Messiah of the Month

This month's winner is...Rabbi Yosef Dayan of Israel...well, maybe...the 'predictor', Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, might have to change his mind down the line. So I guess this will just have to be awarded on a temporary status until Rabbi Dayan makes a final decision or until next month's Messiah is revealed to the world; whichever comes first. Article from Bartholomew's Notes on Religion...

Messiah Countdown in Israel

Latest news from the Israeli religious right, via Arutz Sheva:

On Thursday night, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri said, "Jews must come to the land of Israel to receive our righteous Mashiach (Messiah), who has begun his influence and will reveal himself in the future."

…During the afternoon Mincha prayer on Yom Kippur, the Kabbalist scholar surprised his students and fellow worshippers with secrets relating to the coming of the Mashiach…Only after some 45 minutes, the Rabbi raised his head and looked around the room at the students and worshippers who were gathered at his Nachalat Yitzhak Yeshiva, in the Bucharim neighborhood of Jerusalem. With a broad smile on his face familiar to his students when he has a revelation, he declared, "With the help of G-d, the soul of the Mashiach [i.e. “Messiah”] has attached itself to a person in Israel".
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The Arutz Sheva report also gives Kaduri’s timetable for the Messiah’s appearance, based on his interpretations of the writings of a mystic known as the Vilna Gaon:

On September 24, 2001, Channel One Israel TV broadcast an item on what Torah and other mystics were saying in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. Speaking from the room adjacent to where Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri receives visitors, Arutz Sheva Hebrew radio showhost Yehoshua Meiri, a close confident of the Kabbalist, explained to the cameras Rabbi Kaduri's understanding of the events based on the calculations of the Vilna Gaon: "On Hashanah Rabba, the actual war of Gog and Magog will commence and will last for some seven years," said Meiri. [ Click here to view the Channel One clip in Hebrew and Rabbi Kaduri's prediction communicated by Meiri at the 1:40 minute mark.

Precise to the minute, 13 days later on October 7th as the sun was setting and the Jewish holiday of Hoshana Rabba was ushered in, US and British forces began an aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban forces and Al-Qaida.

So, apparently, while the person who will be the Messiah is around at this moment, he will not actually become the Messiah until two more years have passed. But who will the “Messiah” be? Most likely, Kaduri is backing Rabbi Yosef Dayan, who claims to be the legitimate King of Israel, and who recently uttered a death curse against Sharon. But if the Messiah must be Sharon's successor, perhaps Kaduri (pictured below) has a more likely candidate in mind...?

"Hey, if you end up becoming the Messiah,
let's let political bygones be bygones, alright?"

On a serious note, we all need to pay more attention to these events as this could represent some truly scary days ahead for the rest of the sane world. As I've always griped and moaned, when government officials and news Medias give public credence to this alarmist end-of-the-world nonsense, it always pushes the envelope of possibility that someone in power might dictate policy in a fashion to facilitate this catastrophic end-result. Maybe I just can't wash Martin Sheen's voice as the American President in the movie 'The Dead Zone' out of my head…"Mr. Vice President, Mr. Secretary, the missiles are flying. Hallelujah. Hallelujah!"

With the Middle East an extremely over-primed powder-keg just waiting for the right spark, movements such as this sure don't help the situation much for any nation in the region. Everyone worries about Muslim nations getting nuclear weapons in the near future (which is, admittedly, quite troubling)...but I tend worry a bit more about how many 100's of nuclear bombs Israel already has stockpiled. Fanaticism by any other name is still as dangerous... Jage