The Wolf Shall Lie With The Lamb: The Messiah In Hasidic Thought

A belief in and hope for the coming of the Messiah has always been a part of Judaism. In fact, Maimonides, surely one of the greatest minds of Jewish history, includes the belief in the arrival of the Messiah and the messianic era as one of the Thirteen Articles of Jewish Faith. As Maimonides writes, these thirteen principles are 'the fundamental truths of our religion and its very foundations.' In The Wolf Shall Lie with the Lamb: The Messiah in Hasidic Thought, Rabbi Shmuel Boteach offers the first book-length exposition in English of this important pillar of Jewish belief. In addition to Rabbi Boteach's thorough discourse on the Jewish belief in the Messiah, the twelfth of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith, this volume includes a clear analysis of the thirteenth and final principle, that of the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead. Rabbi Shmuel Boteach is the rabbi and director of the Chabad (Lubavitch) House of Oxford University. His book is largely based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. The Wolf Shall Lie with the Lamb appears at a time when attention to messianic speculation among the Lubavitcher Rebbe's followers in particular appears to be on the increase. However, the belief in the coming of the Messiah is not a new phenomenon. Nor is daily preoccupation with the hope in the arrival of the Messiah something introduced by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. On the contrary, traditional Jews express messianic yearning each and every day in their prayers. If anything, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, his hasidim, and others who have recently stepped up their teaching and learning about this profound concept in Jewish thought are merely bringing to the fore that which has traditionally been on the minds and in the hearts of the Jewish people for centuries. The Wolf Shall Lie with the Lamb clarifies a grossly misunderstood Jewish belief in terms that can be grasped by both layperson and scholar.