The Jewish Power Blog: The Power of Longing – Longing for Power

In 2 Samuel, God promised David, “your throne shall be established forever.” (7:16).  And while the kingdom split just a generation later, and the ten tribes were lost two centuries after that, the Davidic dynasty lasted 400 years. Thus generation after generation saw confirmation of that promise, and the nation came to assume its validity. And so when the catastrophe came in 586 BCE, with the destruction of the Temple, loss of sovereignty, and exile, the cognitive dissonance was strong. What to do with the disconnect between sacred promise and cruel reality? How continue to hold on to a faith and an identity that seemed at worst false, at best a failure?

The prophets had been preaching all along that the promise had been conditional, and that the punishment had been foretold and should have been expected. They had argued, pleaded, threatened, that our sovereignty as a nation depended on our building a society according to the Torah. And since we failed to do so, God should not be expected to keep that promise. So why didn’t we just throw in the towel and go seek comfort in other, less demanding religions? Because the prophets’ preaching of covenant offered hope of a restoration: after they scolded us, they comforted us by offering the possibility of redemption through repentance, through a renewed commitment to building that ideal society. We could, they taught, restore our sovereignty, our divine favor – our power as a nation – by building what we could of an ideal Torah society, even in exile. So there was hope that, if and when we deserved it, God would “renew our days as of old,” and an anointed descendant of David (“messiah”) would re-ascend to the throne.

However, as the exile extended well beyond Jeremiah’s prediction of seventy years (25:11-13), it could be hard to keep up hope. Indeed, perhaps there is a bit of cynicism in the statement by Rabbi Yochanan in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: “If only Israel would observe two shabbatot properly, they would immediately be redeemed.” (Bab. Talmud Shabbat 118b) That is: even such a minor demand as just keeping two shabbatot properly, en masse, is such a long shot that how can we ever expect to deserve redemption? Knowing ourselves, and human nature in general, the covenantal project of redemption could be pretty discouraging.

An alternative view became popular, with roots in the Hellenistic period (e.g., the biblical book of Daniel), and found expression in rabbinic literature (e.g., Rabbi Joshua, in his debate with Rabbi Eliezer in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 97b) and in kabbalah: redemption is not conditional, not dependent on our repentance; it will come when God is ready to bring it, according to a divine long-term plan that we cannot know. Maybe it will take a long time; but maybe it will come tomorrow.  Patience. Faith. Hope.

This apocalyptic view takes the burden off of us, which is a relief; but it introduces a painful element of uncertainty, and while it counsels patience, it cannot help but stir up our impatience, and our desire to decipher the plan. How long can we wait, yearn, suffer, hope, without any indication of how much longer? The Book of Daniel is full of cryptic numbers and symbols purporting to describe God’s schedule. Over time, concrete attempts to understand and implement the plan erupted: Jesus of Nazareth in the first century; Bar Kokhba in the second; Sabbetai Zevi in the seventeenth; Jacob Frank in the eighteenth; [Karl Marx in the nineteenth?]; the Lubavitcher Rebbe in the twentieth. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (1893-1963) the great American social activist and Zionist leader, in his doctorate, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel (1927), cataloged seventeen centuries worth of mystics, charlatans, and movements, mostly obscure, that claimed to have deciphered the plan. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, from Russian misery to Holocaust to statehood, reinvigorated the industry of calculating the end-time. And the fact that the longed-for reign of peace and security that redemption was supposed to bring has not dawned, despite the Jewish emergence from powerlessness into statehood, only seems to have ratcheted up the messianic tension. Thus, an apocalyptic, messianic understanding  of Zionism has been ascendant, especially in the years since 1967; today, it guides the policies of Israel’s ruling coalition.

No messianic movement has ever ended well for the Jews. We have a choice between two paths forward:

1) Stake all our chips on the bet that the apocalypse is now, that this particular messianic movement is the real thing, and that this one won’t crash and burn like all the others across the centuries. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a) recounts that when Rabbi Zeira used to come across rabbis calculating the time of redemption, he would say, “Please, I beg of you, stop delaying the redemption! As we have learned: Three come only when they are unexpected: a scorpion, a found object, and the messiah.”

2)  Understand the creation of a Jewish state as an opportunity to fulfill the conditions of the covenant: to build an ideal society, a light unto the nations, a model of social justice – thereby moving the needle, even if only a little, toward redemption. On the next page (98a) the Talmud tells of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, for whom Elijah arranged a meeting with the messiah. The rabbi asked, “When will you come?” and received the answer “today.” But the messiah did not come that day, so Rabbi Joshua complained to Elijah, who explained that the messiah had just been quoting Psalms (95:7) “Today – if you would but heed God’s voice!”