Discussion+Questions+Week+2

__ terms __ **Shechinah:** God’s presence in the world Note: Talmudic texts may initially seem disorganized, but note the associative structure and the emphasis on wordplay.
 * selections from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin** 96b – 99a (London: Soncino, 1969).


 * 1) Where do you find expression of the following possibilities?
 * The Messiah will come when the world will be in a perfect state and the Jewish people repent and abandon their sins
 * The Messiah wll appear in a time of total deterioration, anarchy, and moral chaos
 * Nothing exceptional will herald the coming of the Messiah, which will be unexpected
 * 1) What is Rabbi Zera’s attitude towards attempting to calculate the time of the Messiah’s coming? What is Rabbi Samuel bar Nahmani’s (in the name of Rabbi Jonathan)?
 * 2) If calculating the time of the coming of the Messiah is discouraged, then why is waiting eagerly for the Messiah’s coming nevertheless justified?
 * 3) What are the opinions of Rab, Samuel, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Joshua about the ability of the Jewish people to affect the coming of redemption through repentance and good deeds?
 * 4) How does the power of the empires of Rome and Persia play a role in these texts? How does the reality of imperial might shape these texts and the understanding of the Messiah? Does it seem to undermine or increase expectations of the Messiah’s immanent arrival (vs. more distant or unlikely arrival)?
 * 5) How is the Messiah described in the episode with Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and Elijah?
 * 6) What is the significance of the statement: “Let him come, but let me not see him”?
 * 7) What theories do we have about the name and the identity of the Messiah? What does Rabbi Hillel believe?
 * 8) What does Samuel say about the difference between the world as it currently is and the world as it will be in the messianic era?

“Sefer Zerubbabel,” trans. Martha Himmelfarb, in David Stern and Mark Mirsky, eds., //Rabbinic Fantasies: Imaginative Narratives from Classical Hebrew Literature// (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990), 67-90.
 * Sefer Zerubbabel **


 * 1) What is the role of Menachem son of Amiel (Messiah son of David)? What is the role of Nehemiah son of Hushiel (Messiah son of Joseph)?
 * 2) What do you make of Zerubbabel’s being brought to a church (“house of disgrace”) to receive his prophecy? What do you make of the depiction of Armilos’ mother—i.e., the “marble stone in the shape of a virgin,” whose “beauty . . . was wonderful to behold”?

in Isidore Twersky, ed. , //A Maimonides Reader// (Behrman, 1972), 222-227.
 * selections from Maimonides, Mishnah Torah **


 * 1) What will the Messiah do? When does one assume that a person is the Messiah, and when can one be sure of it?
 * 2) What will the status of Jewish law be in the messianic age? How will the natural world be transformed or altered in the messianic age?
 * 3) How does Maimonides understand the concept of the two messiahs?
 * 4) What positions in the Talmudic passages we read are held by Maimonides?
 * 5) What is the purpose of the coming of the Messiah, according to Maimonides?
 * 6) What does Maimonides say is the role of Christianity and Islam?

in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., //The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History,// second edition (New York: Oxford, 1995)
 * The Reform Rabbinical Conference at Frankfurt, “The Question of Messianism” **


 * 1) What aspects of Jewish messianism are debated and discussed by the leaders of Reform Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany? Is this a religious debate or a political debate?
 * 2) How is messianic belief modified in accordance with the new political realities and hopes of Jews to be accepted as equal citizens in Europe?


 * Hillel Halkin, "How Not To Repair the World" **

How does Halkin's critique of the contemporary Jewish liberal ideology seen in //Righteous Indignation// involve his understanding and evaluation of messianism?


 * David Berger, "The Rebbe, the Jews, and the Messiah" **
 * Abraham Socher, "The Chabad Paradox" **


 * 1) What is Chabad messianism, and on what grounds does Berger oppose it? Why does Berger maintain that it constitutes a threat to Judaism's historic position on Christianity?
 * 2) What are the reasons for Socher's suggestion that Chabad Hasidism has been "the most successful Jewish religious movement of the second half of the twentieth century"?
 * 3) To what extent is Chabad messianism a product of the movement's own history and late leader?