4 - The Second Coming: A Rejoinder

Summary

ON 17 JUNE 1994, five days after the petirah (passing) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt“l, an advertisement appeared in the Jewish Press declaring that he would be resurrected as the Messiah. At that point, I wrote a letter containing the following assertion: ‘There is no more fundamental messianic belief in Judaism than the conviction that the Davidic Messiah who appears at the end of days will not die before completing his mission’ [Jewish Press, 1 July 1994; see above, Ch. 1].

In my article in Jewish Action [see Ch. 2], I formulated the point as follows: ‘Even [the small minority of] Jews who believed that King David would be the Messiah (or the vanishingly tiny number who may have left open the possibility that Daniel might be) did not believe that a Davidic figure born (or reborn) during or after their lifetime would begin the redemptive process only to die and be buried before its completion. Such a position is utterly alien to the most basic messianic posture of all non- Sabbatian Jews through the ages.’

I repeat these formulations here because their key point has apparently been missed by both Rabbi Butman and Rabbi Weisberg. Although, as we shall see, I regard the belief that Mashiach ben David (Messiah son of David) can come from the dead as a rejected position (a shitah deḥuyah), the core of my argument does not depend on this conviction. Whoever the Messiah might be, once he begins his messianic activities, there is no dispute as to the certainty that he sees the process to its completion without an intervening death, burial, and resurrection.

Jews have written numerous works through the ages describing the career of the Messiah. In some cases, we find only highlights of the unfolding messianic drama, in others, painstaking accounts of every stage. Differences abound. Alternative scenarios are proposed.