For students excited by Kabbala, some Maimonides rationalism is essential - The Jewish Chronicle

Last week, after lunch, a few of my pupils came to me excitedly, with almost a glow in their eyes, bursting for a discussion. They had just learnt about the Messianic Age and all the miracles and wonders that will come with it.

I was intrigued and listened to what they had learnt. They quoted Kabbalistic texts and statements from the Sages all about the Resurrection of the Dead, what this future paradise will be like and even when all this might take place.

It reminded me, I said, of when I was their age and someone brought a photocopied page of a mystical Jewish text into school, folded in his jacket-pocket. On it was written exactly what events would take place prior to the days of redemption; it seemed to fit with a recent tragedy at the time and filled me with rapture. When I was younger still I vaguely remember an old man fainting in Shul. He was, I was told, just about to reveal when the End of Days were coming.

After listening to my students, I felt the need to both broaden and contextualise their newly acquired knowledge about this Messianic Era (isn’t that what teaching’s all about?). I thought I’d temper the more Kabbalist understanding of the Messianic Era that they had just received with the more rationalist approach of Maimonides.

Maimonides explained that it will be an age of religio-political success for Israel; Monotheism and morality will prosper and spread throughout the world. He discouraged fantasising about what the process will be like or what wondrous phenomena will happen.

After all, Judaism’s end-goal is not for us to have cakes grow on trees or to be revived in our clothes (which ones? Perfectly preserved?). The miracles and bounty of the Messianic Era are intended to be understood more figuratively (the Resurrection aside), and are to serve as a means for us to become better people, not to just kick our feet up in a paradise-like life.

I then explained how these different approaches continue to have a great bearing on the Jewish world till this day. Religious Zionism, the ‘knitted-kippah’ wearers, for example, perhaps adopt a more Maimonidean approach to the Messianic Age, seeing it as a project which we all must get involved in, building and protecting a country and making it flourish. Chabad, in a very different way, also advocate this Messianic activism.

The Hungarian Chassidic groups (now in the States and North London) fervently adhere to a far more passive, divinely-led model of the Redemption and the Lithuanian tradition has perhaps an entirely different focus. We also discussed the geography and history that played a part in these fault-lines and the False Messianic movements that swept through continents throughout the ages: people would sell all they owned and wait on their rooftops to be flown to Jerusalem on eagle’s wings.

In short, I wanted them to understand the topic as a whole, and the plethora of opinions contained within it, like quite a lot in Judaism. Yet, I concluded, I didn’t want to extinguish that glow I saw in their eyes, that buzz I sensed from them. As with every subject we study, we need to understand the various views within it.

However, ultimately what this ancient Jewish dogma is about is precisely that. To be excited, to anticipate soaring on eagle’s wings, be it literally or figuratively. The future could certainly be bright.