becoming not a single fearful person, but one capable of being the father of twelve tribes, the progenitor of an eternal nation. 

If the world’s tragic history is to be overcome and a world of peace to be created, there must be an internal struggle of all people to face our demons, our negative emotions and dark thoughts, to rise to be what we can be, what we must be, if we want to survive. That may be the “war” that our tradition teaches: not a battle between people but within each of us. 

The inner Moshiach in every one of us awaits.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.