If you’ve read Michael Chabon’s amazing new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, you’ll already have discovered a whole alternate universe of Jewish life in Alaska, complete with a Messiah who escapes from his arranged marriage by slipping out of the family home in drag. Some might be outraged by this characterization, but the Talmud has a story about the Messiah in which he is a scabrous leper who begs outside the gates of Rome. Here’s the story:
Rabbi Yehoshua asked Elijah another question about the future time: “When will the Messiah come?
Elijah answered, “Go and ask him, himself.”
Rabbi Yehoshua was amazed: “You mean I could find him, talk to him—now? Where is he?”
Elijah said, “You can find him at the gates of Rome.”
“How will I recognize him at the gates of Rome?” asked Rabbi Yehoshua.
Elijah told him, “There he sits among the lepers whom you will find unwinding all of their bandages at the same time and then covering their sores with clean bandages. The Messiah is the only one who unwinds and rewinds his bandages one at a time, thinking, ‘I want to be ready at a moment’s notice if I am called’.”
Rabbi Yehoshua traveled from the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai all the way to Rome—a journey that seemed to take him only a few steps. He was not frightened by the strong gates of the enemy nor the pitiful condition of the lepers. Keeping in mind Elijah’s advice of how to identify the Messiah in the most unlikely of places among the most wretched of people, he quickly spotted the one poor sufferer who was unwrapping and rewrapping only one sore at a time.
Rabbi Yehoshua approached him and said, “Peace be upon you, my master and teacher.”
The leper looked knowingly at him and replied, “Peace be upon you, son of Levi.”
Rabbi Yehoshua asked him, “When will the master come?”
“Today,” said the leper.
Rabbi Yehoshua returned to Elijah in the blink of an eye.
Elijah said to him, “What did the Messiah say to you?”
…
Rabbi Yehoshua said, “…he lied to me, saying, ‘Today I will come.’ But he has not come.”
Elijah said, “No, he did not say that he would come ‘today’. Rather, he was quoting a Psalm verse to you: Today—if only you will listen to His voice (Psalm 95:7). (from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a)
At the time this was written there was no human more feared or despised than the leper. To see the Messiah in this way was a radical act — as indeed was the entire recreation of Judaism by the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple. Which brings me to the holy day that begins tonight after sundown: The 9th of Av.
One of the myths of our people (here I mean the Jewish people as opposed to the Queer People or the Buddhist Peoples, all of whom I number myself among) is that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. This is also the day on which the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, and the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. A day on which there was much carnage, cruelty, and torture. A day of mourning in our calendar. Yet the rabbis also say it’s the day the Messiah will be born. Why is that?
I have to admit, I don’t want to see the Temple rebuilt speedily or at all. I am glad animal sacrifice is gone. I am glad there is no longer a hereditary priesthood. The destruction of the Second Temple led to the creation of a renewed and new Judaism. A more individual connection to the Divine rather than one mediated by a politically connected priesthood.
There are those who even today see the destruction of the temples as an example of ignorance spreading in the world. Rabbi Shraga Simmons recently wrote:
With the loss of the Temple, God has become more concealed -- resulting in a world filled not with clarity but with spiritual confusion. It is no coincidence that immediately following the destruction of the First Temple (circa 421 BCE), Greek and Roman philosophy (as well as Buddhism and Tao) rose to their peak. Similarly, Christianity began concurrently with the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE).
Of course this comes from someone who believes the reason the first temple was destroyed was the sexual immorality of the people. But this attitude — a prejudice that apes the recent position of the Nazi Pope that other Christian faiths are invalid — is depressing. If anything, I live with the hope that when faced with destruction of the foundation of our beliefs we see what was corrupt in that belief, and say goodbye to it as we rebuild again. 
This is the reason that the card that follows The Tower in the Tarot deck is The Star. In The Tower we
see the destruction of a man made structure, and people falling from it. A potent image for New Yorkers, not in the least theoretical or mythical. Many people have forgotten what it was like in New York in the days after the destruction of the Trade Center. It was a city of people who walked around with open hearts filled with compassion — we spoke softly, not in fear, but out of concern for each other, knowing we had all gone through something truly traumatic, and out of concern that the stranger we spoke to on the street had lost someone. We were all connected to the truth of loss. We all had a crash course in the Buddhist teaching of annicca — impermanence. And not only did the Towers fall, but our ego defenses fell as well. 
With The Star, we find a naked human, defenseless, drawing the water of hope under the guiding light from above.
Of course, this openness did not last. Certainly in the rush and drumbeat for revenge led by our pseudo-leaders in Washington and with the constant retraumatization by the constant broadcast of the images we were numbed and dumbed into a war that has taken us to the home of the ancient conquerors of the first Temple: Babylon. Meanwhile, there are those who make the remnant of the Temple, the Western Wall, an idol.
And like Rabbi Simmons, the Taliban see Buddhism as spiritual confusion. So they bombed ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan to the horror of those who wish to save the history of humanity. But these statues weren’t idols to the Buddhists. Because they were just stone. And their destruction only furthers the teaching of impermanence. It might be sad to lose art that is part
of our spiritual heritage on the planet, and it might be sad to lose art that inspires spiritual reflection. But the loss of the art is in fact a teaching. What do we do in the face of impermanence? How can we treat each other with compassion? How can we see each other in our vulnerability and beauty as humans instead of becoming rigid and astonished (in the old sense of to become like stone) in our beliefs?
Meanwhile we (and here I mean the collective we of all humanity) are hard at work destroying the original temple: the planet. The cruelty and torture continue across the planet in wars in fact if not in name. And we poison the seas, the land, the air, and our fellow creatures.
In this moment of what seems to be almost certain planetary destruction headed towards us, the Messiah sits at the gates, appearing as a beggar, a leper, a queer man with a heroin addiction. Yet she is ready to come, today, if only we will hear — and heed — the voice.
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