Critique to a Response
By Melech Jaffe
The author of Can the Rebbe be Moshiach? recently declared his completion of a response to my critique saying "If this isn't sufficient to convince readers that the critic is mistaken then nothing will be."
At this point I am relatively confident that the author is the only person to have seriously read through my critique, and I am not too concerned that his response is going to be dissuading anyone. The author is well aware that I have what to respond on every point he mentions, as he is probably also well aware that even where I agree with him I am capable of contriving elaborate logical schemes to demonstate his absolute failure to obligate his conclusions, pulling this discussion into an eternal spiral of complexity and confusion. But that was never my intention. If anyone cared the slightest bit about objectively studying this topic I would respond in full, but as the current situation stands I will take another, far less elaborate, approach.
Regarding the response as a whole, I must note that the author only responded selectively to items in the critique. The gaps left by the author alone are sufficient to conclude that he is objectively wrong. In addition, as I just mentioned, the responses themselves are wholly inadequate and even erroneous. But I will leave this behind for now and respond by chapter.
Is the Rebbe Alive?
The answer is no. Of course the Rebbe is not alive. Everyone knows this. I once read somewhere that the Internet is "the world's junkyard of useless information," but this debate about whether the Rebbe is alive makes the rest of the Internet look like the Library of Alexandria. Since the author's goal was to establish that the Rebbe is not alive as far as Jewish law is concerned, he could have sufficed by pointing out that although "life" can be perceived on many levels, the Rebbe's legal status, that he is not alive, is the only status concerned in this discussion. It does not matter who is the object of the phrase "David king of Israel is alive and well." It does not matter if Jacob, Rabbi, and others are referred to as literally being alive. Since for all legal purposes these people are dead, and since for all legal purposes the Rebbe is dead, then as far as our discussion is concerned the Rebbe is not alive. If the Rebbe actually is alive then we surely don't know about it. And no non-legal statement will change our present state of knowledge. The only thing that could change it is proof that the Rebbe is alive to the extent that he is considered alive for all legal purposes. As long as he is legally dead then he is dead enough for the discussion of the next chapter.
Can a Dead Man Be Moshiach?
Here again the answer is a resounding no. There is universal consensus that Moshiach will be a living person. This is a self-defined characteristic of Moshiach and any suggestion to the contrary would be to speak of something other than Moshiach. But no one has yet come forth with the suggestion that Moshiach will not be alive when he becomes Moshiach. The author's question here is: Can or will someone who died ever regain his life and then become Moshiach? Of course not. Death is a status self-defined by Jewish law as the end of life. In Jewish law the presence of a living person is the greatest proof that he did not die.
The Lubavitcher Rabbeim taught that a resurrected man remains dead while he receives a new form of life that is compatible with death. At that point the person does not experience life as we know it, he does not eat or drink, his soul is sustained by his body. If someone were to resurrect, a dead man who is also alive, could he be Moshiach? Absolutely! The Rebbe himself cited traditional sources, explaining Talmudic passages, allowing such a man to be Moshiach. But this follows, as these sources explain, the unaccepted view that resurrection will precede the redemption. The accepted view is for all practical matters the one that reflects our reality, and that is that no such change will occur in this world at the very least until the beginning of the redemption, when Moshiach is already here.
The Rambam, who clearly rules that no such change will occur, cannot possibly be accounting for a living man who also happens to be dead. His simple wording "did not succeed" for a man who dies before succeeding clearly demonstrates that he views death as final. Any conclusion relegated to such a man, namely, that he is not Moshiach or even the man that the Torah promised (i.e. who will be Moshiach someday), is based on that preconception. But he does not make a legal ruling on the impossible. If, as in the sources the Rebbe cites, a man would resurrect, then there would be no obstacle for that living dead-man to be Moshiach. The same applies to any other source that expects Moshiach to be a non-veteran of death. This has nothing to do with Moshiach, rather, it has to do with the expectation that the dead remain lifeless.
But, as the Rebbe taught, as is clear from the tradition, and as is clear in Jewish law, life does not return to the dead until after the redemption process is already commenced by Moshiach, a living Moshiach who could not have died.
What Counter Proofs Can Be Brought?
As I have shown in chapter five there is an abundance of precedent for a resurrected Moshiach. No part of Moshiach's essential makeup precludes him from having died. Well, save for the fact that he has to be alive and that can only be true without his death. But in the depth of Torah where views that are not reflective of the reality or the law are often cited, and contain a hidden meaning but not a literal one, there can still be a resurrection. According to the areas of Torah where the dead can live in an unredeemed world nothing stands in the way of a dead man being Moshiach. The author apparently recognizes that he has no way to account for these sources and has chosen to default on his response, relying on the fact that no one really cares about the truth anyway and that he has given them a big enough fig leaf to hold onto should they prefer to cleave to his dogma.
Is this Heresy?
Here too the author has no response. It should be sufficienty clear by now that someone who does not understand basic Jewish laws and imagines fantastical scenarios that will not occur in our reality may be quite foolish but is no heretic.
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