The Messiah had finally summoned the courage to redeem the world, and was on his way to bring about the end of days. But as he ran with great speed through the long corridor connecting heaven and earth, he thought to himself, at this pace, I will arrive on earth depleted of all energy and smelling of toil. Surely, this is no way for the Messiah to greet his world, for would a man arrive at his own wedding in tattered clothes? But I dare not walk, for the world needs me. Therefore, I will run to the world of thisness, but camp just outside of it, so that I may cleanse myself before my arrival. For who knows if showing up as I am now, people will not just mistake me for a mad and errant knight. Thus, the Messiah arrived on the outskirts separating the world of thisness from the world to come, and set up tent there near a large lake. In the morning he arose, said his morning prayers, and entered into the lake, intending to purify himself. But so refreshing were the waters, so cleansing were they, and so engulfing, that when the Messiah returned to his tent, he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing there.
By now, his tent and his clothes have withered into nothingness, and all that remains is his eternal nakedness. If only he could find his old, dirty clothes and put them on again, he would remember his task and be here in no time.
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Into Life
The Messiah will come only when it is too late
The Messiah Ben Joseph Contemplates the Eschaton
Franz Rosenzweig
Into Life
Posts
Welcome to my blog
I like to write theological musings and parables and ditties. Here they lie awaiting your interpretations. More forthcoming. Below are pictured two great modern secular Jewish thinkers who inspire me and haunt me to give color to the page.
I've named the blog after a Kabbalistic concept, according to which, the truth exists not in names, not in letters, but in between them, in their interrelationship. Truth dwells not in the ink, but in its absence. Schlegel, a German Romantic theorist of irony puts the idea nicely when he says, "Words understand themselves better than we who use them." On such a view, the idea that God's name is unpronounceable is not a negative statement. For God's name is not a word. Rather God's name is language itself. In every breath and every pause, in ever noun form and verbal utterance, lingers the conspicuously inconspicuous stage upon which meaning discloses itself. Our aim is to seek out the meaning, to reverse the shattered world order, to elevate the sparks, to overturn the fallenness of language and the schism between signifier and signified that is just another name for the abyss between heaven and earth, being and nothingness, perception and reason, body and soul, time and space, me and you, and dare I say, good and evil.
The story, the parable, the musing, the rambling, the ditty, are ways through which we can attempt to unconceal the primordial letters out of whose fire we sprang. For by making the strangeness of life stranger, we exalt it and bring it back to its origins.
I've named the blog after a Kabbalistic concept, according to which, the truth exists not in names, not in letters, but in between them, in their interrelationship. Truth dwells not in the ink, but in its absence. Schlegel, a German Romantic theorist of irony puts the idea nicely when he says, "Words understand themselves better than we who use them." On such a view, the idea that God's name is unpronounceable is not a negative statement. For God's name is not a word. Rather God's name is language itself. In every breath and every pause, in ever noun form and verbal utterance, lingers the conspicuously inconspicuous stage upon which meaning discloses itself. Our aim is to seek out the meaning, to reverse the shattered world order, to elevate the sparks, to overturn the fallenness of language and the schism between signifier and signified that is just another name for the abyss between heaven and earth, being and nothingness, perception and reason, body and soul, time and space, me and you, and dare I say, good and evil.
The story, the parable, the musing, the rambling, the ditty, are ways through which we can attempt to unconceal the primordial letters out of whose fire we sprang. For by making the strangeness of life stranger, we exalt it and bring it back to its origins.
Joseph K.
The Messiah will come only when it is too late
Walter Benjamin
The Messiah Ben Joseph Contemplates the Eschaton
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