When The Messiah Comes

Bradley Burston has an entertaining, and sure to anger piece on his blog today called "When the Messiah comes". 

"When the Messiah comes, he will be without papers.

When the Messiah comes, he will be taken into a small room, off-white and chilled, with one gray metal chair at each side of a gray metal desk.

When the Messiah comes, he will be questioned by a junior officer of the Shin Bet, and by an official of the Interior Ministry, who got his job through his cousin, who is an inspector of ritual dietary observance at a cookie bakery and who got his job through his sister's father-in-law, third assistant to the deputy chair of the Shas party branch in Ramla.

When the Messiah comes, no one will know.

His donkey, which is white and is named Snowpea, will be impounded in a leaky underground police lot near the Lod railroad station. There will be no paperwork. By nightfall it will have disappeared, spirited into a closed truck by the lot's watchman, who after his shift will drive the donkey to a moshav. Money will change hands, and the donkey as well, four times, until it is sold by settlers to Palestinians some of whose ancestral land now lies inside the settlement fence...(Read the full post)

 It is quite easy to see that the Bradley's Messiah is clearly very left wing. Any lasting doubt is cleared towards the end of the post:

"When the Messiah comes, the Occupation will end.

But before it does, a global social network led by the Republican Jewish Coalition, Fox News, The Zionist Organization of America and Daniel Pipes, will launch a campaign aimed at exposing the Messiah as a Muslim.

When the Messiah is crucified, the army will deny that he was even present at the time.

When the Messiah comes, an Israel political party whose voters are routinely denigrated by native-born Israelis as whores and non-Jews will propose legislation declaring him a delegitimizer of Israel and the army (over the crucifixion), a blasphemer of Zionism (for suggesting that the Palestinians were not the sole obstacles to peace), and rendering him ineligible for citizenship unless he signs a loyalty oath stating that even if Israel did practice crucifiction, it did so in a democratic and Jewish manner."

I fear that anyone hoping the occupation will end with the coming of the Messiah is likely to be disappointed. Quite simply - We know little of the messianic times, but the very little we do know, or at least can make a fairly good guess about is that the land of Israel will be in Jewish hands. See chapter 48of Ezeikel and numerous midrashim. I'm not saying that one couldn't interpret these scriptures quite differently - just I fear that the simple explanaition does point to a quite "Right Wing" messiah - at least as far as the land issue goes. On just about everything else, I'm willing to accept Bradley's messiah. 


We want a Messiah that will free us of Pashkevilim. We want a messiah that will accept Giyurim done in the IDF. A Messiah that won't sign the Rabbanim Letter, nor blame Homosexuals, not keeping shabbos or Rav Amsalem for every natural disaster. A Messiah that will set just one Kashrut that every Jew can eat. A Messiah that will make Haredim join the army and go to work. A Messiah that will make Israel a more Jewish place to be in. A Messiah that will get Hilonim interested in learning at least the basics of Judaism. A Messiah who encourages people to think about their beliefs. A Messiah that will allow Jews to have different opinions. A messiah who will make Rabbi Slifkin walk hand in hand with Rav Elyashiv under a rainbow with bunny rabbits jumping alongside. A Messiah who can solve Israel's Hasbarah problems, or at least speak a decent English. A Messiah that will put a stop to the trend of us electing officials, only to discover they are corrupt/rapists/kissing soldiers before going to vote on war.

But Alas, at this point I'll take any old man riding a white donkey, who can solve any 2 of those problems. For the right person, we will be willing to forego the donkey.