Contact:
Harris Lenowitz, 801 581-6181 or [email protected]
Kirsten Wille, 801 581-7975 or [email protected] or
TRAGICOMIC LIVES OF JEWISH MESSIAHS CHRONICLED IN BOOK BY U. RESEARCHER
Seeking freedom from religious oppression, they have warred against empires, wandered in exile across ancient lands, outlasted famine, disease, imprisonment and torture. On their quest to rescue and redeem the Jewish people from the domination of Christian and Islamic rule, it is said that some have effected miracles or returned from the grave.
And though all die and, arguably, fail to deliver salvation, these kings, prophets and priests have resurfaced time and again through two millennia wherever Judaism has endured, in a new guise but with the same promises and same grievous outcome.
They are the Jewish messiahs, the subject of more than 12 years of research by a University of Utah professor of Hebrew, Harris Lenowitz, and the topic of his new book, "The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights."
The word "messiah," meaning "anointed one," comes from the Hebrew Bible where it refers to holy prophets and priests as well as kings. In later Judaism it is associated with a semidivine figure whose future reign will usher in everlasting justice, security and peace.
All manner of messiahs have appeared at different times in Jewish history and for unique purposes, but in comparing them, Lenowitz says he was awakened to many similarities. "I came to see messianic movements as a variety of drama, a constantly repeated ritual, a tragedy as I guess Jewish political life was," he says.
Discarding the term "false messiah" in his book, Lenowitz looks in detail at the tales of all the messiahs from Jesus of Nazareth to Menachem Schneerson of Crown Heights, N.Y., translating them from the original accounts, autobiographies, dreams and letters.
From the first century before Common Era (A.D.) to the present, the book highlights figures such as Shabtai Zvi, a "handsome" 17th-century messiah, second only to Jesus in fame and influence; a messiah of the Spanish Inquisition, Mexican-born Ines Pereira, one of several female messiahs; and the most powerful figure to emerge since the end of World War II, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a man who survived Soviet and Nazi persecution to lead a hasidic movement in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Many of the messiahs' stories are first-time translations. They range from the tragic to the comic and bizarre, but the drama is always the same, says Lenowitz.
Messianic movements occur at times of desperation and when the Jewish community is under intolerable stress, he says. "When a segment of Jewish society feels a rising existential threat, messiahs...emerge to lead those who can see only an unacceptable present and an impossible future," he writes.
And though they always fail to achieve redemption, and not surprisingly, fail to guide their followers through the apocalypse to eternal life, the continued appearance of such events suggests that they do achieve something, Lenowitz says.
The messianic ritual is sufficient unto itself, he says. A familiar drama with the same tragic ending, the ritual brings meaning and hope back into the lives of the participants. "Rituals reassure their participants' place in the world," he says.
A collection of the depth and breadth of Lenowitz's book hasn't been compiled in the past because messianic movements arouse suspicion and strong emotions in religious scholars who tend to avoid the topic altogether, he says. The few scholars who have tackled the subject confine their research to "defending the messiahs as deliverers... or condemning them as charlatans," he writes in the book's introduction.
Lenowitz, who describes himself as someone having "a lot of sympathy for the contrary view of things," was more interested in why the messianic ritual keeps recurring.
The first full professor of Hebrew and Jewish studies at the U., Lenowitz has been working on the topic of messianic movements since he first learned Polish in order to read the original sayings of the 18th-century messiah, Jacob Frank. He has another book forthcoming, which will provide a full translation of Frank's sayings with commentary, titled, "The Collection of the Words of the Lord."
A prize-winning translator and one of a small number of scholars on the list of academic experts who advise the FBI in the field of new religious movements, Lenowitz is also committed to enhancing the local community's understanding of religious experience in all its variety.
There is not likely to be another messiah in the near future, he says. "Maybe in another thousand years, if the comet doesn't get us first, the situation for the re-enactment of this drama will occur," he says.
But either way, a better understanding of the ritual can shed light on cultural, political and religious movements in Middle Eastern countries as well as our own back yard, he says.
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Editors: Review copies of the book are available by making a request in writing and faxing it to 212 726-6442 or by writing Oxford University Press, Academic Titles, 198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016
Source: Harris Lenowitz, 801 581-6181
Writer: Kirsten Wille, 801 581-7975
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