Word: messiahs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Israeli Jews like to tell an old fable of a Russian Jew who goes to his rabbi in search of a job. The rabbi instructs the man to stand at the village gate each morning and wait there to greet the Messiah when he comes. For this, the rabbi offers the man a ruble a month. "The pay is so low," the man complains. "Yes," says the rabbi, "but the job security is excellent...
...group of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Israeli members of the large and powerful Hasidic movement Habad are convinced that at any moment, the Redeemer will arrive in Jerusalem. In a burst of fervor, they have erected yellow billboards across Israel, instructing passersby to PREPARE FOR THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH. Bumper stickers carry the same message, as do electrified signs atop Habad cars. A full-page ad announcing "The Time for Your Redemption Has Arrived" has run in the New York Times, and Habad speakers have been crisscrossing the U.S. to deliver their message. And who might the Messiah be? Easy...
...what many other religious Jews say. Critics of Habad, which is also known as the Lubavitch movement, after the Belarussian village of its founding, are both angry and worried. Eliezer Schach, one of Israel's leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis, has publicly called Schneerson "insane," an "infidel" and "a false Messiah." The local papers carried Schach's outrageous charge that Schneerson's followers are "eaters of trayf," food such as pork that is forbidden to Jews. Other detractors fret that Habad's Messianic passions will provoke a schism in Judaism or lead to mass disillusionment, driving believers from the fold. Says...
Within Habad, a well-financed organization with 30,000 followers in Brooklyn and at least 100,000 worldwide, the expectation of the Messiah's coming has been building since Schneerson in the past few years began exhorting his disciples more and more to actively prepare for the day. The crumbling of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union's demise, explains Habad spokesman Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, "lead one to think that these extraordinary, shattering events are a precursor to something even more cataclysmic...
...house for him in Kfar Habad, the movement's village in Israel. Schneerson has never set foot in the Jewish state, and his followers believe he will do so only at the moment of Redemption. The ground breaking was seen as a sign that the time is near. "The Messiah will come any day," declared Moshe Kruger, standing on the plot for Schneerson's house...