The search for the authentic sources on MBY is taking me into some interesting neighborhoods I don’t usually visit.

This is a talk R TOVIA SINGER gave about MBY, a few years ago. Usually, he’s not my cup of tea, but in this talk, I picked up some very interesting information from this.

Read on.

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Around the 3.30 minute mark, R Singer starts explaining how the term ‘moshiach’ in Biblical parlance actually refers to the act of limshuach, or anointing.

Kings were ‘anointed’ by pouring oil upon them, in biblical times. So, SR inger explains that the time ‘moshiach’ actually means that someone had a leadership position, and not necessarily that they are a ‘messiah’.

In the book of Yechezkel, R Singer says the prophet refers to Moshiach (the Redeemer of Israel) as the nasi, the prince

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This one explanation for how the word ‘moshiach’ – the anointed one – doesn’t necessarily mean ‘the righteous Redeemer of the Jewish people’ was a huge chiddush for me.

By way of illustration, Singer points to Isaiah 45:1, which begins like this:

Koh amar Hashem le meshicho Koresh…

“Thus said Hashem to his anointed one, Cyrus…”

This appears to be the source brought down in ‘Kol HaTor’ and then further twisted by people like Joel David Bakst, about how a non-Jew can be ‘moshiach’.

Because the word doesn’t necessarily mean ‘Redeemer’ when found in the Tanach. It literally means someone who was ‘anointed’ to be a leader in some way, most usually, a king.

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Later on, Singer quotes another verse from ISAIAH 59:20:, which clearly sets out the necessary spiritual prerequisite for the Jewish ‘Redeemer’ to show up:

“A redeemer will come to Zion, and to those of Jacob [i.e. The Jews] who repent from willful sin – the word of Hashem.”

I.E., if the Jews want Moshiach to show up, they first have to make some serious teshuva, and sincerely return to God.

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Thank God, I’m not an expert in having to rebut missionary and NT cack, so I had no idea about this next thing I am going to share with you, until I got to minute 13 in Singer’s talk.

That’s where he says this:

“Jews must repent, and that repentance will trigger the coming of the Moshiach.”

(The language is awful, sorry! It’s so hard to discuss this stuff in English without getting a strong whiff of Sunday School.)

But here’s the kicker:

Paul, the founder of ‘xtianity’, reverses the order.

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This is the screenshot Singer flashes up on screen, where you see how xtianity basically teaches people ‘you can’t do anything to get ‘saved’ by yourself, except just to get with yoshki’.

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Singer explains that xtianity teaches people that they can’t ‘save’ themselves, no matter how many good deeds etc you do, and that people can only get ‘saved’ with yoshki.

In this xtian paradigm of ‘redemption’, there is no free will, there is no connection between a person’s deeds, and their ability to be ‘redeemed’.

Xtianity teaches ‘sit tight, yoshki is going to do everything’.

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Personally, this sounds disturbingly similar to the concept of Jews needing to do nothing before Moshiach finally shows up except ‘polish buttons’.

And it’s the opposite of what the Rav says, like this for example:

Nowadays, it is incumbent on every Jew to dance and rejoice during these holy days, and to know that this happiness and dancing is a great and awesome rectification for the soul.

A person does not know which kind of harsh spiritual judgements are waiting for him in the coming year.

The Rebbe says (LM 206), A person sins and harms his soul, at first things continue to go well for him, Hashem then begins to send him slight hints, if he still doesn’t get it Hashem calls to him louder, until the person starts getting kicked and pounded with suffering.

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You sinned? Do teshuva! The same Torah that told you it’s a sin tells you about teshuva!

But if you don’t do teshuva then maybe after some suffering something will start to sink in, you will begin to do teshuva, begin to sob over your spiritual blemishes, get shaken up a drop! If not, then G-d forbid, a spouse will get sick, if not a spouse then the children G-d forbid!

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The Rebbe promised that he will fix everything, but the question is how will he fix?

Which suffering much a person prevail in order to receive his fixing. Sometimes it hurts to go to a doctor, and if someone is really sick the surgery can be painful.

We are Jews! Nothing is rectified for free!

By the Christians nothing is needed to be done, just go to the Priest and confess to him once a year and he says ‘forgiven forgiven’ afterwards everyone continues as before.

By Jews there is no such thing! For sins a person must pay! On every transgression he must pay!

If a person doesn’t do teshuva, and doesn’t wake up then he starts getting hit with suffering as it says “There is no suffering without sin”.

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Later on, Singer starts talking about ‘MBY’, based on the reference in the Gemara Tractate Sukkah 52b, plus the verses talking about the ‘end times war’ in Zachariah, 12:1-8.

I’ll type up the passage from the Gemara below.

It’s apparently the only ‘explicit’ discussion of MBY in the Gemara.

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Around the 20 minute mark, Singer starts equating ‘MBY’ with ‘either one, or many soldiers who are killed in battle’ defending Israel.

He bases this idea on R AVRAHAM KOOK’s written eulogy of Theodore Herzl.

Remember, R KOOK was the author of OROT, and the official English translator of his works apparently has no problem with either Shabtai Tzvi, nor yoshki. (And R Kook himself got his job as Chief Rabbi thanks to his connections with the ACHaVA secret society being run by members of the RIVLIN and SOLOVEITCHIK families….)

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According to Singer, the shock of seeing this righteous soldier, or soldiers, dying in the middle of the ‘end times’ war is what finally gets people to make the teshuva required for Moshiach to show up.

But of course, the Jews don’t need what Singer calls ‘that extreme stimulant’ to make the necessary teshuva, because negative prophecies like massive wars don’t HAVE to happen.

They are just the fall-back mechanism for God to encourage us to  make teshuva.

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The idea of ‘MBY’ being a soldier, or soldiers, who die defending Eretz Yisrael is interesting.

More than that, I don’t know what to think about it.

But for sure, seeing all these young people killed and mutilated over the course of this year has had an extremely sobering effect on so many of us, and it is leading to a lot of real ‘teshuva’, at least, within Israel.

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OK, so now, what is that source in the Gemara Tractate Succah 52 b that speaks about ‘MBY’?

Here it is:

(The Gemara is having a discussion about the nature of the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, and how people will be ‘occupied with mournful eulogy’ in the future time, when the redemption occurs.)

What is the nature of this eulogy that the verse describes?

(The Gemara replies:)

R Dosa and the Rabbis disagreed about it. One said that the eulogy will be for the Moshiach ben Yosef who will have been killed in battle, while one said that it will be for the evil inclination that will have been ‘killed’ i.e. Eradicated, at that future time.

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(The Gemara questions this second view):

It is understandable according to the one who said that the eulogy will be for the Moshiach ben Yosef who will have been killed – that is why the mourning will be so bitter, as it is written:

They will look towards me, the one they have stabbed; they will mourn over him as one mourns over a ‘yechid’ (unique one).[1]

The death of God’s anointed is certainly cause for great grief.

But according to the one who said that the eulogy will be for the evil inclination who will have been killed, does that warrant a eulogy?! It warrants a celebration! So why will they weep?!

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[The Gemara answers:)

It is as R Yehuda expounded:

In the future time (atid lavo), the Holy One, Blessed is He, will bring the evil inclination and slaughter it in the presence of the righteous and in the presence of the wicked.

To the righteous, the evil inclination will appears like a high mountain that can hardly be scaled. And to the wicked, it will appear like a strand of hair that can easily be snapped.

These will weep and these too will weep.

The righteous will weep and say: “How were we able to overcome such a high mountain?” And the wicked will weep and say: “How were we not able to overcome this strand of hair?!”

And so too, the Holy One, Blessed is He, will wonder with them.

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Ad kan, from the Gemara talking about the ‘MBY’.

And even in the Gemara, we see there is a machloket about whether what’s actually being discussed is the death of an ‘anointed one’ referred to as ‘MBY’, or the process of uinversal grieving once the evil inclination is finally slaughtered by Hashem, as part of the geula process.

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I am not going to draw conclusions in this post, I’m just putting the raw info out there.

Continue to think for yourself, and may Hashem bless is all that we should draw close to the wellsprings of the True Tzaddikim, who can enter Pardes and leave again, without going crazy or turning into a heretic or xtian.

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PS: I am taking a few days off from blogging again.

At least, that’s the plan.

I’ve stuck enough up today to keep you going for most of the week.

And we still didn’t pin down exactly who put together ‘Kol HaTor’, and why, and how it’s got ‘secret society’ written all over it.

TBC

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] Zachariah 12:10.