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Rabbi Hirsch's Leper-Messiah.

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
The Rabbis said: His [Messiah's] name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.

BT Sanhedrin 98b.

In the Garden of Eden there is one chamber called the Chamber of the Ill. The Messiah then enters that chamber and calls for all the illnesses, all the pains, and all the sufferings of Israel to come upon him, and they all do so. And if he did not ease them off of Israel, taking them upon himself, no one could endure the suffering of Israel from the punishments of Torah, as is written: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, [our pains that he endured] (Isaiah 53:4).

The Zohar, Va-Yaqhel, 2:21a.

Over the course of a number of threads on Rabbi Hirsch's treatment of the menorah I expressed amazement concerning his insinuation that the menorah, as he conceived it, was a near-perfect emblem of the messianic-personage describe in Isaiah chapter 11. In those threads I included the image (created by Rabbi Hirsch) which he considers an accurate visual of Isaiah's messiah transposed from words to emblematic image:




Naturally this image comports too well with the Christian concept of a leper-messiah who's made into a trespass-offering for the sins of Israel. An immediate Jewish rebuttal pointed out that the image above doesn't include the lines Rabbi Hirsch drew to connect the words making up the horizontal cross-member to words that construct the stump of the tree of light (the menorah). The implication being that the image above serves the Christian concept of the leper-messiah so well merely by means of the elimination the the non-linguistic elements of the drawing (i.e., the lines connecting words). ----- Nevertheless, as in most exegetical points of light, Rabbi Hirsch tends to provide a rabbinical rabbit hole that goes deeper down into the spirit of these things than the average bible-toter is comfortable descending.

We, of course, will descend. . ..



John
 

Tumah

Veteran Member
The Rabbis said: His [Messiah's] name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.

BT Sanhedrin 98b.
It says that his name is "the leper of the house of Rebbi [Judah the Prince]." This excerpt is from a passage where a number of Rabbis call the Messiah after a name relating to themselves (ie. Rabbi Shilah says the Messiah's name is Shiloh, Rabbi Yannai says the Messiah's name is Yinnon, and they all bring verses). It's a Midrashic interpretation of the verse.

In the Garden of Eden there is one chamber called the Chamber of the Ill. The Messiah then enters that chamber and calls for all the illnesses, all the pains, and all the sufferings of Israel to come upon him, and they all do so. And if he did not ease them off of Israel, taking them upon himself, no one could endure the suffering of Israel from the punishments of Torah, as is written: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, [our pains that he endured] (Isaiah 53:4).

The Zohar, Va-Yaqhel, 2:21a.
Odd how you left out the last words of this passage, "As Rabbi Elazar [did] on earth".

Over the course of a number of threads on Rabbi Hirsch's treatment of the menorah I expressed amazement concerning his insinuation that the menorah, as he conceived it, was a near-perfect emblem of the messianic-personage describe in Isaiah chapter 11. In those threads I included the image (created by Rabbi Hirsch) which he considers an accurate visual of Isaiah's messiah transposed from words to emblematic image:




Naturally this image comports too well with the Christian concept of a leper-messiah who's made into a trespass-offering for the sins of Israel. An immediate Jewish rebuttal pointed out that the image above doesn't include the lines Rabbi Hirsch drew to connect the words making up the horizontal cross-member to words that construct the stump of the tree of light (the menorah). The implication being that the image above serves the Christian concept of the leper-messiah so well merely by means of the elimination the the non-linguistic elements of the drawing (i.e., the lines connecting words). ----- Nevertheless, as in most exegetical points of light, Rabbi Hirsch tends to provide a rabbinical rabbit hole that goes deeper down into the spirit of these things than the average bible-toter is comfortable descending.

We, of course, will descend. . ..



John
You of course misunderstand. The lines make all the difference because it illustrates where the various concepts are related. The six concepts on the right and left are meant to be attached to the three times "spirit" is used in the verse when referring to these three couplets. That is why the original illustration has the lines connecting them. If you aren't going to draw those lines, then you need to move each of those three couplets to each of the three "spirits" to accurately reflect the verse's construction. Of course that changes the shape of the illustration altogether.

As you continue to descend into madness in your rush to prove that Judaism is really Christianity in disguise, you lose greater and greater touch with reality.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
I am told by a very smart fellow who knows his Talmud that Zohar is recommended for older gents (like 40+) to read once they have mastered Talmud, and without that background is essentially going to be a waste of time. There is also a warning (I have heard I think somewhere) in the Talmud against studying it to obtain magical powers. The Talmud will frustrate such attempts.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
You of course misunderstand. The lines make all the difference because it illustrates where the various concepts are related. The six concepts on the right and left are meant to be attached to the three times "spirit" is used in the verse when referring to these three couplets. That is why the original illustration has the lines connecting them. If you aren't going to draw those lines, then you need to move each of those three couplets to each of the three "spirits" to accurately reflect the verse's construction. Of course that changes the shape of the illustration altogether.

. . . On the contrary. I fully understand the meaning of the lines. Particularly as these things are dissected by Rabbi Hirsch. The menorah is a scion (asexual basal-shoot) חוטר growing out of a a root גזע cut down to the very ground (requiring a basal-shoot) to grow out of the root apart from the normal sexualization of the tree.

Those unfamiliar with Hebrew won't appreciate that in the Hirsch cross the very word for a basal-shoot (חוטר) is growing out of the root attached to the dead stump (גזע).

The spirit (רוח) on the tree makes up the heart and lungs of the personage hanging on the tree. The heart and lungs is where the "spirit" (breath) and the blood reside. Rabbi Hirsch forms the torso of the messianic personage with the word for "breath" or "spirit" which is where the lungs and heart exist on a human frame. He repeats the word four times to form the torso of the body of messiah.

The lines come from the arms of messiah. On the sefirotic tree hokmah and binah are the left and right arm of Adam Kadmon (the divine man). On Rabbi Hirsch's cross, the left and right arms begin with hokmah and binah. The lines run from the heart and lungs, the place where the spirit dwells, to the "arms" that represent the power of a man. The "arms" (specifically the right arm) represents the power of a man to control his world and his destiny.

Isaiah 52:10 says: "The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of al the nations and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God."

Isn't this precisely what Rabbi Hirsch's image portrays. The holy arm of the Lord lay bare on the tree of light. The power of the arm of the Lord is in the blood. In the breath, the ruach רוח, such that the arms are connected to the source of the power of the holy "arm" of the Lord. The power found in his lungs, his words, and his heart, his blood, shed on the menorah for Israel's sins.

fetch



John
 
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John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I am told by a very smart fellow who knows his Talmud that Zohar is recommended for older gents (like 40+) to read once they have mastered Talmud, and without that background is essentially going to be a waste of time. There is also a warning (I have heard I think somewhere) in the Talmud against studying it to obtain magical powers. The Talmud will frustrate such attempts.

. . . May these truths form a wall around this thread.



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Odd how you left out the last words of this passage, "As Rabbi Elazar [did] on earth".

. . . I'm interested in messiah as an archetype. That doesn't deny Rabbi Rabbi El'azar as a type. It's just that messiah is in the cross-members of this thread.



John
 
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John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
It says that his name is "the leper of the house of Rebbi [Judah the Prince]." This excerpt is from a passage where a number of Rabbis call the Messiah after a name relating to themselves (ie. Rabbi Shilah says the Messiah's name is Shiloh, Rabbi Yannai says the Messiah's name is Yinnon, and they all bring verses). It's a Midrashic interpretation of the verse.

. . . The text says rabbi such and such says, and then rabbi such and such replies. But then it says the "rabbis" (all of them) quote Isaiah 53:4. -----Leper messiah is the true revelation of Messiah's name. He is the Salvation of Israel. Given as a "guilt-offering" for the spiritual leprosy of Israel:

In one of the most difficult verses in the difficult text (Is. 53, 10), YHVH states as a condition of the future life and work of the servant: “if his soul makes a guilt-offering.” Some scholars see in this a “clear and definite” expression of “vicarious expiation.” But the wording does not allow such an interpretation. Asham, “guilt-offering,” means compensation and not expiation. It is the name of the gift which the leper had to bring on the day of his purification (Lev. 4, 11ff). We have no indication as to how we should picture in our minds the future purification of him stricken with the leprosy of the world; but we are told that he must purify himself before he enters upon his duty of bringing to the nations the order of righteousness, and of linking them together to a people of peoples in his capacity as “covenant.”

Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, p. 228.​

Buber points out that in Isaiah 53 messiah is being called a "guilt offering" ("trespass offering" in KJV). Buber implies that messiah will be given to God, by Israel, as an אשם (asham), a guilt offering: Israel's spiritual leprosy (53:6) is to be compensated for by making a "guilt offering" of the leper-messiah (suffering-servant).

The Rabbis said: His [Messiah's] name is 'the leper scholar,' as it is written, Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him a leper, smitten of God, and afflicted.

BT Sanhedrin 98b.

In the Garden of Eden there is one chamber called the Chamber of the Ill. The Messiah then enters that chamber and calls for all the illnesses, all the pains, and all the sufferings of Israel to come upon him, and they all do so. And if he did not ease them off of Israel, taking them upon himself, no one could endure the suffering of Israel from the punishments of Torah, as is written: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, [our pains that he endured] (Isaiah 53:4).

The Zohar, Va-Yaqhel, 2:21a.

Various Jewish texts speak of the concept of this leper-messiah, suffering-servant, acting in the capacity of a "guilt-offering" brought by a leper. The contamination of the leper is compensated for by the offering. The sin and disease is transferred to the guilt-offering that's thereafter given to God. The leper-messiah takes on Israel's sickness (spiritual leprosy) and is then given to God as compensation. Which segues perfectly with what Rabbi Hirsch has to say not only in symbol, the emblem of the Hirsch menorah, but in exegesis too.


John
 

Tumah

Veteran Member
I am told by a very smart fellow who knows his Talmud that Zohar is recommended for older gents (like 40+) to read once they have mastered Talmud, and without that background is essentially going to be a waste of time.

The first is an injunction by certain Rabbis of the Ashkenazic communities not to study kabbalistic texts (of which the Zohar is one) under the age of 40. That came about because of a false messianic claimant named Shabsi Tzvi, who caused even more devastation to the Jewish people of his time than did Jesus in his.
The second is a warning from Maimonides (himself not a kabbalist) brought in later codifications and by kabbalists not to study kaballah without a strong background in the basics.
Significantly, kaballah means something that is received and it remains a study that requires a teacher who has himself acquired his knowledge of the subject from a teacher. I have a book in which the author claims to have been studying the same kabbalistic text under his Rabbi for 7 years. I also know of a kabbbbalist who requires of those wanting to study under him that they commit to 40 years. This would not be necessary if you could just open a text and start reading. So at least what you see around the internet, from my perspective is just immature kids fooling around.

There is also a warning (I have heard I think somewhere) in the Talmud against studying it to obtain magical powers. The Talmud will frustrate such attempts.
The Talmud was written well before the Zohar was redacted and does not refer to it.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
.

In the Garden of Eden there is one chamber called the Chamber of the Ill. The Messiah then enters that chamber and calls for all the illnesses, all the pains, and all the sufferings of Israel to come upon him, and they all do so. And if he did not ease them off of Israel, taking them upon himself, no one could endure the suffering of Israel from the punishments of Torah, as is written: Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing, [our pains that he endured] (Isaiah 53:4).

The Zohar, Va-Yaqhel, 2:21a.

Various Jewish texts speak of the concept of this leper-messiah, suffering-servant, acting in the capacity of a "guilt-offering" brought by a leper. The contamination of the leper is compensated for by the offering. The sin and disease is transferred to the guilt-offering that's thereafter given to God. The leper-messiah takes on Israel's sickness (spiritual leprosy) and is then given to God as compensation. Which segues perfectly with what Rabbi Hirsch has to say not only in symbol, the emblem of the Hirsch menorah, but in exegesis too.

Rabbi Hirsch quite truthfully and factually links the menorah to the ornament worn by Jewish priests between their breasts, after having legitimately and truthfully related the menorah to Messiah (even making the menorah a messianic-emblem), he says (with clarification from Buber) that this Messianic ornament worn between the breasts of Jews, represents the "guilt offering" presented to God by lepers seeking to be clean of their spiritual leprosy. He goes further and directly relates this ornament to Yesha ישע--- Salvation.

Here's Rabbi Hirsch's facts unadorned by my new reading of them:

1. Jewish priests wore an ornament dangling between their breasts.
2. The ornament represents messiah . . . is a picture of messiah.
3. Part of the nature of the ornament is that it represents the "guilt-offering" a leper brings to God.
4. In a "guilt-offering" the guilt of the one bringing it is symbolically transferred to the offering.
5. Yesha ישע---Salvation, is directly associated with this ornament that's a "guilt-offering" given by God for Israel's salvation.

You shall put the [messianic-ornament] into the breastplate of judgement, so that they will be over Aharon's heart when he comes before God. Let Aharon bear the judgment of the Children of Israel over his heart before God at all times.

Hirsch Chumash, Shemos 28:30.​

Aaron is to wear the messianic-emblem of a guilt-offering given to God for Israel's spiritual leprosy whenever he comes before God. A messianic-emblem (a picture of messiah as a "guilt-offering") symbolizing the suffering of messiah for Israel's "salvation" ישע is to be worn between Aaron's breast whenever he approaches God. If Aaron isn't wearing this crucifix when Aaron seeks God's mercy for Israel all hell is going to break out.

Oh . . . and btw, the emblem representing a guilt-offering providing Israel's salvation which dangles between the breasts like a leper-messiah is depicted as Rabbi Hirsch conceives it in the image below. . . He literally, factually, claims, the image below had to hang between the breast of Aaron, as a picture of a leper-messiah, anytime Aaron went before the Lord.

די

חכמה עכה דעת רוח ויראת דיוגבורה ובינה
רוח
רוח
רוח
ח
ו
ט
ר

ג ז ע

John
 
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