The Messianic Idea in Judaism by Gershom Scholem

Author:Gershom Scholem [Scholem, Gershom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78908-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

One year has passed and again I am firmly reminded that we frail men do not know what the morrow may bring. My sixty-second birthday has passed and it was a moderately happy one. Two months ago my dear sister27 had to undergo a second dangerous operation. Eight days later my brother Moritz took his leave, perhaps never to return. Such two depressing events were not calculated to cheer me on my sixty-second birthday. The speedily failing strength of my long-ailing sister, her premonition of approaching release, had a most depressing effect upon me. I tried to fight this melancholy and depression—I repeated to myself again and again: Thy work is not yet completed, thou hast still many tasks to finish before thou canst consider thy work as ended.

Indeed, I still deem it necessary sometimes to think of the moment when I will have to leave you all, my beloved ones. And perhaps it may come so quickly, or maybe I will be in a mental and physical condition when it may be impossible for me to express to you my last wishes. Why should I go from out of your midst without saying my last “farewell”; without taking a kind leave, as it is usual if one parts even for a short time?

As on the occasion of every farewell, I shall at my last parting look to another “Meet Again.” I am, my dear children, absolutely sure of it; I have no doubt to overcome. I would maintain with mathematical certainty—if that expression were acceptable: There is a God and man is His image. This image, Man, cannot be condemned to destruction and putrefaction! When you will be reading these lines and perhaps, to my sorrow, some of you with skeptical thoughts, then I will have realized my aspirations, I will know and perceive that the Creator has not endowed man with mind and soul only to let him live and die unhappy, yes unhappier than the lowliest animal! Should it be the only privilege of man over an animal, that he may develop his mind, to embellish the world, eventually to transform it by inventions into a Paradise only to leave it after a short sojourn without any hope of a life after death? Or should it be only by accident that the best and most gentle people, without their fault, drag with sorrow and anxiety through this life during the few years of their existence, and then with the ending of life disappear into nothingness? An inner voice—if we do not suppress it forcefully—tells us: there is a life after this life. How this mental life is constituted we do not know—but the faith in a further life implies the capacity for eternal life. My dear children! believe firmly in this true and blessed faith—without it you will be always unhappy, with it never.

Do not be ashamed of this happy faith of your great ancestors. Say with pride that you feel the germ of this eternal life in you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.