Prophecies and Providence: A Biblical Approach to Modern Jewish History by Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer, Devorah Publishing, New York; ISBN 978-1-93444-059-9 ©2015, $24.95, p. 218, plus appendices
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — Apocalyptic literature tells of the events that will occur at the end-of-days, such as Armageddon and the struggle between Gog and Magog. For fundamentalist Christians those prophecies are recorded in the Book of Revelations and in certain chapters of Matthew and Mark. For Jews who truly wait for the coming of the Messiah the apocalypse is recorded in the Jewish cannon in the Book of Daniel and in certain chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel and Zechariah. But, the prophecies are shrouded in layers of allegory and double meanings. How is one to know if the Age of the Messiah and the final struggle between good and evil are close by? More importantly, how do we even know that these prophecies are true?
A basic axiom of Orthodox Judaism is that God is a personal God who takes a hand, so to speak, in driving the destinies of nations in general and of the Jewish nation in particular. God reveals His plans through prophets, whose legitimacy can only be known after the fact, when the future predictions have come to pass. Since God has infinite knowledge, one hundred percent of a true prophet’s prognostications must take place. Some prophecies occur within a prophet’s lifetime, other true prophets are known only in hindsight.
As a lawyer, rabbinical judge, and Talmudic scholar, Yehoshua Pfeffer, author of Prophecies and Providence, taking a long view of the history of the Jewish people and recognizing that the Age of Prophets ended more than 2300 years ago, seeks to find through retrospective analysis of the prophets, writings, and knowledgeable Jewish scholars, the “Hand-of-God” acting in concert with human behavior on historical events. Prophecies and Providence investigates prophetic pronouncements about the historic ingathering of the Jewish people to the State of Israel, as a stepping stone to the coming of the Messiah.
Prophecies and Providence is a serious work and Pfeffer is no lunatic, he’ll not be telling you that the Messiah is coming because he saw the face of Moses on a piece of matzo, for example. Pfeffer sees Jews locked in an oscillatory history, what he calls night and day, as per Isaiah (9:2) who said, “The nation that walked in darkness saw great light.” In his view, deeper troughs give way to higher crests. The deepest trough being the Holocaust, followed by the creation of the State of Israel, allowing Jews to return to their homeland after nearly two thousand years of exile.
Jews can return to Israel and easily become citizens of the State; however, most Jews remained in the Diaspora. Pfeffer points out that Isaiah (11:11) called for a two-stage return. “It shall come to pass on that day, that the Lord will set His hand again, the second time, to cover the remnant of His people.” According to Pfeffer, the ingathering associated with the establishment of the State of Israel is the first stage. The second stage will be fulfilled with the coming of the Messiah.
The land of Israel is special to the Jewish people, expressed by the saying, “Next year in Jerusalem,” which is often heard in synagogue and home rituals. The land and the Jews form a symbiotic relationship, as evidenced by its chronic desolation until the Jewish people returned to it. Pfeffer turns to the Book of Leviticus (26:32), in which God says, “I will make the land desolate; and your foes that dwell upon it will be desolate.” The revival of the land under the Jewish nation is part of the confirmation that God is fulfilling stage one of His promise.
Exilic and post-exilic prophets regularly announced that God would gather the dispersed Jews and bring them back to the Land of Israel. But non-religious Zionists established Israel, not God in a sweeping display of power. So is Israel’s present existence part of the God’s unfulfilled pledge, or not? Pfeffer presents both sides of the argument: right-wing Orthodox Judaism is sharply critical of Israel on theological grounds, arguing that only Torah observance can bring an end to the exile. Pfeffer counters by quoting a midrash to Ezekiel 36:17, “God said, ‘Would that the children of My people should dwell in the Land of Israel, even if they should contaminate it.’”
Further bolstering his argument, Pfeffer draws on a cryptic verse from the apocalyptical Book of Daniel (8:14), where he interprets the phrase “And he [that is, some unknown heavenly being] said to me, ‘For twenty-three hundred evenings and mornings for the sanctuary to be made holy’” to mean 2300 years, and based on his starting point, the re-consecration began about the time of Israel’s establishment. [Note: the actual Hebrew says “evening morning.” There is neither an “and” between them, nor are the words plural.] Pfeffer further notes that the State of Israel’s existence has forced Christian theologians to discard their long held assertion that God abandoned the Jews.
Pfeffer, tackling the meaning of the future wars of Ishmael and Gog, as described in Isaiah and Ezekiel, respectively, concludes that these do not represent battles with Israel’s past traditional enemies, but rather with a coalition of world-wide forces, perhaps an alliance between Islam and the West.
With the battles over and Israel’s victory, the Messiah, “a human, mortal man” will appear, and Pfeffer cites the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah who declare that the Messianic Era will be like “days of glory no lesser than those of the original redemption from Egypt.” The issue at hand is when will the Messiah come? The Jewish response is unclear. Maimonides says before the Gog War. Some in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 97b) say the timing depends on repentance and mitzvot, but not later than 6000 years after creation, which places the event not later than 2240 C.E., others say after all the nations convert to Judaism (Avodah Zarah 3b).
Interpretations and truths are not the same thing; truth emerges only when interpretations become fully realized. This, as Pfeffer points out on numerous occasions, is Prophecies and Providence’s dilemma: the story for the advent of the Messiah fits the interpretations, but is it the truth? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, Prophecies and Providence is a carefully crafted analysis of Judaism’s canonized apocalyptic literature, which provides background information on the Messiah, and describes the relationship between the prophetic predictions of the redemption from exile, the end of war, and contemporaneous Jewish history. Regardless of one’s level of belief in a future Messiah, Prophecies and Providence is worthy of a careful reading.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. You may comment to fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.
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