לא ידעתי כמה דבקתי נפשי בשלך אבא שלי. מבני אדם כולם יפיפית למה דווקא עתה כאשר זקנת אף לא הבנתי כי זה סוד הברכה. [קדוש ברוך הוא אבינו מלכנו רחמים... רק סודות יש בינינו דברים אשר לא מספרים אז לא מדברים עם אף אחד אפילו בין עצמנו.]

זה החלום, אתה הילד ואני מחזיק אותך בזרועות. הפכת קשיש כזה, עם חיוך, חצי מואר. בבוקר לא ברור היה הנמשל - אבא או קדוש ברוך הוא, זיכרון אשר התחיל בשכחה... זכור לי רק ברשותך, אהבת נעורים, אבא שלי בידך תופקד רוחי.

זרעי כולו מושקע בנזיד, נשרף, נאכל ומתבשל. מצמיח עתידות, מלכים וזעיר אנפין. מרוב קנאתי היתה זאת, לישון בין שדיה ולמות תחת רחמה. ניצלתי את תמימותה ובחידות דיברתי אל ליבה. תרום קרן בית אבי כי אכלתני בכורת ישראל, פורקן ליום אחרון.

נולדתי אנוס באבוס. מאז, כל היום, אני תוהה המון תהום. וחולם על היום, שנפלתי בישראל. נחש הכיש בידי, ורוב דמי נשפך לאדמה, כמו להזריע אותה לקראת דבר אחר, ישן חדש. אבא שלי, מסתבר, חושב אחרת, למרות שסיפרתי לו. ועד היום אני כבול כאחר. חולם על עצים ונשים, דם וניגונים, כל כך עמוקים, שנשמעים ברכות. כי צרה הדרך שלי, ולימים אחרת.

דניאל אמר לי בחלום מתישהו, שאהיה גדולות והאמנתי לדברו. אף אחד לא עזר לי למרות שחפצו בכך, אז נותרתי לבדי להתבונן בספרים...

אבא שלי, נתן לי, הכל. מה לא נתן לי? אבל לרקוד, אני לא יכול. אני אשם? אך, שאני הבן, לא אתן, לעולם שכן עד לקבר, זה שלי.

אבא אלוהים, תן שלוה למוחי. הסר ממני את השד אשר שוחה בכוס הזאת. מה ששלי שלך, ומה ששלך שלך. החזק לי את היד בדרך אל המוות. הגן כה חשוך, מלא בדידות מרה. צלליות מאחורי העצים מסובבות לי הכול. אך טוב וחסד ירדפוני גם הם- כוס רוויה בדם. שלולית של שמן.

חייב אני לעשות מעשה - אף אחד אחר לא מנסה לתקן... אין ברירה מעשות מעשה. לא, זה לא שפיות, הנכונות להתייסר. אבל האורות קבורים בתוך החושך, עמוק אפוא באדמה. לו אצליח גם לחפור, גם לגעת... אצטרך מבית אבי אמנם לקום ולעזוב, לרדת מכיסאי במרומים, אך לשבת בשולחן עם האומללים. איך לקחתם ממני את הכתר?! כבר לא פשוט שתזכו בגאולה. איך לא ברכתם את העפר עליו דרכתי? עוד תנשקו את רגלי ספוגות בדם. יום אחד ממש כמו גנב בלילה, אחרי שמשכתי קצת כדי לגרות את הטעם, כאשר ידי בעליונה על ההדק - אז תדעו שנסכת

The Ramchal, Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzatto, might be viewed as the quintessential messianic Kabbalist. He was born in 1707 in Padua, near Venice, but will die at the young age of 39, in 1746 in Israel, following the tragic death of his wife and son, from a plague. Despite his short lifetime, he wrote an immense amount of texts of all kinds - letters, books, articles, poems, even plays. He wrote ethics, theology, Kabbalah, and linguistics. He engaged in polemics of communal rel

The great Maharal, Rabbi Yehuda Loeb of Prague, of the 16th century, is a fascinating character, generally and also in our context of messianism. While Abarvanel, also a great and fascinating case, lived into the beginning of the 16th century, he was still very much a man of the 15th century. Abarvanel summarized and symbolically sealed the medieval era. His heart and mind were in Spain and set on the expulsion and its immediate aftermath. On the other hand, the Maharal, wa

Don Isaac Abarvanel lived in the 15th century mostly. He was a great official in the court of the King of Portugal. He was also a great religious scholar. Incidentally, his famous family claimed to be of direct lineage to King David. This item and other aspects contributed to a mild messianic consciousness... What kind of a religious scholar was he? Not halacha in particular. He dealt with philosophy, but was not primarily a philosopher. The weight of his work was biblical c

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon of the 12th century was the greatest philosopher of Judaism and one of the greatest and most influential religious legal scholars. He influenced messianism as well. However, I did not present so much of him in the series, because I viewed him as an extension of a marginalized messianic approach - in the Talmud, in Sanhedrin perek cHelek, the voice of Shmuel: Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba says that Rabbi Yoḥanan says: In their prophecies with regard to redemption

What about this concept? We went along with this notion, without getting an understanding of when, where, and how it came from. The pair of terms Son of Joseph + Son of David is not original in the Hebrew Bible. There are an abundance of commentaries interpreting Son of Joseph into the biblical texts, but these are not original. This series provides value in that there is a general structure to the history of the ideas and concepts of messianism, and then we should be able to

The mysterious dark secular Jew from Prague, but culturally German, lived from 1883 to 1924, and died at the young age of 40 by tuberculosis. He was a failed writer in his time, but posthumously world famous, a legendary literary figure. Around 1917-1918 he wrote a series of aphorisms in his notebooks, including this one about the Messiah: The Messiah will come as soon as the most unbridled individualism of faith becomes possible--when there is no one to destroy this possibi

This is a great opportunity for a word on the Theologico-Political Fragment of Walter Benjamin, an article on the Messiah, by the legendary intellectual. It is opportune because Taubes writing on Paul references it particularly! saying that the nihilism of Paul is that nihilism of Benjamin’s Fragment... Benjamin says, according to Taubes, that only the Messiah completes all of history. Nothing inside history stands alone separately - all things are measured in relation to Mes

I find this section more straightforward. It is spiritual experience, or in my terms spiritualization of and mystical phenomena, in regards to the absentee messianic figure in my terms, in Paul’s terms, the real and actually present Messiah, through Spiritual Experience. Every Word is This Actually Albert Schweizer wrote a book a hundred years ago called “Mysticism of the Apostle Paul” which says it all. It works through Paul's writing and shows how every phrase is a mystical

Continuing the ‘REAL Paul’ theme, not the theoretical or philosophical pawn of modern thinkers, we previously considered how realistically Paul thinks of the apocalypse and the paradoxical disposition he is in, himself and his constituents. We continue the real Paul realistic thinking, and engage in loads of textual evidence in 2 categories - what we refer to as political, and mystical. Taubes went off on a tangent speaking of Paul’s politicalness. He was excited about the th

By the way, according to the large majority of scholars only these writings were authored by Paul himself - 1 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Romans, Philemon. Other writings attributed to his original authorship are contested by some or many historians. So then we do take those additional epistles, as well as Acts of the Apostles, and consider them... Now, if we are to read Paul it is very important to understand that he is a realist, and a real b

As mentioned in previous posts, I wrote my master’s degree thesis on the messianism of Paul, Pauline Messianism. That is how I got started on the track of researching messianism here! It starts with Paul. Paul was and is a complicated, provocative and misunderstood character. His letters and thoughts and words are often ambiguous, if not contradictory! ... which is evident by the fact that until today religious scholars and critical historians continue to argue and research

Throughout this series, the whole point was to take apart any narrow approach to the subject matter, of messiah yes or no, this type of messiah, versus a broad complex approach, seeing all sorts of messianisms, aspects of messianism in so many places and people in Jewish history. This approach is applied to the case of Professor Gershom Scholem as well. How can we simplify the question of his own ideological messianism? How was it mixed into his research - was his research af