Why were Jews waiting for the messiah?
Answers
Answer:
The Jewish messianic belief plays a central role in the lives of Jewish people, but it is very different than Christians’ belief in Jesus as Christ. The redemption that Christ brought is internal transformation—being saved from one’s sinfulness, achieving the inner peace that comes from receiving God’s love. As a Jew, I rest in God’s unconditional love and the ever flowing blessings that come to me through divine grace. I do not, however, believe that the world has yet been redeemed. In a redeemed world, swords will be turned into ploughshares, nobody will go hungry, the powerless will not be oppressed, and justice will prevail everywhere. This was the vision of the Biblical Prophets, and it remains the foundation of Jewish hope for the future.
There is no single authoritative Jewish belief about redemption, but the one the speaks most powerfully to me is from the medieval teacher Maimonides (known to Jews as the Rambam) in his treatise The Mishneh Torah. Maimonides states emphatically that none of the laws of nature will be altered in the messianic era. Instead, he envisions a world governed by a King Messiah who is wise, righteous, just, and politically adept. There will be no servitude to foreign powers and there will be peace. All people will be free to devote themselves to the study of the Torah and the practice of good deeds, and there will be plenty of material goods for everyone. All of this will happen because of the righteousness and wisdom of the messianic ruler.
Answer:
Even though we say we are waiting, we are not waiting passively to be rescued. We are actively working to hasten the arrival of the messianic era by increasing justice and peace, by fighting oppression and human suffering. Our awareness of the unredeemed state of the world moves us to work to make things better. I believe that this is a major reason why so many Jewish people become social, political, and economic activists, why Jews in the USA vote more liberally than others in the same economic brackets. Our interest in helping the less fortunate derives from a vision of what the world redeemed looks like.