I Want to Talk About the MessiahThe King Laid Bare — The Story of the Messiah’s Identity
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The King Laid Bare — The Story of the Messiah’s Identity

I Want to Talk About the Messiah

The king wears the clothes of his generation. Redemption is taking place before our eyes.
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Opening — I Want to Talk About the Messiah

I want to talk about the Messiah.

Not only about what books say about him, but about the road that led me to search for him and the moment when all the pieces seemed to fall into place.

Why I Began to Search

I returned to Jewish observance at the age of twenty-seven. I began studying Kabbalah and Hasidic thought and became close to a very special rabbi, whom I will not name here. I learned from him for years. His teaching was fascinating, his way of thinking original, and he opened doors for me that I had never known.

At one point I thought that perhaps he was the figure I had been looking for. Later I left, when I came to understand that he was probably not the Messiah. But the question did not leave me.

Who is the Messiah? What are we actually looking for? Is he a great rabbi, a hidden saint, a prophet, a king, or a man who is supposed to fall from heaven one day? And why had so many dates associated with the Messiah’s coming apparently passed without his arrival?

What Is a Messiah?

The Messiah is first of all a human being. A king of flesh and blood who carries the people of Israel, fights its wars, and leads it from where it stands to where it is meant to be.

When Israel asked for a king, they did not ask for a man who would sit in the study hall and give them a lesson. They said:

“Our king shall judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles.”
— I Samuel 8:20

The sages of Israel, the priests, and the tribe of Levi bear a spiritual role. The king bears another role. He carries the national body: the land, the army, the economy, the borders, the honor, and the security of Israel. He must act in the place where blood is shed and decisions are made, not only where ideas are studied.

A Word to the Christian Reader

A Christian reader who hears the word “Messiah” immediately thinks of Jesus. I understand that. But this book begins with the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish tradition. When I say Messiah, I mean a human king who carries Israel and acts within history.

After we learn from the earlier redeemers what that role actually is, I will devote a chapter to the obvious question: Does Jesus fit this pattern? I will examine him by the same standards used to examine Moses, Joseph, David, and Mordechai.

The Body of Redemption

This was the great change in my thinking. I understood that redemption is not only a story of the soul. It needs a body.

For two thousand years of exile, Israel preserved its soul in synagogues and houses of study. When it returned to the land, it also had to rebuild a body: a state, an army, agriculture, an economy, science, and government. This body is not less holy because it is made of budgets, metal, soldiers, and officials. Without a body, the soul cannot act in the world.

Then I understood why the man carrying the messianic role might not look like a rabbi. In our minds, a rabbi represents the soul of the people. A king carries its body. This does not mean Torah is unimportant, or that the Messiah must look secular. It means I had searched only on the spiritual side while his primary role was unfolding within the body of the nation.

The moment that thought struck me, I looked at Benjamin Netanyahu—and suddenly things connected.

Here was the man who had carried the State of Israel on his back for decades. The man who had placed his body in danger for it, whose name was known throughout the world, whose greatness the nations could see, whom Israel’s elites fought, and whom millions of Jews returned to leadership again and again. I looked back at the years in which people said the Messiah would come and no one saw him arrive, and another possibility rose before me: perhaps he had been here. Perhaps he had governed Israel during those very years, and no one noticed because everyone was looking for another kind of man.

From that moment the evidence kept accumulating. Midrashim I had not understood took on meaning. The stories of Moses, Joseph, David, and Mordechai looked different. I began speaking about it wherever I could—with family, with friends, on Facebook, and in lectures. For years I felt like someone crying, “The king is naked,” while people heard the words but did not look.

I do not know why God placed it on my heart, of all people, to see this. Nor can I force history to agree with me. Time will tell whether I was right or wrong. But after years of speaking about it, I decided it was time to place the argument in writing, clearly and in order.

My Grandmother and the Miracle We Failed to See

Years after I returned to observance, I was driving with my grandmother, may she live and be well. My phone lay in front of us, and Waze told me where to turn. She looked at it, laughed, and said something simple: less than a hundred years ago, if people had seen a little piece of metal talking to you, knowing where you were, and scolding you when you missed a turn, they would have called it the work of demons.

At that moment I understood another piece.

We are used to thinking of a miracle as a break in the laws of nature. The sea splits, fire descends from heaven, a staff becomes a snake. If something passes through a laboratory, a factory, an army, an airplane, or a computer, we call it nature. Yet a person from a century ago would faint at the sight of our lives. We speak to someone on the other side of the world through a piece of metal, cross continents in an iron box in the sky, see organs inside the body without opening it, and talk to a machine in human language.

We became accustomed to wonder, and so we stopped seeing it.

The same thing happened with redemption. We waited for a man to emerge from the picture we had drawn, and failed to look at the man already acting inside history. So I decided to set imagination aside for a moment and examine the messianic figures who had already lived: what they looked like in real time, before they became portraits of saints, while they were still being pursued, suspected, and disputed.

That is where this book begins.

My starting point is simple: “That which has been is that which shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” I do not draw a future Messiah from imagination. I seek to recognize him through the redeemers whom God has already raised for Israel.

Chapter 1 — The Man Who Will Not Fall from the Sky

When people say “Messiah,” many imagine a man no one has ever heard of. One day he appears, performs signs, and every doubt disappears.

That is not how Israel’s redeemers appeared.

Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house. He went out to his brothers, killed the Egyptian, fled to Midian, and returned to Egypt. David was not revealed as king in a single morning. First he was a shepherd, then a musician in Saul’s house, a warrior facing Goliath, an army commander, the king’s son-in-law, a fugitive, and a hunted man. Joseph passed from his father’s home to a pit, slavery, prison, and the palace. Mordechai sat at the king’s gate and worked within the empire before the decree reached its height.

They did not come from nowhere. Their generation watched them grow, fight, fall, and rise. Only later did it understand what the story meant.

Maimonides, too, does not require the Messiah to begin with a miracle. He writes plainly:

“Do not imagine that the King Messiah must perform signs and wonders, create new things in the world, or revive the dead, and the like. It is not so.”
— Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 11:3

Maimonides points to Rabbi Akiva, who regarded Bar Koziva as a possible Messiah and did not ask him for a sign. History tested him.

That is the order. First a man rises and acts. He fights, leads, and changes Israel’s condition. Only when the process is complete can we know with certainty what to call him.

It is comfortable to wait for an unknown man. Someone who has not arrived demands no choice and no change of mind. A living man arrives with a biography, enemies, mistakes, a political camp, and a price. It is far easier to believe in tomorrow’s Messiah than to recognize a leader acting today.

The redeemer is revealed at the end, but he is formed before the eyes of his generation for years.

Chapter 2 — What Does a Messiah Look Like?

What is the Messiah supposed to look like? Religious? Secular? A rabbi? A commander? A man of the palace?

Let us examine the earlier messianic figures.

Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house. When Jethro’s daughters met him, they returned to their father and said:

“An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds.”
— Exodus 2:19

They did not see a rabbi. They saw an Egyptian. His heart was with his Hebrew brothers, but his appearance, language, and habits spoke of Egypt. Life inside the empire was precisely what prepared him to stand against it.

Joseph also looked Egyptian. His brothers stood before him and failed to recognize him:

“Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him.”
— Genesis 42:8

He wore Egyptian clothes of office, carried an Egyptian name, and spoke through an interpreter. The sages add that in his youth he styled his hair. In short, he did not resemble the figure his brothers expected Joseph the Righteous to be.

When Samuel came to anoint David, even the prophet had to be taught how to look:

“Do not look at his appearance or the height of his stature… for man sees with the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart.”
— I Samuel 16:7

David is described as ruddy. The Midrash says Samuel was alarmed and feared that he shed blood like Esau. David also surrounded himself with men from the margins:

“Everyone in distress, everyone in debt, and everyone bitter of spirit gathered to him, and he became their captain.”
— I Samuel 22:2

To an outside observer he could look like the leader of criminals and embittered men, not a messianic figure. Jephthah was likewise driven out by his brothers, joined by “worthless men,” and only in wartime did the elders of Gilead return and ask him to lead them.

Mordechai presents another possibility. He was openly Jewish and, according to the sages, one of the Sanhedrin. So there is no rule that the Messiah must look secular or foreign. The point is simpler: redemption has no fixed uniform. Most redeemers did not look, in real time, like the conventional image of a “Jewish saint,” but God is not bound by our picture.

Cyrus sharpens the point. Isaiah calls a gentile king God’s “anointed” because he was charged with restoring Israel and rebuilding Jerusalem. He certainly did not look Jewish.

External appearance is a weak sign. The stronger questions are different: What does the man do? Whom does he protect? What will he risk his life for? And what happens to Israel when power is in his hands?

Chapter 3 — Self-Sacrifice Is Not a Sermon

The Messiah is not merely a Torah scholar who never left the study hall. Torah stands at the foundation of Israel’s kingdom, but the king carries it down into life and places his body in danger.

Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He can walk on and remain a protected prince in Pharaoh’s house. Instead he intervenes, kills the Egyptian, and loses his safety in that instant. Later, after the sin of the golden calf, he says to God:

“And now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, erase me, please, from Your book which You have written.”
— Exodus 32:32

Moses does not ask for a future apart from Israel.

David hears Goliath humiliating the armies of Israel. The entire camp is afraid:

“Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, and they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”
— I Samuel 17:11

David does not send another man. He goes himself. Later he fights again and again, is wounded, is hunted, and continues defending the towns of Judah even while Saul seeks his life.

Esther enters Ahasuerus’s chamber without being summoned, when the law says such a person may die. She says, “If I perish, I perish.” Mordechai does not hide his Jewishness even when the price may be his life.

It is easy to give beautiful speeches about love of Israel. The test begins when a person pays for that love with his body, his family, his good name, and years of his life.

So when I search for a Messiah, I do not begin with the number of books he wrote. I ask: Did this man bind his life to Israel’s fate? Did he stand in the dangerous place? Was he ready to be erased with his people, or did he merely explain what others ought to do?

Chapter 4 — Who Challenged the Redeemer?

Every leader hears complaints. Hunger, war, and fear make people complain. But a complaint about living conditions is not the same as a challenge to the very legitimacy of leadership.

When Scripture describes an organized rebellion against Moses, who leads it?

“Princes of the congregation, representatives of the assembly, men of renown.”
— Numbers 16:2

Korah and his company are not shouting from the back row. They are dignitaries. The spies were likewise “heads of the children of Israel,” representatives of the tribes. Zimri son of Salu, who publicly defied Moses, was a prince of a father’s house among the Simeonites.

With David the picture is sharp. Saul and his court pursue him, while Scripture says:

“All Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before them.”
— I Samuel 18:16

The women sang, “Saul has struck his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” The people’s love did not calm Saul; it frightened him more. Michal, the king’s daughter, despised David when he danced among the people. David was not ashamed to set royal ceremony aside and stand among them.

Mordechai is described as “accepted by most of his brothers.” The sages asked why only most, and taught that some members of the Sanhedrin distanced themselves from him after he entered the affairs of government.

The pattern repeats. Ordinary people see the man who goes out and comes in before them. Those of rank also see a man who unsettles the order from which their power comes.

There is no need to claim that the public is always right. That is not the argument. The point is that in stories of redemption, disputes over the redeemer’s very authority often begin among the distinguished.

Chapter 5 — The Nations See First

When you stand inside a forest, it is hard to know which tree is tallest. You are surrounded by trees, tied to them, familiar with every broken branch and every shadow in your way. A person outside the forest sees the line of the treetops.

Sometimes the same is true of Israel’s leader. Inside the nation there are camps, insults, interests, and memories. A foreign king does not vote in our elections. He asks who truly holds power, who understands the world, and whose response must be calculated.

Of Moses it is written:

“The man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of Pharaoh’s servants and in the eyes of the people.”
— Exodus 11:3

Israel had already believed in his mission. Pharaoh’s servants saw something more than the fact that Moses had been sent. They saw the stature of the man and the force overcoming Egypt.

Pharaoh says of Joseph:

“There is none as discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and according to your word all my people shall be governed.”
— Genesis 41:39–40

The brothers who sold him do not know where he is. The emperor already understands that no one in his land compares with him.

Of David it is written:

“David’s fame went out into all the lands, and the Lord put the fear of him upon all the nations.”
— I Chronicles 14:17

And of Mordechai:

“Mordechai was great in the king’s house, and his fame went out through all the provinces, for the man Mordechai grew greater and greater.”
— Esther 9:4

From this I learn that the Messiah is not a marginal figure. He will be among the most famous and influential people of his generation. Kings, presidents, enemies, and friends will know him. At times they will grasp his stature before his brothers are willing to say it aloud.

Chapter 6 — The Man Considered a Sinner

We ask for a Messiah with no stain, rumor, indictment, or suspicion. But a man who acts in the world, fights, and decides collects enemies, and enemies do not leave him a clean page.

Moses kills the Egyptian and hides him in the sand. The next day, when he rebukes a Hebrew striking his fellow, the man throws the accusation at him:

“Who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”
— Exodus 2:14

The act by which Moses defended his brother becomes evidence, in the opponent’s mouth, that he is violent and hungry for rule.

Joseph is accused of attempting to violate Potiphar’s wife. The truth is the reverse: he fled the sin and left his garment in her hand. Yet outwardly there is a garment, a woman of standing, and a powerless Hebrew slave. The righteous man enters prison as if he were the criminal.

Shimei son of Gera calls David “a man of blood and a worthless man.” Nabal describes him as a slave breaking away from his master. A warrior anointed by Samuel can be turned, in another man’s telling, into a dangerous rebel.

Something else must be said. Not every grave act disqualifies a man from kingship. A person can fall. The question is whether pride prevents him from rising.

Ethics of the Fathers distinguishes between one who is quick to anger and quick to be appeased, and one who is slow to anger but slow to be appeased. To me, David and Saul illuminate the difference. David fell and rose, fell and rose. When Nathan the prophet told him, “You are the man,” David answered at once, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Saul was great, modest, and clean, but when he fell, he struggled to confess without explaining and without placing some responsibility on the people.

A king is not a man who never erred. A king is a man who, when truth stands before him, does not place his pride above it.

Chapter 7 — From Smallness to Greatness

Now comes the most practical test: What happened to Israel under his leadership?

Moses received a nation of slaves whose sons were condemned by the decree, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the Nile.” At the end of the process, that nation stands at the sea and sings:

“Then were the chiefs of Edom terrified; trembling seized the mighty men of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan melted away. Fear and dread shall fall upon them.”
— Exodus 15:15–16

From a nation whose children and bodies belonged to Egypt, into a nation feared by all around it.

Joseph received a hungry family in the midst of a worldwide famine. He did not merely give them sacks of grain. Pharaoh placed him over all Egypt, and Joseph told his brothers:

“He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his house, and ruler over all the land of Egypt.”
— Genesis 45:8

Jacob’s family came to ask for food and became the family of the country’s most powerful ruler, settled in the best of Egypt.

David met a nation afraid of one Philistine warrior. “They were dismayed and greatly afraid,” says the verse. By the end of his path, his fame had spread through all lands and God had placed the fear of him upon the nations.

Mordechai received a people under a decree “to destroy, kill, and annihilate.” At the end of the scroll we read:

“Many among the peoples of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.”
— Esther 8:17

Later, the fear of Mordechai falls upon the governors of the provinces.

This is the clearest thread. The redeemer does not leave Israel where he found it. He takes weakness and turns it into power, fear into security, hunger into royalty, and a decree of annihilation into a condition in which the enemies themselves are afraid.

Such a thing is not measured in a single speech. We look across years. What was Israel’s condition when the man entered the arena, and what was it after his years of leadership? What abilities were built? How did its standing among the nations change?

Not how great the man became. How great Israel became through him.

Chapter 8 — Kingship Comes to Him

Israel’s redeemers used force against enemies, but kingship itself was not obtained through civil war.

Joseph did not organize a coup. Pharaoh heard his wisdom, removed his ring, and gave him Egypt. Jephthah did not conquer Gilead from its elders; when war came, they went to him and said, “Come, and be our commander.”

David was anointed in secret, yet refused to kill Saul. Twice he could shorten the road to the throne, and twice he refused to strike the Lord’s anointed. After Saul’s death, the men of Judah anointed him. Only years later did all the elders of Israel come, make a covenant with him, and crown him over the whole nation.

Power is used after kingship is given, not to steal it.

In our generation the people crown through the ballot box. A man can fall, be declared politically dead, and return because the public asks again for his leadership. It is not an anointing with oil, but it is the acceptance of kingship in the instruments of this age.

A king of Israel must be strong. He must fight. But he does not need tanks in the streets to receive his people. The people return him because they believe in him.

Chapter 9 — From the House of David

There is one condition that cannot be erased:

“A shoot shall come forth from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow from his roots.”
— Isaiah 11:1

The King Messiah comes from the House of David.

Two thousand years of exile, wandering, expulsion, and destruction wiped out records and broke genealogical chains. Most Jews alive today cannot present an unbroken row of documents reaching King David. If we demand an archive that survived intact for three thousand years, almost no one can meet the demand.

That leaves a place for family tradition. As a rule, a father does not invent his ancestors for his children.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said publicly that his Lithuanian family descends from the Vilna Gaon. Genealogical studies of the Gaon’s family preserve an old tradition connecting his roots to the House of David. I cannot place a complete documentary chain on the table, and I do not claim that I can. What exists is a family tradition joined to a known tradition of descent.

I accept it. Anyone who requires more may continue investigating, but it is not honest to demand from Netanyahu a document almost no other Jew in the world can produce.

Chapter 10 — What About Jesus?

Now we can return to the Christian reader and ask the question directly: Is Jesus the Messiah?

I have not come to examine Christianity as a whole. I want to examine Jesus by the same signs we examined in the earlier redeemers of Israel. The test is not complicated.

Jesus was persecuted, and a dispute formed around him. After his death, his name became one of the most famous in the world. But this is not the fame we saw among the earlier redeemers: a living leader whose power was recognized by kings and nations in his own generation. At most, we can find in his story part of the patterns of persecution and dispute. The question is what the man did for Israel.

Moses led Israel. Joseph received power and placed his family in the royal house. David reigned over Israel. Mordechai became second to the king and acted for his people. In every case, leadership became real within the life of Israel. Jesus never reigned over Israel.

The earlier redeemers fought Israel’s battles. They stood against Pharaoh, Goliath, armies, and a decree of annihilation. Jesus did not fight Israel’s battles.

The redeemer carries Israel from smallness to greatness. After Moses, the nations of Canaan feared Israel. Joseph turned a starving family into a royal family. David took a people afraid of the Philistines and established a kingdom. Mordechai took a people marked for destruction and brought it to a state in which the peoples of the lands feared the Jews. Jesus did not carry Israel from smallness to greatness.

Kingship is not imposed over the people’s head. After the sin of the golden calf, God says to Moses, “Go down, for your people have corrupted themselves.” The sages read this to mean: “Did I give you greatness for any reason other than Israel?” Elsewhere they said, “A leader may not be appointed over the community unless the community is consulted.” Samuel anointed David, but David’s kingship became real only when the men of Judah, and later the elders of all Israel, crowned him. Israel did not crown Jesus.

One of the proofs Christianity presents is the miracles attributed to Jesus. But the Torah already taught that a sign or wonder does not decide the truth. It warns of a prophet who gives a sign or wonder, even when “the sign or wonder comes to pass,” and nevertheless says, “Do not listen to the words of that prophet.” A miracle may stir a person. It cannot replace the test of deeds and results.

And what was the result for Israel? Jesus did not establish the kingdom of Israel. The Temple was destroyed after his lifetime, the exile deepened, and for generations Jews in Christian lands suffered expulsions, forced conversions, blood libels, and persecution. Christians alive today are not responsible for the deeds of their ancestors, and modern churches have explicitly rejected antisemitism. But history cannot be presented as a story in which belief in Jesus raised Israel from smallness to greatness. The opposite took place.

Here comes the Christian answer: Jesus will return in a Second Coming and complete what he did not complete in his lifetime. But that is not evidence. It postpones the test to the future.

This book rests on another principle: “That which has been is that which shall be.” Moses did not die before the Exodus in order to return later in a second coming. Joseph did not return in a second coming to save his family. David and Mordechai fulfilled their roles within the course of their lives. None of Israel’s earlier redeemers failed to fulfill the role, died, and later returned to complete it. A second coming has no pattern in the history of Israel’s redeemers.

The world began in a repaired state, and humanity damaged it. The future redemption is not the invention of another world. It is the repair of this world and its return to its root. The future may be greater and more astonishing than the past, but its root was already laid in creation. “There is nothing new under the sun.”

If every sign that failed to appear can be postponed to a second coming, no candidate can ever be tested. Any man can fail every test, while his believers say he will complete it in the future. That is not identification. It is a belief with no test.

I am a Jew. I rely on the Hebrew Bible and the sages of Israel, who did not accept Jesus as the Messiah. But even someone who does not accept their authority can open the stories of the redeemers and examine them. In Jesus he will find persecution, dispute, and immense fame built after his death. He will not find kingship over Israel, acceptance by Israel, war on behalf of Israel, or Israel’s passage from smallness to greatness.

That is why I do not see Jesus as the Messiah of Israel.

Chapter 11 — The World Continues in Its Course

Maimonides wrote a sentence that clears away much of the fog:

“Do not imagine that in the days of the Messiah anything of the world’s natural course will cease, or that there will be an innovation in creation. Rather, the world continues according to its course.”
— Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 12:1

The sages said that ten things were created at twilight on the eve of the first Sabbath, including the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, the mouth of Balaam’s donkey, the manna, and Moses’s staff. Maimonides explained that at the beginning of creation, everything that would one day emerge from created things was already placed within their nature—even what appears to us as a miracle. A miracle does not break into creation from outside. Its opening was planted there from the beginning.

I read the Mishnah this way: the extraordinary things that would appear within time were prepared at the final moment of the six days of creation, before creation was sealed. When they are revealed in the future, they are not a new invention dropped into the world from outside. Their root was already placed in the past; now their time has come to appear.

This is “that which has been is that which shall be.” Redemption does not bring into creation an essence that was never there. In time, it reveals what was prepared from the beginning.

If the world continues in its course, the Messiah is not a magician who bypasses history. He must build coalitions, speak with leaders, manage an economy, mobilize an army, decide under uncertainty, and bear the consequences.

Redemption works in the same way. The Torah says, “I carried you on eagles’ wings.” The Jews of Yemen came to Israel in an operation called “On Eagles’ Wings”—inside airplanes. There were pilots, passenger lists, delays, and flight numbers. Prophecy described the meaning of the event; history gave it wings of metal.

The ingathering of exiles did not happen in a single moment. Jews came by ship, train, airplane, and on foot. There were organizations, officials, collections, and transit camps. Anyone waiting for a cloud of glory could have looked at it all and said: This is bureaucracy, not redemption.

But the whole picture is not bureaucracy. Communities scattered across continents and languages return to one land. An ancient language becomes the language of the street. A people dependent on kings builds an army, agriculture, cities, and science.

If the exiles came home by airplane, the king may also be revealed through a political system. A human mechanism does not remove the hand of God. It shows the instruments through which that hand works.

Chapter 12 — The Great Miracles We Learned to Call Ordinary

Purim is a miracle without a split sea. God’s name does not even appear in the scroll. There is a king, a feast, a contest for the queen, a sleepless night, a book of records, a court struggle, and decrees sent through the empire.

Every detail can be explained. Only when we read the whole story do we see the hand behind the screen: Esther reaches the throne before the decree; Mordechai saves the king and is not immediately rewarded; the book of records opens on the right night; Haman enters at the right moment and prepares Mordechai’s honor with his own hands.

At Hanukkah, too, victory came through swords, knowledge of the ground, and the courage of fighters. “You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, and the many into the hands of the few.” Human beings fought, and God delivered victory into their hands.

The prophet says, “As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show him wonders.” How can the wonders be greater than the Exodus if the world continues in its course?

Here I return to the little piece of metal that spoke to my grandmother. Nature is sometimes a wonder we have met often enough. A person from a century ago would call the telephone, airplane, medical imaging, and artificial intelligence works of magic. Scientific explanation teaches how a thing works; it does not make it small.

The Exodus took a people out of one country. The final redemption gathers a nation from the ends of the earth, revives its language, builds a state, and sets it before empires, missiles, and armies. Every part is done by human hands. The joining of all the parts is the wonder.

We ask when redemption will begin while Israel has already returned to its land, established sovereignty, built a defending force, and become a state the entire world must take into account. The Temple is not yet built, the exiles are not fully gathered, and the wars have not ended. Clearly we have completed only part of the road. But the beginning of the road is far behind us.

A person waiting for a shofar before agreeing to see the ingathering of exiles resembles someone waiting for an eagle while the airplane has already landed.

Chapter 13 — How to Examine a Living Man

It is easy to recognize a redeemer after the Bible has written the end of the story. It is harder while the man is alive, his enemies are still shouting, and the outcome remains open.

So far we have found these signs:

  • He is not an unknown man who comes from nowhere.
  • He risks his life in practice for Israel.
  • He is persecuted and considered dangerous or sinful by many.
  • He need not look like the saint imagined by the public.
  • Opposition to his leadership often begins among the people of rank.
  • His name is known in Israel and throughout the world.
  • Leaders of the nations recognize his stature.
  • He lifts Israel from smallness to greatness.
  • The people give him power and return it to him.
  • He is connected to the House of David.
  • He works within nature and the political instruments of his time.

When all these lines meet in one man, they cannot simply be dismissed as a random collection of traits.

Before I name him, however, one matter cannot be hidden: the language of Maimonides.

Maimonides describes a king from the House of David who is “versed in Torah and engaged in the commandments like David his ancestor,” directs Israel toward Torah, and fights the wars of God. Many read these words and immediately picture a rabbi and legal authority.

I read them through the king’s role in the Bible. When Israel asked for a king, they said:

“Our king shall judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles.”
— I Samuel 8:20

The king bears Israel’s purpose, judges the nation, and fights for it. Teaching Torah through the generations belongs to priests, Levites, and sages. Samuel stood beside Saul, and Nathan the prophet stood beside David. The king received the word of God and carried it into the life of the nation.

Maimonides is a towering legal authority, but he is not a prophet who gave us a photograph of the Messiah’s face. Questions of redemption contain disputes, and he himself warned against making the precise sequence of events a principle of faith. I therefore do not accept that the Messiah must be a rabbi whose main occupation is giving Torah lessons.

Netanyahu does not look like a rabbi and does not present himself as an ultra-Orthodox man. I do not hide that fact. I argue that his messianic role lies where the Bible places the role of a king: protecting Israel, fighting its wars, raising its stature, and opening within it the road to repentance. Indeed, from within the people themselves we see in this generation a movement of return, ritual fringes in the streets, and a renewed bond with Jewish identity.

One may dispute this reading. One cannot say it avoids the question.

Chapter 14 — Why Not Every Great Leader?

If the signs are too broad, they can be attached to every successful leader. So they must be tested.

Herzl saw far ahead and changed Jewish history, but he did not lead an existing state, command Israel’s wars, or receive kingship from the people in the land.

Ben-Gurion stood at the founding of the state and the War of Independence. His part in Israel’s rebirth was immense. Yet he was the head of the ruling establishment, not a man pursued for decades by the centers of power. His name did not reach Netanyahu’s global standing, and he represented a camp that sought to form a new Jewish identity largely detached from tradition. The Altalena affair, in which fire was opened against Jews, remains a stain that cannot simply be brushed aside.

Begin was pursued, loved, and possessed genuine self-sacrifice. He certainly carried several of the signs. But his period of leadership was shorter, his global influence more limited, and he was not the man around whom nearly every struggle over Israel’s identity and leadership gathered for decades.

One sign can be found in one person and two in another. The search is not for a man with an admirable quality. It is for a man in whose life all the lines converge: a body given to Israel, a worldwide name, recognition by kings, repeated election, prolonged persecution, a transformation in Israel’s standing, and leadership before its enemies in an age of messianic wars.

Within that list, one name remains that cannot be passed over.

Chapter 15 — Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu has stood in the Israeli and international arena for almost all his adult life. He did not appear yesterday, and he was not drawn from a hidden study hall.

As a young man he returned from the United States to enlist in the IDF. He served as a soldier and officer in Sayeret Matkal, took part in operations including the rescue of hostages from the Sabena aircraft, was wounded in an operation, and returned to serve in the Yom Kippur War. Before he was a politician, he had already placed his body where Jews were in danger.

The death of his brother Yoni at Entebbe bound the Netanyahu family to the struggle for Jewish lives. Benjamin did not remain only a bereaved brother. He founded the Jonathan Institute, worked on international terrorism, and brought that struggle before the world years before terrorist attacks became a central concern of the West.

Then he entered the palace of the superpower. He became Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, learned America from within, and spoke to it in its own language. Like Moses and Joseph, his knowledge of the foreign world did not erase his identity. It became a tool for defending his brothers.

By 2024 he had addressed four joint meetings of the United States Congress—more than any other foreign leader. After the 2015 speech, Congressman Joe Wilson called him “the Churchill of our time.” Even those who hate him know who he is. Presidents, kings, prime ministers, enemies, and friends calculate their moves in relation to him.

That is the difference between Israeli fame and a worldwide name. Inside Israel people argue over whether he is a good leader. Outside Israel they ask how a small country produced a man capable of standing alone before the chamber of a superpower and changing its agenda.

For years Netanyahu warned about Iran while many mocked him. He stood before Congress against the policy of a sitting American president and declared that even if Israel had to stand alone, Israel would stand. One may agree with every decision or oppose it; no one can say that he easily bows before the great king of the age.

Within Israel, too, he received power from the public again and again. He rose, lost, returned, was removed, and came back once more. Five elections were held between 2019 and 2022. After he had already been eulogized politically, the public restored the camp he led to power. This was no seizure of the palace. It was a people continuing to return one man to the center of leadership.

And the more the people returned him, the fiercer the persecution became. Nearly every possible label was attached to him: corrupt, coward, dictator, inciter, hedonist, enemy of democracy. They searched him, his wife, and his children. They examined gifts, cigars, bottles, and headlines. Another man would have broken long ago. He continues to appear in court, run a country, and fight for his name without losing control of his language and without speaking about his opponents as they speak about him.

That is one reason I see in him a humility others miss. Humility is not a bent posture and a soft voice. It is the ability to absorb humiliation for years, surrender personal honor, and continue the work. I listen to the way Netanyahu speaks about his opponents and compare it with the way they speak about him. To me, the difference cries out.

And what happened to Israel during his years of influence?

When Netanyahu first entered international politics, Israel still struggled to make the world hear its case. During his years of leadership, it became a technological and cyber power. His government established the National Cyber Bureau in 2011 and later the National Cyber Authority. Israel became a global center that companies and countries came to study.

He fought for the development of Israel’s natural-gas fields in the face of enormous opposition. Gas turned Israel from a country dependent on imported energy into one that produces and exports gas to its neighbors. That is not a speech. It is political and economic independence built through struggle.

The Abraham Accords broke a decades-old assumption that Arab states would not establish relations with Israel before the Palestinian conflict was resolved. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and other countries opened their doors. They did not do so out of pity. They saw in Israel power, technology, intelligence, and an alliance worth approaching.

Netanyahu did not build all this alone. Soldiers, engineers, entrepreneurs, scientists, teachers, and millions of citizens carried Israel. David did not personally hold a sword on every border, and Joseph did not plant every field in Egypt. The question is who stood at the head, who set the direction, and who fought for the decisions when others wanted to retreat from them.

The Israel Netanyahu first received is not the Israel standing today. It is wealthier, more independent, more technologically capable, more connected to great powers, and more frightening to its enemies. They say so themselves. Foreign leaders, too, grant Netanyahu a weight almost no other Israeli leader has carried.

In his body and life he bears the signs: a fighter who risked himself, a bereaved brother who turned pain into mission, a Jew familiar with the palace of the superpower, a man whose name travels through all the provinces, a leader returned to power by the people, a hunted man whom the centers of authority cannot remove, and a man during whose era Israel rose from one level to another.

If every sign stood alone, we could argue. When they all converge in one person, the argument is no longer about coincidence. It is about our willingness to see.

Chapter 16 — The Wars of the Messiah

We are deep within the process of redemption. The ingathering of exiles has begun, sovereignty has been restored, and Israel again fights its own wars. The wars of the Messiah therefore need not be a single battle with a biblical name. They appear as a chain of struggles over Israel’s existence, strength, and identity.

Netanyahu leads Israel in an era of nuclear threat, terrorism, missiles, and war on several fronts. At the same time, a bitter internal struggle is being fought over the authority of the elected government and the very legitimacy of his leadership.

October 7 does not need to become a separate chapter in order to see this. The disaster requires an investigation of the failure and accountability from everyone who failed. But the identity of the Messiah is not decided through one interpretation of one disaster. It is decided through the course of an entire life.

I call this whole period the wars of the Messiah: Israel’s war to move from weakness to full sovereignty, and the struggle surrounding the man who leads it. This is not a side detail. It is the setting in which the signs are revealed.

Chapter 17 — The King Is Already Standing Before Us

After all the verses and comparisons, the matter must be stated simply.

I see Benjamin Netanyahu as the Messiah of this generation.

I am not saying redemption is complete. The Temple has not been built, the exiles have not been fully gathered, the wars have not ended, and the world remains far from the repair described by the prophets. That is why the argument over whether to call him a “presumed Messiah” or a “certain Messiah” is not the heart of this book. We are still inside the story.

I am saying that the man who bears the messianic pattern in our generation has been standing before us for years. He is not anonymous. He gave his body to Israel. He is persecuted. The nations recognize his stature. The people return him again and again. Israel’s enemies see him as the greatest obstacle before them. During his leadership, Israel moved from a state asking for recognition to a regional power that makes the whole world calculate its steps.

I also believe there is justice in God’s governance. It makes no sense for one man to bear decades of wars, humiliations, threats, and sacrifice, only for an unknown man to arrive at the end and harvest the fruit. When Moses did not complete the entry into the land, Joshua continued the mission he had received from him. When David did not build the Temple, his son Solomon built from the preparations his father had laid. Continuation does not steal the work; it grows from it.

That is how I understand Maimonides’ statement that the King Messiah may die and his son and grandson reign after him. Kingship is a work built across time. I do not know who will continue it or when, and there is no need to invent what has not happened. I know that the crown is not detached from the man who carried the people to where they stand.

For years I felt like the child crying, “The king is naked.” Not because there is no king, but because the clothes everyone describes are not on him. They searched for a robe and found a suit. They searched for a wonder-worker and found a statesman. They searched for an unknown man and found the most famous Jew of his generation.

The king is bare of the costume we placed upon him.

Afterword — Look Again

This book does not ask the reader to stop thinking. It asks him to examine what he thought he already knew.

Open the stories of Moses, Joseph, David, and Mordechai again. Try for a moment to forget that you know the ending. Look at them as their contemporaries saw them: an Egyptian man, a prisoner, a rebel, a leader surrounded by bitter men, a Jew who entered too deeply into palace politics.

Then look at our own generation without the headlines pasted onto it.

Ask who risked his life. Who stood before kings. Whom the people returned. Whom the centers of power tried to remove. Whom Israel’s enemies did not want facing them. And what happened to Israel across his years of leadership.

A person can read all the signs and reach another conclusion. But no one can still say there was no question here worth asking.

My grandmother heard a piece of metal speak and laughed. She reminded me that wonder does not disappear merely because we grew accustomed to it.

Redemption does not disappear because it has a government, a budget, airplanes, soldiers, and a ballot box. Those are its clothes in this generation.

And the king—he wears the clothes of his time.

Sources for Further Study

  • Genesis 41–47 — Joseph’s rise and the rescue of Egypt and Jacob’s family.
  • Exodus 1–15; 32 — Egypt’s decrees, Moses’s self-sacrifice, the Exodus, and the Song at the Sea.
  • Numbers 13; 16; 25 — the spies, Korah, and Zimri son of Salu.
  • I Samuel 8; 16–31; II Samuel 1–7 — the king’s role, David’s anointing, persecution, and enthronement.
  • Judges 11 — Jephthah’s rejection and return to leadership.
  • The Book of Esther — redemption through nature and Mordechai’s rise.
  • Isaiah 11 — kingship from the house of Jesse.
  • Deuteronomy 13:2–5 — a sign or wonder is not sufficient proof that a prophet speaks the truth.
  • Ecclesiastes 1:9 — “That which has been is that which shall be” and “there is nothing new under the sun.”
  • Micah 7:15; Jeremiah 16:14–15 — the wonders of the final redemption and the memory of the Exodus.
  • Ethics of the Fathers 5:6 — the things created at twilight on the eve of the first Sabbath.
  • Berakhot 32a; 55a — a leader’s greatness exists for Israel, and the community is consulted before its leader is appointed.
  • Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars, chapters 11–12 — the signs of the Messiah and the natural course of the world.
  • Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin chapter 10 — succession by the Messiah’s son and grandson.
  • Ethics of the Fathers 5:11 — anger and appeasement.
  • Sichot HaRan 93–94 — Messiah, knowledge, and dispute.

Modern Factual Sources