The Instructions

  Probably the most talked-about condition, most likely because it is the most interpretable one, is the Brink of Destruction condition, which is exactly what it sounds like: the entire (human) world’s very existence just being a moment or two away from assured erasure. This prophecy, however, is subject to the same difficulties as the prophecies mentioned under the heading Persons, and it is subject to those difficulties to an even greater extent because who could possibly know if the world is on the brink of destruction or not? At any given moment, some madman genius in a basement with a few plane tickets could complete his fast-acting doomsday virus and go around the world contaminating all the water and who would know? And say someone did know—like the Mossad. Say the Mossad knew all about it, and so, at any given moment, the Mossad could be at the basement in question, destroying the virus or the man: if the Mossad were to know about this and were able to prevent it, would it be right to say the world was ever on the brink of destruction? I don’t think it would be right. I don’t think you can know what the brink of destruction is until the destruction has well begun—and even then… Maybe the madman will have invented the virus because a girl he thought he loved as a boy did not love him—maybe the brink was the moment just before she called him a bancer, or laughed at his engagement proposal, or kissed some other boy in front of him. You can’t know, so the prophecy is useless.

  Apart from all of that, the Kabbalists tell us that Hashem holds the world together by speaking the ten sephirot at a rate of uncountable billions of times per second and, were He to stop, the world would stop existing. So, from where we stand, as humans, the world is always on the brink of destruction, and so the world is never on the brink of destruction.

  And so the Brink of Destruction condition is a useless condition to consider, not because it isn’t truly a condition under which the messiah might come—it is a condition under which the messiah might come—but because it is impossible to determine when the world is on the brink of destruction.

  Adonai

  No few scholars claim that the actual messiah will hear the voice of Adonai and that the voice of Adonai will tell him—in advance of his undeniable victory—that he’ll become the messiah. Rabbi Avel Salt himself once made this claim, and, for a moment, it seemed reasonable.

  But then the scholar Emmanuel Liebman, in what might have been his finest moment in all of eighth-grade Torah Study, opposed the claim with oratory of such high caliber that when he was finished we applauded for minutes. Emmanuel stated that Adonai would most certainly not tell the messiah that he was the messiah—ever; that not only would “having heard Adonai tell you in your ears that you were the messiah” be insufficient reason to conclude that you were the messiah (this insufficiency a qualification that Rabbi Salt had, to his credit, stipulated), but hearing Adonai’s voice in your ears would necessitate that you were not the messiah.

  “First of all,” Emmanuel said to us, “it’s been millenia since He spoke to anyone in their ears. He didn’t speak like that to Chaim Weitzman nor Theodor Herzl, nor Maimonedes, nor Nachmanedes. He didn’t speak in Rashi’s ears either, and He didn’t speak into the Bal Shem Tov’s. No king, but for Saul and David—and even then only mediated by judges and prophets—ever heard Adonai in his ears. When the time of Judges was over, He stopped speaking into ears.

  “And granted: to argue that examining what Adonai has not done can predict, with any kind of certainty, what He will or might do—that would be blinkered, and I would never even dream of attempting to put such sophistry into your ears and call it wisdom. I say, ‘The time of Judges is past,’ and Rabbi Gurion, who breathes deep, hands animating, he wants to say, ‘While no longer in the time of Judges, Emmanuel, we are no longer in the time of Kings, either, and this, the time of the disapora, is certainly on its way out.’ He wants to say, ‘Times change, earnest student, and times are always changing. It is impossible to define clearly the characteristics of our own era, let alone those of eras to come.’ And with Gurion ben-Judah—by whose suddenly relaxed posture I can see is satisfied with the words I have put in his mouth—I would, as always, agree. The argument from eras may be compelling, but it is well shy of convincing. I only note the history as an introduction to the following explanation, which, among other things, may help account for the history. And while you consider the following explanation, I ask you to note that you’re being asked to do nothing other than consider, however more explicitly, that which you already consider every waking moment of your lives.

  “We have the written Torah. We have the one document that contains the universe, and therefore all the truth in the universe; all the truth that is, was, and will be. As well, we have this world; a world that Adonai is constantly acting on. And finally, we have scholars who study both—the Torah and the world. We are scholars who study both, and we are scholars who study the methods by which we study and the methods by which others who were like us have studied.

  “In other words, all the truth is before us, arranged perfectly. And so I submit that it would be inelegant of Adonai to speak into ears with words. And Adonai is elegant. I submit that it would be sloppy, and He is not sloppy. For Adonai to speak into ears with words would furthermore be shmaltzy in the slickest, schlockiest Hollywood tradition, and He is no more a Spielberg than was Moses a homesick alien or Ruth a tragic cutie pie in a little red dress.

  “It is through studying Torah, the world, and the way others have studied them that the messiah will know how to bring about the events which will characterize the messianic era. It is through studying those same things that we will know how to recognize the messiah when he arrives; for though he will be a scholar like the rest of us, he will be better than us; he will teach us how to be like him and we will be ready to learn. In the end, that is why we seek truth, why we study Torah: Our scholarship speeds the coming of the messiah. If we did not believe that, we would not be scholars. In sum: The messiah will not need to hear the voice of Adonai in his ears, and so the messiah will not hear the voice of Adonai in his ears.

  “And now Samuel Diamond, my wise, forward-leaning friend, leans forward, wisely, wondering to himself, ‘How does all of this fit itself into Rabbi Gurion’s teachings about potential messiahs and proper environmental conditions?’”

  “It fits perfect,” said Samuel Diamond, elbows on the table, chair balanced on two legs.

  “Perfect you’re saying?” said Emmanuel, averting his eyes. “You’re saying perfect? Does that mean I should be flattered or anxious? Because I am beginning to feel anxious. Have I mistaken an enumeration of the obvious for a strong argument? What must you guys think of me? ‘Loquacious Liebman’? ‘Mamzer, stop asking questions you and we already know the answer to’? ‘Button up, you windbag shmendrick’?”

  “No,” the scholars protested. “Tell us,” they said. “Finish,” they said. “Tell us how it all fits together.”

  With shaky hands, Emmanuel touched his yarmulke. It was still there, held fast by black bobbypin. “If not the sole,” he said, “then we are, at the very least, the most central environmental condition that needs to get proper. We are the ones who will make actual the potential messiah. And as I have already said in so many words: that is why we are scholars.”

  And that is when the applause started. It was me who started it.

  InConclusions

  It seems to me that even though the messiah can’t know he is the messiah until he has had the undeniable victory of the messiah, it would not be unreasonable to assume that he would, prior to the victory, suspect he was his generation’s potential messiah.

  Therefore: A person who suspects he is his generation’s potential messiah is not necessarily false, or crazy.

  But what would such a person do with this suspicion? What, if anything, should he do with this suspicion? There is no doubt that he should keep the suspicion to himself, no doubt that he should not speak about it to anyone, at least not directly, that’s a no-brainer: Were he to mention the suspicion, those who a
lready shared it—assuming there were any—could overreact and annoint him too early, spoiling his potential. Those who did not share the suspicion could spoil the potential in other ways. They could—as is done with so many of those who claim they are the messiah—lock the person up.

  But what should he do? In the world. How should he act?

  What if, for example, a part of the world is persecuting him? What if he’s already locked up?

  What is the righteous thing for this person to do?

  Is it righteous for him to throw his hands up and say to himself, “Right now I am, at best, only this generation’s potential messiah, and I suffer persecution because the proper environmental conditions that would allow me to become the actual messiah and bring perfect justice to the world have clearly not been met”? = Is it righteous for this potential messiah to be humble about his potential? To allow that messianic actuality is solely in the hands of the world at large?

  Or is it righteous for him to say to himself, “In persecuting me, a potentially potential messiah, my persecutors may be haunting the world’s future, and I will therefore rise up and smite them?” = Because the potential messiah might one day become the actual messiah, might not smiting his enemies be righteous? Might not this smiting, in itself, help to render him the actual messiah?

  Clearly, if the person who suspects he is the potential messiah is being persecuted because he is an Israelite, he must try to rise up and smite his persecutors—not necessarily because they are his enemies, but because they are the enemies of the Israelites, and therefore the enemies of the world, who all Israelites must face down. But if that’s not the case, or if—even more confusingly—some of his persecutors are, themselves, Israelites, then what is righteous becomes much harder to figure out.

  It is what I am trying to figure out.

  It wasn’t easy to stay pissed at Benji, the way his chin would drop. After I finished my detention assignment and Nakamook still hadn’t said anything, I saw I’d really hurt his feelings. I was trying to figure out how to make it up to him when I noticed the top half of his assignment was sticking out from under his nearer arm. I saw the title of it was Villainy, and I started to read the intro:

  The world may be villainous, the world may be virtuous, but to believe the world wholly villainous is no less blinkered than to believe it wholly virtuous, for a virtuous world is one in which the virtuous overcome the villains, and a villainous world one in which the villains overcome the virtuous. Thus: without virtue, there can be no villainy; without villainy, no virtue. So if we value our belief in the tendency of the world to be virtuous, we must be grateful for the villainous aspects of the world which test the instances exemplifying that tendency. Yet that is a macro-level assertion, and such assertions are easy. What of true love? What of mine? Or yours? We can agree that true love is the sweetest of all things, yet love untested cannot be known to be true. And who tests true love if not villains? And so if we value our true love, must we not, in turn, be grateful for the existence of the villains who would thwart it? Must we not be grateful for their attempts to thwart us? And how do we reconcile this gratitude with our insistence that they are villainous? How can anything that is necessary be considered villainous? If, for example———

  But then Nakamook’s arm was suddenly blocking the rest.

  “Why are you making that face at my paper?” he said.

  I said, It’s weird—it doesn’t sound like you.

  “What do you mean?”

  The way the sentences move—and the words you’re using.

  “The diction and the rhetoric?” he said.

  The syntax, too, I said. Doesn’t sound like you.

  “You always write the way you talk?” he said.

  Half the time I don’t even talk the way I talk, I said.

  “Me neither,” said Benji. “Let alone talk the way I think.” He didn’t want to be pissed at me anymore.

  I pulled the Coke out of my bag and set it on the table.

  I said, Want a warm Coke I got from the teachers lounge?

  “Thank you,” he said. He sipped the Coke and set it down. Benji loved Coke.

  I said, You’re leaving rings on the table. What kinda slob are you—the Coke’s not even sweating. It’s room temperature.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  I said, No. I said, You shut up. Look at those rings.

  He said, “There’s no rings.”

  I said, You must be crazy, because look at those rings. I said, Look at the rings, Benji. I said, I think you need a coaster. Look at the rings! Don’t you think you need a coaster? Say you need a coaster.

  “You’re a spaz,” he said.

  I said, Say it. Say you need a coaster.

  “Wow,” he said, “I need a coaster.”

  I said, Luckily, I’ve got a coaster for you.

  Then I dropped the hall-pass-pad on the table, and even though my sucky timing ruined the joke, Nakamook laughed his face off because he was my best friend.

  I said, You can have half of those, but if you sell them—

  He said, “They’re my favorite things to have at school. You can go anywhere with them. No way I’d sell them. Thank you,” he said.

  He liked me again. I said, You’re welcome. I said, Know what else? I said, Before I came in here? June snuck out of detention to meet me in the hallway.

  He said, “Nice. Is she your girlfriend now?”

  I said, She said she never kissed Berman.

  “I told you,” he said. “Is she your girlfriend now?”

  I said, I don’t know. I said, I should’ve asked her.

  “No way,” he said.

  Benji was single, but girls went nuts for him. He’d had six different girlfriends in the first five weeks of school and broke up with all of them because he wasn’t in love. Even though he’d have told you fighting, girls was Nakamook’s favorite subject to talk about. I don’t even think fighting was his second favorite—I think it was manners.

  He said, “Any time I’ve ever asked a girl if she was my girlfriend, she got angry at me, like I should know already, and anytime I’ve ever asked a girl if she’d be my girlfriend, she got freaked out, like I should know that if I had to ask, there was no way.”

  I said, That’s crazy.

  He said, “It’s only sorta crazy, actually. I think I figured it out a little. I think it’s like this: If you’re asking a girl if she’s your girlfriend, it’s probably because you kissed her, and if you kissed her already, then she already thinks she’s your girlfriend, which makes sense, and so by asking her if she’s your girlfriend, it sounds like, ‘Did you kiss me because you’re my girlfriend, or just because you’re easy?’ which means you think it’s possible that she’s easy, which is a mean thing to think about a girl who was nice enough to kiss you. And then if you ask a girl to be your girlfriend, you probably haven’t kissed her, and so it’s more like you’re asking for permission to kiss her, which is not a cool thing to do because why would you ask that?”

  I said, Why wouldn’t you ask that?

  Benji said, “Girls decide who gets to kiss them, right? So if you haven’t kissed a girl, it’s because she hasn’t decided to kiss you. And if she hasn’t decided to kiss you, and you ask her to be your girlfriend, which is the same as asking her to kiss you, then it’s like you’re telling her to go faster, which is like telling her she’s prude—it’s either that or she just doesn’t want to kiss you. And that’s the part that’s the most suck, because after you ask her to be your girlfriend and she gets freaked out and stops talking to you, you can’t even just be glad it’s over and that you got it out in the open so that the healing process can begin; you’ll always have to wonder if you might have had a chance that you ruined by asking, and maybe, instead of feeling relieved about having put everything out on the table, what you should do is run very quickly at a picnic table so you trip on the bench of it and your head smacks the boards and gets splintered.”

  I shouldn’
t say ‘girlfriend’ to June, I said.

  “Right,” he said. “You just have to wait and see if she decides to kiss you.”

  But I shouldn’t try to kiss her, I said.

  Benji said, “Of course you should try—if she decides.”

  I said, And she’ll tell me if she decides?

  He said, “Don’t look worried, Gurion. You’re smart. You’ll be able to tell if she decides to kiss you.”

  I said, How will I tell?

  He said, “Wait and see. There’s signals. You’ll know.”

  And then I thought of something that made no sense if what Benji said before was true.

  I said, Esther Salt was my girlfriend and I knew it and I never kissed her.

  He said, “How’d you find out she was your girlfriend?”

  I said, She told me I was her boyfriend.

  “There you go,” he said. “She decided.”

  I said, But you said the girl decides about the kiss, and the kiss decides the girlfriend part.

  “I said the kiss decides the girlfriend part, but that doesn’t mean the girl can’t decide the girlfriend part, too, without the kiss,” Benji said. “There’s really not much that a girl can’t decide about. They don’t have rules.”

  I said, I don’t understand.

  He said, “I don’t really, either. I’m kinda just making it up.”

  I said, Maybe June decided she was my girlfriend but didn’t tell me.

  Benji said, “It’s possible.”

  She stole my hoodie, I said.

  He said, “Well I guess if she—”

  I said, This is making me explosive. I said, I really want to kiss June.

  He said, “Who wouldn’t?”

  I said, I will break your skull.

  He said, “I didn’t mean I wanted to. I meant who, if they were you, wouldn’t want to? You’re in love with her, you said. You wrote it down. Of course you want to kiss her.”