Been done before, it’s not like they have no precedent for worrying:
This one seems pretty undoable, too.
There are 15.7 million Jews in the world today.
Size of Israel is only about 22,000 sq km.
So bringing all Jews back to Israel would be a population density of about 7,100 people per sq km. That is more than 5 times as dense as the current most crowded country, Bangladesh. Such density has only been reached in small, highly developed cities such as Singapore & Hong Kong – and the high-rise buildings there are quite lacking in much of Israel, like the Negrev Desert or the Dead Sea.
Item 1, rebuilding a temple is quite a bit simpler than building the facilities needed for item 2, bringing all the world’s Jews back to Israel.
Sure we do. I mean, they’re not ordained or whatever, but anyone with the surname “Cohen” or “Katz” or several others is presumed to be of priestly descent, and have some of the same obligations and restrictions of the original priestly caste.
I believe you miscalculated: 713.63 is the correct number. Pretty close to the current density, btw: 446/km2 (1,155.1/sq mi). That is rank 34 in the world.
No more disease? What are people supposed to die from? I thought eternal life was not to happen in this world, but the next. No more getting old also? Otherwise this is not well thought through IMO.
Does the expected Messiah have supernatural abilities or is he just a superb leader or something?
Yeah, we have tons of priests. And genetic testing has even shown that most of the men that Jews think are priests share the same y chromosome. (approximately )They may actually be descended from Aaron.
There’s a question of how to ritually purify the site, and that’s where the red heifer comes in.
That temple was built on the traditional birthplace of Ram, and Hindus claim that Muslims tore down a temple of Ram’s to build the mosque that was then torn down in 1992. Al Jazeera says the prior temple is disputed. Which leads me to wonder if the prior Jewish temple is also disputed.
(I also wonder how common it is to build your own religious site on top of the site of the people you’ve just conquered.)
Christians and Muslims have been the most obnoxious about it, but it has been pretty common worldwide. I think the Jews once took a temple to Baal and converted it into a latrine.
After tearing down the temple in Jerusalem the Romans built a temple to Jupiter on the site. Seems like it is common to me.
He wouldn’t be divine; he’d be human.
But I suppose God might work miracles for him. It’s claimed that was done for Moses.
Very, I suspect.
I’m not quite convinced that being “of a priestly caste” is quite the same thing as being a priest. Isn’t there some process or accreditation to allow someone to *actually * be a Jewish priest?
Pretty damn common. Christianity did a lot of that, too, lots of European churches are on top of Pagan sites. Ancient Rome built a Pagan Temple on top of the ruins of one of the Jewish Temples. It’s a time honored way to add to subjugating a conquered population.
Perhaps not quite as often as formerly thought. I recently watched a lecture by Ronald Hutton, an expert on British Pagan history and archaeology, and he indicates that this did not happen very often, despite a stated policy to do so.
IIRC, the red calf was an important plot point in the book The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
@cmkeller still posts occasionally, doesn’t he? Tried to do a search, but it didn’t come back with any results. But I think I remember see his username pop up a month or so ago.
ETA - no results because I misspelled his username.
Is RivkahChaya frum? at least to the point of observing the Sabbath?
I think they would still say we are living in a Messianic age.
No, not really. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the priestly caste’s duties have been defunct for 2,000 years or so; since then, the rabbis have taken over the religious leadership role.
The big thing the priests did was to oversee sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem. I suppose that requires a little bit of training. But mostly it was just a hereditary status, i think. And anyone from a priestly family was allowed to eat the sacrifices given to the Temple. Except a married woman takes on her husband’s status.
But as a daughter of a kohen, I’ve been given priestly honors.
It’s also pretty common to assign the dates of religious holidays at about the same time as a previous pagan festival (even if the actual religious event being celebrated didn’t happen around that date).
So the Roman peoples stopped celebrating Saturnalia, instead they were celebrating Christmas! And the germanic/nordic tribes stopped celebrating Yule time, but celebrated Christmas instead. Same time of the year, and often some of the old traditions continued, now as part of the Christmas celebration: Yule logs, decorating Christmas trees, giving gifts to servants (service workers), etc.
And other religious celebrations near that time seem to be merging into ‘Christmas time’ here in the USA. Like Jewish Hanukkah (I know Jews who put up a ‘Hanukkah bush’ decorated with candle-like ornaments – looks like a Christmas tree to me). Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day, and the 30 days celebration overlaps the 12 days of Christmas. The African-American Kwanza was specifically set during the 12 days of Christmas.
So it seems a common way to encourage ‘cultural unity’ to push common celebration times.
First of all, thanks for thinking of me. Yes, I still post here occasionally, but much less than I used to in my heyday, but I’m happy to address Judaism questions.
As @DocCathode mentioned, the criteria for someone being the Messiah were compiled in one place by Maimonides. The way he writes is is as follows:
So first of all, there couldn’t be two claimants to Messiah-hood, because the very first pre-requisite is that the person should already be acknowledged as King - only one person could be recognized as King at any one time. Secondly, the other determining activities mentioned by Maimonides can confirm his status as the Messiah, but does not necessarily exclude someone who has yet to do all of them (or cannot because they were already done by another) from being the Messiah. Merely that one who did definitely is.
That said, Maimonides says several verses later:
In other words, even though we know that if specific conditions are met by a single individual, we can assume, and if more conditions are met by him, be certain, that according to Jewish law that man is the Messiah, that does not mean that we know for certain it WILL happen in that specific way (i.e., a single man fulfilling all of those criteria). If the situation in the OP arises, it merely means that the Messiah is to be revealed/declared by means other than the full slate of conditions listed in my first quote from Maimonides.
Yes, that’s what I’m asking. I consider world peace, etc. to be undoable, but it is perfectly doable to build that specific Temple. And bringing all the Jews of the world back to Israel may be near-impossible, but it’s still technically within possibility (and perhaps some might interpret it somewhat loosely so that if 99% of Jews are brought back to Israel, that counts, and does not mean literally every single Jew?)