My Moshiach

I take it for granted our long awaited savior will be an ordinary human being, who will live and die like the rest of us. For this reason, I can't quite wrap my head around the idea. Human beings are greedy and selfish, capricious and vain. And, even if the long-awaited savior is the rare human being who is none of those things what about his son? Or his grandson? Once absolute power has been taken or given, how can we be absolutely positive it will always be properly used?

Happily, in the comments of a previous post, some Jewish monarchists have assured me that our King Messiah won't have quite so much power: rather, he'll rule according to the Torah, as determined by the Sanhedrin. In other words, they believe the form of government during the messianic era will be a "constitutional monarchy."

Such a thing works, of course, and it can take many forms. In modern day Great Britain, for example, the monarch is largely ceremonial, though as originally conceived, Britain's constitutional monarch was at least as powerful as a modern American president. In fact, there's some reason to think that at least a few of the framers of the US Constitution thought the president was like an elected constitutional monarch. [Ha! So I wasn't too far off yesterday when I said I wanted a president Moshiach.]

The success of this model, though, will depend on the character of Sanhedrin. How will they be chosen? How powerful will they be? Will they allow themselves to act as a check on the King? Will they be more like the Supreme Court or more like Congress?

Suggestions and thoughts in my next post.