Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Speaking of Jewish messiahs ...

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: When Messiah Is an Afterthought: The Talmud’s pragmatism and wonder meet in a technical problem about the height of a boundary line.
As best I can recall, in my Talmud reading so far there has been only one reference to the Messiah. This came in Tractate Berachot, where one sage was cited as saying that the deeds of the Messiah would not be supernatural, but political—that the only difference between our world and the messianic age would be the restoration of Jewish sovereignty. And it makes sense that messianism should not, at least so far, be a major concern of the Talmud’s rabbis. After all, they are not theologians but legislators, concerned with how Jews should live in the here and now.

In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, however, the subject of the Messiah returned, in an utterly unexpected and roundabout fashion. ...
A flying Messiah, no less, which brings to mind flying Jesus, as well as the flying Man from the Sea in 4 Ezra 13 who is mentioned in the article cited in the immediately preceding post.

Previous Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.