The Wish for the Messiah

  Moschiach and Our Beliefs

The concept of Moschiach has been with us since time immemorial.  In Europe, long before the common era, our Jewish brethren  believed in this being. Moschiach means “Messiah,” the anointed one.  This word can be interpreted in many ways.  The connotation is a being who will rescue all of humanity and give goodness and happiness to all.  He will appear when humans will do the “right” thing in all aspects of their thoughts and deeds.  He is a being who appears, pays attention to every Jewish person, and will lead them out of the diaspora into a better place.  The dead would come out of  their graves, and become instantly restructured and complete  as new healthy, happy humans, together with all the other Zadikim.  Families would reconnect with one another.  There would be no illness, there would be resurrection, and everyone would feel strong.   There would be no more strife, no more anger, just love. There will be no more anti-Semitism.  The Messiah (Moschiach)  would bring back all of the good, decent, and g’d fearing people on earth and all the righteous human beings would live in Nirvana forever. No one will perish.

The other belief is that when life is unbearable, the Moschiach will appear and lead the suffering ones into happiness, out of their pain, into utopia.  When the Moschiach comes, there will be no Holocaust, no Hitler, no Stalin, no dictator to slaughter humanity.  All people will be worthy, unblemished, and alive.  There will be peace in all of the world.

The belief of wholeness comes with the command that we must bury a dismembered limb along with the body of the deceased.  There is also the belief that “The Temple” will be the same as it was before its destruction.

In the “olden days” before the common era, the orthodox “Yidden” believed that when all of our brethren will be righteous and true believers, nadvens (givers) who follow the ways of “Hashem” (G’d) and are Torah True, Moschiach will come and rescue the Jewish people.  There was also the belief that these sincerely orthodox persons would be led to Yeruscholaim (Jerusalem) the place where possibly Moschiach would take the just, the righteous, the perfect, the ideal, the Torah True.  The very orthodox of our faith negated any belief that Israel, which then was Palestine, was a place to lead the Jewish people before the Moschiach would come, and that orthodoxy was the only answer for all Jews.  No one would be an unbeliever.

Psychologically speaking, we all at one time or another wish we had a Messiah who would take us out of some difficult situations, occurrences, or problematic times.  Moschiach is the perfect father figure (combined with the love of a mother’s heart) who would save us from all misfortune and strife.  He would give us magic hallucinatory omnipotence, we would be loved and respected, there would be nothing that would harm us.  There would be no anti Semitism; no accusations; no projections of the evil doers whose thoughts and actions, could direct their antagonisms unto us.  Our emotional domicile would be far better than the beautiful Garden of Eden.

Lehitraot.

 Dr. Ursula A. Falk is a psychotherapist in private practice and the author of several books and articles.

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