Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was the youngest person to ever land a job working for the US government who was a nuclear physicist. From what I remember, he got the job at the age of 17. He became a BT and died very early at the age of 48.
During his lifetime, he translated the Torah into English (The Living Torah – by the way, Sister Che, Chaya Adler Poretsky, at the Carlebach Shul, maintains that it isn’t a good translation) and also wrote about 50 books on Judaism. He translated the Sefer Yetzirah (“Book of Formation), the Bahir (“Brilliance”) and was the author of a booklet about “The True Messiah”. It’s the latter that I want to focus on.
I haven’t read the book about the messiah for a while but I remember certain key points. One thing Kaplan maintained was that this messiah would be a person who would diagnose and treat illnesses, give economic advice and also political advice and as people learned of his great wisdom, they would flock to him from all over the world to listen to him.
Furthermore, one of the things that the messiah would do is kiruv rechokim or outreach to those Jews who left the Orthodoxy. Schneerson fits in as I said elsewhere in a recent posting. And by extension this redeemer would correct the problems all foreign religions have caused especially Christianity and Islam as per Jesus creating a problem that most Jews would think is Avodah Zara (“Idol Worship”) at least for a Jew to believe and as per Mohammed causing a lot of falsity to come into being too.
The Orthodoxy wants to outdo Jesus in the worst way because they claim that the non-Jewish nations of the world have the teachings of the Torah but in a distorted format.
Also, Jews were tortured and mistreated in Jesus’ name and that is also problematic.
They want to change the whole world picture and that’s what Rabbi Moshe Yess has on his site at [www.rabbiyess.com] - see his Chabad Meshichist point of view.
It seems to me that this type of reasoning is to be right along side of that infamous, forged document “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” It portrays a picture about how a super genius from the Orthodox Jewish community is going to become the leader of all mankind because of his “greatness” and that is a problem to me. Also in that document is the idea that the nations of the world will fail economically and then the Jewish community will step in (as did Joseph in Egypt) and save the day and the Orthodox Jews as a group are going to be running everything. I don’t want that to happen.
At this point in time, the vast majority of the Jewish people aren’t Orthodox, so it’s politically correct to examine the Orthodoxy as per some of its long- term political goals.
And due to the fact that Christianity is experiencing an attrition rate, the Orthodoxy may be considering the possibility that the Jews should do outreach again and even Jewish Path on the web has a Noahide program. Shlomo Carlebach said on a video that after the Holocaust, the world was waiting to hear from the Jews again but “There was no one to talk to” whatever that means.
Chabad must have figured that this super genius was in the form of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. And the Chasidim were going to be the body of that Rebbe (their Chasidus draws heavily from Christian sources based on materials I have read.). He was the greatest rabbi, the greatest doctor, the greatest mathematician; et al. Can see my point here?
And it’s critical to note that Rabbi Schneerson tried to put into motion the “Global Noahide Program.” He is the only major rabbi (who has infrastructures for receiving Righteous Gentiles) that I know of who tried to put something like this in orbit. Please see the forum archives if you don’t know what I am talking about here.
Years ago at the 8th St. Shul, we had a Lubavitcher teach some classes. I told him about the “Not the Jewish Press” the Purim spoof of the Jewish Press. There was an ad in that paper asking non-Jews to get involved with the Sheva Mitzvahs B’nei Noach Campaign, (7 commandments applicable to the sons of Noah) specifically the commandment to not eat from the limb of a live animal. The rabbi told me, “We certainly put ourselves in the middle of that one!”
With all the events transpiring in Israel and with all the problems I have had as per my Jewish background and also taking into account all the things people I led at the 8th St. Shul told me, I hope we can do better for the future than we have in the past. One of the guys at the 8th St. told me that being Jewish is more of a liability than an asset. I have had similar experiences.
Years ago, when I was in the 5th grade, I was targeted by an anti-Semite. He attacked me, as I was open to talking about my tradition and religious orientation. I was not the only Jew in the class and the other Jews laughed at me when this Nazi attacked me. He was 10 years old or so but he was a full-blown Hitler already. I found him on Classmates.com and sent some emails to him, which he read. Really, it’s all too much.