Tag Archives: Pesach

Coronavirus and the Coming of Mashiach

In this week’s parasha, Vayikra, we see the word HaMashiach (המשיח) appear for the first time. In fact, the word only appears a total of four times in the entire Torah, three in this week’s parasha, and once next week. In all four cases, the Torah is not speaking of the messiah, but rather of the High Priest, the anointed kohen gadol. Of course, this is only true on the surface, peshat, level. On a deeper, mystical level the Torah is indeed alluding to the messiah at the End of Days.

It is fitting that we are reading these words now, when the Jewish world is abuzz over what coronavirus means in the grand scheme of things, and whether, perhaps, it is a sign of Mashiach’s coming. Jewish social media is full of posts and reposts affirming that coronavirus is absolutely a sign of Mashiach’s arrival, with all kinds of “proofs” based on gematria and ancient prophecies. While some of these are accurate, others are nonsensical, absurd, or just plain fake, so it is worth checking the sources behind everything you receive.

Many of the posts cite the same verse, Isaiah 26:20: “Go, my people, enter your chambers, and lock your doors behind you. Hide but a little moment, until the fury passes.” This verse is indeed a prophecy for the End of Days. The preceding verse speaks of the Resurrection of the Dead (“Your dead shall live, dead bodies shall arise; those that dwell in the dust will awake and sing…”) while the verse that follows describes God’s final retribution: “Behold, God shall come forth from His place to punish the dwellers of the earth for their iniquity…” Having said that, it isn’t only sinners that perish. On the contrary, Isaiah cautions everyone to hide behind closed doors for, as the Sages teach, in such moments the angel of death is let loose and doesn’t differentiate between the righteous and the wicked. (For a detailed explanation of this, see Alshech on Exodus 12:13.)

Now, what exactly is the nature of the za’am (זעם), “fury”, that Isaiah speaks of? Is it really a virulent plague?

A Plague Before Mashiach

In several places, the Sages speak of a great plague that will befall the world before Mashiach comes. Possibly the earliest mention of this is Tosefta Ta’anit 2:11, where the Sages discuss if a global flood can come upon the Earth again, since God promised it wouldn’t (Genesis 9:15). The Sages qualify that statement:

Rabbi Meir said: A flood of water will not come again, but a flood of fire and brimstone will, like He brought upon the people of Sodom, as it is written, “And God rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire.” (Genesis 19:24) Rabbi Yehudah said: A flood upon the whole world will not come again, but a flood upon individuals will, such as if a person is at sea and his ship sinks and he dies—this is like a personal flood. Rabbi Yose said: A flood of water will not come again, but a “flood” of plague upon the idolaters in the days of Mashiach will…

A similar statement is found in the Midrash (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 2:13):

“The fig tree puts forth her green figs…” (Song of Songs 2:13) Said Rabbi Chiya bar Abba: before the days of the messiah, a great plague will come to the world, and the sinners will succumb to it “…and the vines in blossom give forth their fragrance…” (ibid.) These are the survivors, of whom it is said: “And it shall be, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remains in Jerusalem [shall be called holy…]” (Isaiah 4:3)

Such passages agree that a devastating plague will come upon the world at the End of Days to strike down idolaters and sinners (though even the righteous will suffer among them). It is interesting to point out how the coronavirus we are dealing with today has, strangely, left the vast majority of children unaffected, with mild symptoms, or none at all. Scientists have yet to find a good explanation for this baffling phenomenon. Perhaps, from a spiritual perspective, it is because innocent children cannot be categorized as “sinners” or “idolaters”, and are being spared.

The Midrash Rabbah quoted above goes on to cite a couple of passages that also appear in the Talmud about the final seven-year period before Mashiach comes, and the state of the world during that time. We’ve written about both of these prophecies on multiple occasions in the past (see, for example, #21 here), so we shall not repeat them. It suffices to say that much of what the Sages predicted has come true. The final sign given in the lengthy midrashic passage is that if you see a generation where people are growing bolder and bolder, love to “rant and rave”, where blasphemy is widespread and people constantly “taunt” God, you should expect Mashiach to be near.

This is one of the factors that distinguish between the current state of the world compared to previous global plagues. For example, the Spanish Flu that started in 1918 certainly qualifies as a great plague that engulfed the entire world, with an estimated 50 million deaths. It came at the same time as World War I, and there were certainly Jews then who expected Mashiach imminently. The critical difference between then and now is the set of prophecies in the Talmud, which are more descriptive of today’s world than, say, 1918, as well as the fact that today we have the State of Israel. The latter is especially significant, since Ezekiel (ch. 37-38) prophesied that Jews would first return to Israel, settle down and build a prosperous country, and only then Mashiach would come. Thus, it is only today that essentially all the prophecies have been fulfilled. And there is at least one more.

Rome and the Enemies of Israel

Another intriguing prophecy that has been brought to light in recent days is the destruction of Rome. The notion that Rome will be crushed before Mashiach comes is found across ancient Jewish texts. This is because, of course, for most of history the biggest oppressor of Israel has been Rome. It was Rome that destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and thrust the Jewish people into this current, millennia-old exile. From historical records, we know that Rome enslaved countless Jews, far more than any other empire in history (see, for example, Samuel Kurinsky’s The Eighth Day). Later, Rome transformed into the Christian Empire—its seat being the Vatican in Rome—from which horrifying crusades, inquisitions, and other terrors were launched.

For the Sages, the greatest enemy was always Rome, and for Mashiach to come it meant Rome must fall for good. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 98a-b) records how when the students of Rabbi Yose ben Kisma asked him when Mashiach would come, he answered: “When [Rome] falls down, is rebuilt, falls again, and is again rebuilt, and then falls a third time, before it can be rebuilt the son of David will come.” Rabbi Yose predicted that Rome would fall three times. The third would be the last, and then Mashiach would come.*

While the city of Rome has been conquered and sacked multiple times, there have been three major powers that can be called “Rome”. The first was the Roman Empire itself, which formally came to an end in 476 CE. Then, in 800 CE, Pope Leo III resurrected the title and crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor once more. What followed was the era of the “Holy Roman Empire”. By 1648, the Holy Roman Empire was dismantled (though the title was carried on by some German powers until 1806). Finally, in 1861 the various kingdoms and states on the Italian peninsula unified to form the modern nation-state of Italy in the hopes of forging a renewed, strong Rome. Today’s Italy can therefore be seen as the third incarnation of ancient Rome. (This is all the more compelling when we remember that Italy was Hitler’s primary ally.)

As it stands currently, Italy has been hardest hit by the coronavirus. They have already had more than double the casualties of China, where the plague began. While we sincerely wish for everyone around the world to be healthy and protected from this dreadful pandemic, it is understandable why some have connected Italy’s unfortunate (and inexplicable) fate to this ancient prophecy. On that note, closely following Italy in terms of casualties are Spain and Iran—probably next in line when it comes to horrible treatment of the Jewish people throughout history. Of course, these numbers will change with time, and we pray for the plague to end immediately so that none more shall perish, no matter where they happen to live.

A Final Prophecy and a Call to Action

The Sages famously state that “in Nisan they were redeemed, and in Nisan they are destined to be redeemed again.” (Rosh Hashanah 11a-b) Just as the Israelites were saved from ancient Egypt in the month of Nisan, the Jewish people in the End of Days will be saved in the same month. The Sages actually debate in these pages whether the Redemption will take place in Nisan or in Tishrei, bringing various Scriptural proofs for both possibilities. The only conclusion is that both must happen: the process will begin in Nisan, and end in Tishrei, with the blowing of the Great Shofar.

Tonight, we usher in the month of Nisan. It is a most auspicious time to bring about the Final Redemption. Now is the time to take this opportunity seriously and prepare. Thankfully, God has made it easy—after all, just about everything is closed. There are no shows, no sports games, no vacations, no activities. There is nowhere to go. For most people, there is no need to even go to work. All distractions are out of the way. Now is the time for Torah and mitzvot, for prayer and repentance.

Finally, the Sages state that the best way to bring Mashiach is for all the Jewish people to keep Shabbat together, and that if the entire nation kept just one Shabbat properly, Mashiach would come (Shemot Rabbah 25:12). The Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, 1847-1905) added that the ideal time for this unified Shabbat is the last Shabbat of the month of Adar, right before the start of Nisan (see his commentary on Parashat Zachor). That Shabbat was just a few days ago, and it just so happened that the parasha we read was Vayakhel-Pekudei, which begins with God’s command to keep the Sabbath! (Exodus 35:2) The timing couldn’t be better. Heck, even the Pope has called for everyone to keep Shabbat like the Jews!

With the State of Israel, and much of the rest of the world, currently on lockdown, God has made it especially easy for us to fulfil one proper, nation-wide Sabbath. This week we have another tremendous opportunity, and the Shabbat that follows is Shabbat HaGadol, the “Great Sabbath” before Pesach. If we do our utmost now then maybe, just maybe, it will be the Great Sabbath that brings the Final Redemption.

Courtesy: Temple Institute

*Click here to read about the “Three Romes” and the coming of Mashiach from a different perspective.

Eye-Openers from the Book of Jubilees

Parashat Behar begins with the command to observe shemitah, the Sabbatical year, and to proclaim a yovel, “Jubilee”, every 50th year after seven such cycles. The 50th year is a particularly special one, where “freedom shall be proclaimed”, slaves are freed, and all property returns to their ancestral owners. This is one of several incredible mitzvot which demonstrate the Torah’s strong emphasis on socio-economic equality and justice.

In the ancient Jewish world, the Jubilee was an important milestone for tracking the passage of time. For example, the Talmud (Arakhin 12b) calculates how long each Temple stood in terms of the number of Sabbaticals and Jubilees elapsed, and that there were exactly 17 Jubilees between Israel’s entry into the Holy Land and their exile by the Babylonians. In fact, there is an entire book, known as Jubilees, written some time in the Second Temple era which divides the early history of Israel and the world into segments of Jubilees. This intriguing text is one of the most controversial books from that era.

It is unknown who wrote Jubilees, but it itself claims to be a revelation given to Moses by the angels upon Mt. Sinai. Moses is the subject of the book, the “you” to whom the angels are speaking. It presents a comprehensive history from Creation until the given of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, organized into 50 Jubilees. The book holds that a Jubilee year, the fiftieth year, is also the first year of the next shemitah cycle. This means that a complete cycle is not 50 years, but 49 years. That’s precisely the debate in the Talmud page cited above. The Sages question whether the Jubilee year is the first year of the next shemitah or not. Rabbi Yehuda insists that it does, which is just one example of the Book of Jubilees overlapping with traditional Judaism.

Having said that, our Sages did not include Jubilees in the Tanakh. Although it reads very much like a Biblical book, it was excluded from the canon. This was not the case among Ethiopian Jews, who surprisingly did include Jubilees in their Tanakh! The same is true for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Many ancient Christian scholars referenced Jubilees, too, while modern scholars have shown that Jubilees was an important book for the Maccabees. The Hasmonean dynasty that followed made extensive use of it, as did the priests of the late Second Temple era. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jubilees is one of the most prevalent texts, more than all other books of ‘Nakh except Psalms and Isaiah. All of this proves that the Book of Jubilees was of great significance in olden days, and greatly influenced Judaism (and Christianity). Intriguingly, some scholars have shown that Jubilees had an even greater impact on Islam, and much of the Quran was clearly inspired by it (see the work of Jan van Reeth for more).

In traditional Jewish texts, too, especially in Midrash and Kabbalah, there are numerous teachings which overlap with Jubilees. In fact, Jubilees may be the earliest known written source for some foundational points of Judaism today. For example, in chapter 7 we see the first description of God giving a set of laws to Noah. A careful count shows there are seven. The Torah does not explicitly say anything about a code of law given to Noah, but Jewish tradition of course speaks of seven “Noahide” laws.

In Jubilees, these laws are: 1) be just and righteous, 2) dress modestly, 3) bless the Creator, 4) honour parents, 5) love your fellow, 6) abstain from sexual sins, plus 7) the prohibition of eating the limb of a live animal which was relayed a bit earlier in the text. In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 56a-b), the Noahide laws are: 1) establish courts of law, 2) bless the Creator, 3) do not worship idols, 4) abstain from sexual sins, 5) do not murder, 6) do not steal, and 7) do not eat the limb of a live animal.

The first law in Jubilees and the Talmud is one and the same: being just implies having a justice system, ie. establishing courts of law. The second in the Talmud is phrased as “blessing Hashem”, just like the third in Jubilees, but is taken to mean not to curse Hashem, since we don’t expect gentiles to know Hebrew blessings. In any case, it is the same law. Not to engage in sexual sins and not to consume the limb of a live animal are the same. All in all, four of the seven are identical, and there are some parallels between the other three.

Another idea that finds its earliest expression in Jubilees is the concept of a messianic “millennium” (23:18-29). After a series of great travails, the world will enter an idyllic age that lasts one thousand years, with no evil and Satan destroyed. This is similar to descriptions in the Talmud (see, for instance, Sanhedrin 97a).

A final example: Jubilees states that God created seven things on the First Day: Heaven and Earth, water, spirits, darkness and light, and the abyss (tehom, as in Genesis 1:2). This is essentially identical to the Midrash (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 3), which says eight things were created on the First Day: Heaven and Earth, water, the Divine Spirit, darkness and light, and tohu v’vohu (also in Genesis 1:2), which can be seen as two parts of the tehom.

The Book of Jubilees presents many more fascinating details. Although not officially accepted in the Jewish canon, we see that it does contain a great deal of accurate information that is also in accepted Jewish texts. This makes it a potentially very useful tool to shed light on some of the big mysteries in Judaism. What follows is a list of some of the most intriguing and perhaps controversial teachings from the Book of Jubilees.

The above is an excerpt from Garments of Light, Volume Two. To continue reading, get the book here!

Secrets of the Pesach Seder Plate

This Friday evening marks the start of Passover. At the Passover seder, it is customary to have a plate upon which all the symbolic Passover foods are placed. According to one arrangement, on the top right we place the zeroa bone; parallel to it on the left is an egg; then the maror (bitter herb) in the centre; the sweet charoset on the bottom right, opposite the karpas vegetable; and in the bottom centre the chazeret, horseradish or another serving of maror (which is used in the korech “sandwich”). In addition, we have three matzahs and the cup of wine, to be filled four times. What is the significance of these Pesach elements?

The zeroa represents the fact that God took us out of Egypt “with an outstretched arm” (b’zeroa netuya), as the Torah states. It also represents the korban pesach, the Pesach offering that would be brought and consumed in the days of the Temple. For this reason, it is best to have a zeroa from a lamb shank, since the Pesach offering was a lamb. The lamb itself was in commemoration of the fact that the Israelites smeared the blood of the lamb on their doorposts on the eve of their Exodus, to protect their homes from the tenth and final plague. It was a lamb in particular because the astrological sign for the month of Nisan is Aries, a ram or sheep. This is tied to Egyptian idolatry, where a number of Egyptian gods were depicted as ram-headed, or with the horns of a ram, including Khnum and Osiris. The slaughter of a lamb was thus symbolic of destroying the idols of Egypt, like the Ten Plagues themselves (see ‘The Ten Plagues: Destroying the Idols of Egypt’ in Garments of Light).

The egg symbolizes another offering brought on Passover: the chagigah, or holiday offering. This was the standard offering brought on all festivals in the days of the Temple. The reason that it is specifically an egg is because a whole egg is one of the foods traditionally consumed by mourners. (The round egg represents the cycle of life.) In this case, the egg is a symbol of mourning for the destruction of the Temple. Intriguingly, Rav Sherira Gaon (d. 1006) wrote how it is customary to eat meat, fish, and egg at the Pesach seder to represent the foods that will be eaten in the End of Days at the Feast of Mashiach. According to the Midrash, in that time the righteous will eat the fishy flesh of Leviathan, that great sea-dragon that Mashiach will slay; as well as the meat of the beast called Behemoth; and the egg of the mythical bird Ziz. So, eating an egg at the Pesach meal is symbolic of that future messianic feast.

‘Destruction of Leviathan’ by Gustav Doré

The maror famously represents the bitter oppression of the Jews, just as the Torah states that the Egyptians “embittered” (v’imareru) the lives of the Jews with mortar and brick, and hard labour (Exodus 1:14). The need to eat maror actually comes explicitly from the Torah, which commands that Jews should eat the Pesach offering together with matzah and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:8). The Mishnah (Pesachim 2:6) lists five possible maror herbs, though their identity is not entirely clear. The only one that appears to be undisputed is lettuce, and hence it is lettuce that is used for maror in Sephardic communities. Another possibility is that maror is horseradish—not the mustard-like sauce but an actual horseradish root (since maror must be a raw vegetable, as the Shulchan Arukh states in Orach Chaim 473:5). There are other traditions for maror’s identity as well.

Interestingly, the Midrash states that the consumption of maror on Pesach is one of the few things King Solomon did not understand! In Proverbs 30:18, Solomon wrote that “Three things are wondrous to me and four I do not know.” Although the passage continues to state what it is that Solomon wondered about, the Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:14) has an alternate explanation: The three things wondrous to Solomon were the Pesach offering, matzah, and maror; and the four he didn’t know were the mysteries behind the four species of Sukkot!

The Mystery of Karpas and Charoset

The maror is dipped into the sweet charoset. This paste is meant to resemble the clay mortar that the Israelites used, or the mud that was baked into clay bricks. The word charoset comes from cheres, “clay”. There are vastly different traditions as to the ingredients of charoset. One tradition is to use the fruits mentioned in Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, among them: apples (2:3), figs (2:13), nuts (6:11), dates (7:7), wine (1:2), and cinnamon (4:14). The romantic lyrics of the Song are interpreted as an allegorical “love story” between God and Israel, and the fruits are used throughout the text in metaphorical fashion to describe that passionate love. It is particularly appropriate to use the Song of Songs recipe since it is customary to read the Song of Songs on the holiday of Pesach. (There are five megillot, “scrolls”, in the Tanakh, and each is read on a particular holiday: Shir HaShirim on Passover, Ruth on Shavuot, Eichah on Tisha b’Av, Kohelet on Sukkot, and Esther on Purim.)

Some have pointed out that charoset may have a Greek origin, as it was common…