By Hazan Gavriel ben David

This week, we return to Abraham, our grandfather. The world still does not fully grasp that the people of Israel are a family. The promise to Abraham came only after twenty-five years of wondering whether it would arrive through some other channel than his own children.

We, the Jewish people, stand as witnesses to the world alongside our brother Ishmael. The Torah codes and the prophets tell us that terror and war will not fully end until the knowledge of Hashem fills the earth. Our sages do not always agree that “Messiah” means a single supernatural man.

Many understand it as the moment when humanity reaches a new heart of flesh rather than stone, when we see Hashem in that day, and His name is one, when the wolf, the lamb, the bear, and the cow dwell together and weapons of war are beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 11: 2).

The argument that Judaism does not center on believing in or following a Messiah, the way Christianity and Islam have constructed the idea, has been made for centuries. The reason so few know it is that making the point has often led to Jews being killed.

From the Barcelona Disputation of 1263 onward, speaking the plain reading of the Tanakh brought exile, book burnings, and worse. Today, we are still being killed, yet it is time to rise and tell the truth. Hashem called Israel to be a light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6; 49:6; 60:1–3). That calling does not require a divine savior figure to be accepted for personal salvation. It requires guarding and teaching the Torah.

Torah from Adam to Noah to Abraham

The Torah is the blueprint of creation, the Tree of Life given first as guidance in the Garden, then as the seven Noahide laws to Noah after the Flood, and finally entrusted to Abraham and his descendants to guard and keep for the sake of all humanity.

Midrash and Talmud record that Abraham observed the entire Torah before Sinai (Yoma 28b; Genesis 26:5). The Sages teach that the Torah preceded the world and served as its blueprint. Adam and Noah received foundational instructions; Abraham’s family was chosen to protect and transmit the full path so that the nations might walk in it.

At Sinai, roughly two to three million people heard Hashem speak the Ten Commandments simultaneously (Exodus 19–20). That family heard the word of Hashem directly. They rejected every later imposition the world threw at them and continued to declare, generation after generation, “This is not what our Torah says.”

What the Rabbis Say: Singer, Dorfman, Ramban, and Rambam

In the recent conversation between Rabbi Tovia Singer and Rabbi Yonatan Dorfman (In the Valley of Giants #49), Dorfman opens with the Ramban’s striking words from the 1263 Barcelona Disputation. Facing King James I, the Ramban explained that the Messiah is not of supreme personal importance as Christians assume.

Under exile and oppression, Jews receive greater reward for observing the Torah precisely because of the difficulty. When the Messiah comes, he will be a flesh-and-blood human; people will be freer to keep the mitzvot, yet the personal reward will be smaller because the truth will be obvious. Singer endorses this as brilliant: wanting the Messiah now means prioritizing the revelation of Hashem’s glory—every knee bowing, every tongue swearing only by His name (Isaiah 45)—over one’s own greater personal reward in the current era.

Singer notes that of the hundreds of messianic passages in the Tanakh, fewer than twenty speak directly about the person of the Messiah. Most describe the transformed world: peace, the knowledge of God covering the earth as the waters cover the sea, the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7), the return of Israel, and restored Temple service.

Messiah Teacher and Judge

The Messiah is primarily a Davidic teacher and judge who teaches Israel and the nations, prompting them to respond, thereby producing justice and peace. There is no mention in the Tanakh of him performing miracles. Expectations of constant wonders, Singer and Dorfman agree, have been colored by living amid Christian and Islamic cultures. The plain reading of Isaiah 11 is that the Spirit of the Lord rests upon him—wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and the fear of Hashem.

He fears God; therefore, he is not God. The Spirit equips him for judgment, just as it equipped Bezalel for the Tabernacle. Dorfman presses on the Rambam versus the Raavad and on differences between the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds regarding supernatural discernment (the “smell” test in Sanhedrin 93b). Singer’s consistent reply is that the Tanakh’s own language takes priority: a human Davidic figure whose era is marked by the world’s change, not by personal “belief” requirements or miracle proofs.

Mishneh Torah Laws of Kings 11

The Rambam in Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings and Wars 11, is clear. The Messianic king will arise, renew the Davidic dynasty, build the Temple, gather the dispersed of Israel, and restore the observance of all the statutes (sacrifices, Sabbatical and Jubilee years). Anyone who does not believe in him or await his coming denies the Torah and the prophets.

Yet if a candidate fails or is killed, he is not the one promised. The Rambam then addresses Jesus of Nazareth: he imagined he was the Messiah and was executed by the court; Daniel had already prophesied of him (“the vulgar among your people shall exalt themselves… but they shall stumble,” Daniel 11:14). “Can there be a greater stumbling block than this? All the prophets spoke of the Messiah as the redeemer of Israel… who would gather their dispersed and strengthen their observance of the mitzvot.

In contrast, [Christianity] caused the Jews to be slain by the sword, their remnants to be scattered and humbled, the Torah to be altered, and the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord.” Nonetheless, the deeds of Jesus and of “that Ishmaelite who arose after him” serve only to prepare the way for the true King Messiah and to motivate the nations toward serving God together (Zephaniah 3:9).

The Torah never commands us to “believe in” or “follow” a Messiah as a condition of salvation. The sign is the changed world itself.

Isaiah’s Servant and the Remnant

Throughout Isaiah, the Servant is Israel, or the righteous remnant within Israel. Isaiah 41:8 addresses “you, Israel, My servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen.” The Servant Songs (chapters 42, 49, 50, 52–53) continue this language. Isaiah 53 describes the suffering of that remnant at the hands of the nations, not a single figure who dies to atone for the sins of the world by substitutionary sacrifice.

Zephaniah 3:12–13 portrays the remnant that will remain: “a humble and lowly people… the remnant of Israel shall do no injustice, nor speak lies, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth.” No deceit in their mouths—this is the character of the faithful remnant that has preserved the Torah through centuries of pressure.

Jewish tradition has long read the Servant as Israel or its righteous core; the messianic individual reading, while present in some earlier sources, was never the sole or binding view and was often advanced in response to Christian claims.

The Three Questions and the Blueprint

Rabbi David Fohrman asks three questions that open the Garden of Eden:

Why two trees—a Tree of Life and a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

What is the function of each?

And why does Chava describe the forbidden tree with the phrase the Torah uses for the Tree of Life (“the tree that is in the midst of the garden”)?

These questions, developed in his series A Book Like No Other and earlier lectures, reveal the Garden as a school for becoming human. Knowledge seized as possession is not the same as good received from the Giver. The Torah itself becomes the Tree of Life after the exile from Eden (Proverbs 3:18).

My book Adam: The Blueprint of Creation and the Tree of Life presses these questions further: Hashem created humanity in His image, declared creation “very good,” and gave the Tree of Life as the blueprint. He then chose one family to guard it for every family on earth.

Christianity, in my reading, never fully exited the Garden; it substituted a different tree and a different mediator. Every pastor, rabbi, and Bible teacher must confront Fohrman’s questions and the plain sequence from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Sinai. The 613 commandments do not include “believe in the Messiah.” They include guarding the Torah, being a light, and teaching the nations.

Conclusion

We are not told in the Tanakh to believe in a Messiah, to follow a Messiah, or that such a figure’s personal acceptance is the key to redemption. We are told that Israel is a family chosen to guard the blueprint, that the prophets describe a future age of peace and knowledge of Hashem, and that the remnant keeps faith without deceit.

The historical cost of stating this has been high. It is still high. Yet the time has come to speak. The same Hashem who spoke at Sinai to millions still calls Israel to be a light to the nations. The world will know when the knowledge of Hashem covers the earth as the waters cover the sea, when His name is one, and when the weapons are beaten into plowshares. Until then, we guard what was given to Adam, to Noah, and to Abraham, and we refuse every later imposition that claims the Torah says something it does not.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

• How the Temple Actually Worked
• Judiasm Has Nothing to Hide. A Point-by-Point Response to The BLK SHP Bible Talk Episode
• The Tree of Life: Why Christianity Should Come Home: The Real Sin of Sodom and the Path Back to the Tree of Life
• The Jewish Prophets Words
• The Tree Of Life: Things Are Not the Way They Should Be