Rabbi
Lawrence Kushner has a somewhat unorthodox (and kabbalistically based)
translation of the word: “yourself.”
Here’s his thinking:
The
Messiah will only come, goes one legend, when things get so bad we cannot live
without him or so good you don't need her.
Indeed, we often say that at the time all the contradictions, paradoxes
and antinomies will be resolved. Love
and hate, male and female, even good and evil at last will be in perfect
balance. When the Messiah comes, we will
understand how they all fit together and even why it seems so important they
were once in conflict. But until that
time, the syntax written in our brains cannot simultaneously comprehend of
thing and it opposite. Because we cannot
comprehend everything on one uncontradictory linear plane, we imagine a time when
we won't need to. In this way the notion
of the Messiah is a metaphor for the resolution of all contradiction, when
paradox will replace linear logic, right brain supersede the left.
According
to the Talmud, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi asks
Elijah, “When will the Messiah come?” Elijah says,”Go and ask him yourself.” Levi
finds the “son of David” at the gates who tells Levi that the Messiah will come
today. Levi goes back to Elijah and complains that he is been tricked, for surely
the Messiah is not coming today. But
Elijah only explains that today refers to Psalm 95:7, which reads, “Today, if
you listen to my voice.” In other words,
the Messiah will, only when we listen to the voice of God.
“Listening
to the voice of God means attaining a rung of awareness on which hearing God’s
voice is routine. And once that happens, all contradictions are resolved and
you yourself are the Messiah. You
already have everything you need and you are where you need to be. Lions will
lie down with lambs and then they will eat them because that's what lions and
lambs do to and for one another. The way
things are just now is messianic. The
end of days is now and the Messiah is already here.”
For
more explanations of this complicated concept of Messiah and messianism, see this
intoductory article from myjewishlearing.
Also, my second day Rosh Hashanah sermon Apocalypse
Later .
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