January 31, 2020 “…Hashem shall bring you to the land”           Bo 13:5

Redemption is a powerful theme in Judaism. Though the sages of the Talmud forbid calculation of the time of redemption, Messianism has nevertheless aroused the Jewish people many times in the last 2,000 years and almost always with disappointment and unintended consequences. That a certain manifest destiny justifies the persistent Israeli occupation and settlement of Judea and Samaria is an allusion to Messianism that often underlies the narratives that have been dominating mainstream American Jewish support for Israel as well as official Israeli politics. Zionism has always been about a pluralistic Jewish homeland, not Jewish expansionism. Moshiach will come, we are taught, as a result of good deeds. Annexation, intransigence, and punishment are roads neither to a secure peace nor to redemption.