Failed Messiah?

The Baltimore Jewish Times has this revealing interview with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, founder of CLAL:

Rabbi Greenberg also contends that Jesus was not so much a false messiah, as mainstream Judaism has steadfastly declared for some 2,000 years, but a "failed" messiah - a category into which Rabbi Greenberg also places the patriarchs Abraham and Moses, the prophet Jeremiah, and the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, among others . . .

"Jews deemed Jesus to be a false messiah out of defensiveness," Rabbi Greenberg explains. "A failed messiah is someone who teaches correct values . . . "Moses," Rabbi Greenberg continues, "was a failure because he sought to transform people who left Egypt as slaves into truly free people, but he couldn't do that. They remained slaves mentally and had to die in the desert before the Nation of Israel could enter the Promised Land. Even [Moses] failed to get there. . . . When Christians speak of the Second Coming, they are tacitly admitting that a complete transformation of the world did not occur during Jesus' lifetime, and in that sense, he also failed."

To be called a "failed messiah," Rabbi Greenberg emphasizes, is anything but demeaning. Rather, it is the highest of compliments, given the importance of the messianic vision in Jewish thought.

"To do so much good to even be thought of by some as a messiah speaks of the rarest of individuals," he says.

. . . As for Rabbi Greenberg's conclusions about Jesus, Rev. Leighton adds, ". . . My own view is that the Christian tradition has always acknowledged that what Jesus did was inaugurate a process of redemption and that we still await the consummation of that redemption. Therefore the claim that Jesus failed is, I think, a Jewish rendering of the Christian understanding . . ."

Of course, this is exactly what Chabad claims about the Rebbe.

So try reading the quote like this: "Chabad believes that what the Rebbe did was inaugurate a process of redemption and that we still await the consummation of that redemption. Therefore the claim that the Rebbe failed is an anti-Chabad rendering of what Chabad believes."

See what I mean?

Read the entire interview here.