Rabbi Yuval Noah Harari

The sixth century BCE was undoubtedly the most important century in human history. Within a few decades, we see a global intellectual boom in all major cultures: China (Confucius, Lao Tzu), India (Buddha, Jainism), Persia (Zoroaster), Judah (beginning of the Bible) and Greece (Thales and the beginning of Greek philosophy)

The Laughing Buddha, or: The Buddha of the Future (Source)

I dreamed I was wandering in the secular part of the city to see what's new. And the secular bookstores fill their display windows with the new book by the new historian who decided to exit history. And pashkevils [Translator's note: wall posters common in ultra-Orthodox communities] cry out from the wall:

A genius has come to town! A new book induction
In the presence of His Honor the Bestseller, uprooter of concepts and grinder of
them  together,  guide  of  ways  and  breaker  of  perplexities  and  digger  of
pits that do not lose shame, author of the Bible
of Bible authors, master of the Abridged Humanity
the   Edited,    The    Great    Guru    The   Homo
Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens, the Dr. who received
professorship for publishing a popular science book
raiser of academia from dust, crown of our brain
The Great Yogi HNNH [Translator's note: Hebrew acronym for "His Honor Noah Harari"] may his musings protect us

And the secular Hasidim [Translator's note: followers] jump and sing in a circle "Harari Krishna, Krishna Harari", and hug me: Come join us and remove your sidelocks, Judaism has no historical importance! And I'm startled: Really? Not even the sidelocks? And they reassure me: Only the future has historical importance! Say N-Na-Nach Harari a thousand times a day and you'll be saved from judgment day. And I raise an eyebrow: But what kind of funny secularists are you - you can't do without? If you had a long and worthy historical Jewish nose, you'd identify it from miles away. Doesn't this stink a little to you? And they ask: What? And I say: The sweat, the messianic fervor, the missionary zeal, the disappearances for increasingly long periods in India, the righteous one who meditates for hours every day, the classic religious process of turning an author into an Admor [Translator's note: Hasidic leader], the style of the last of the flattering preachers looking down on the monkeys.

And they get angry: But it's written in the book that man is a monkey. So what do you want from us? So you're an ultra-Orthodox monkey and we're secular monkeys. That doesn't make you a better monkey. And I get irritated: Just because it's a Buddhist guru and not someone bringing you back to religion, you didn't notice that they're selling you a religious concept in scientific guise? And what's funny is how much it's a combination of Jewish ideology with Hindu theology, and therefore from Israel shall come forth Torah. Do you really want to know what the next century will look like? You'll go up to the grave of the secular Admor, and buy "scientific" New Age insights at an exorbitant price and used ideas as new at a bargain price. So here's one thought for free, from the head of a monkey with a hat who didn't study in academia, sidelocks not included. And I hand them a small pamphlet and flee back to the black city:


One Thought for the Year 5779 - A Brief History of the Future

It might sound strange to the modern ear, but the future is a Jewish invention. And it's the most important Jewish invention (much more than monotheism), which actually created Judaism out of the religion of Moses. Contrary to some present-biased reviews, the sixth century BCE was undoubtedly the most important century in human history. Within a few decades in the sixth century, without any satisfactory explanation, we see a global intellectual boom in all major cultures: China (Confucius, Lao Tzu), India (Buddha, Jainism), Persia (Zoroaster), Judah (beginning of the Bible) and Greece (Thales and the beginning of Greek philosophy). This is a phenomenon unexplained by current conceptions of cultural influence, since it's clear that texts weren't transferred between these cultures at that speed, but rather there was a transfer of the most viral idea in the world until then - a new conception that passes even in conversation.

And the source of this idea is at the beginning of the seventh century in the most important person who ever lived, because he is the initiator of the first global intellectual boom, which was therefore the most important in the history of culture and determined all the central ideologies in Eurasia to this day, and he is a Jewish man of letters named Isaiah. The Abrahamic monotheistic revolution and the Torah revolution of Moses had zero influence on human culture, except in a remote kingdom, for many hundreds of years. The viral idea that gave birth to two religious reforms in Judah within decades, and from there spread further partly because of the exiles to the margins of empires of the elites of Judah and Israel, is the comprehensive and abstract worldview born in Isaiah's prophecies, which has a completely new dimension - the messianic dimension.

From a literary perspective, it was first expressed in the genre that Isaiah developed to maturity, whose essence is the stretching of time created by his new conception of the future - the long prophecy. Out of dealing with the great historical catastrophe of the destruction of Israel and Judah by Assyria, Isaiah developed the world of the future and utopia and eschatology in the Jewish conception of time, from which it reached the human conception of time. The messianic idea is a powerful idea that in every historical appearance caused an explosion, and monotheism was spread in the world (and became a symbol of Judaism) only thanks to the messianic idea that was its carrier, through Christianity, which not coincidentally is particularly attached to the book of Isaiah.

The messianic idea is the donkey of Judaism, on which Jewish conceptions rode again and again into global culture, and it erupts in times of crisis towards destruction. Towards the destruction of the Second Temple, Christianity was created, and towards the destruction of Spanish Jewry, the Kabbalistic messianic idea of returning to the ancient and revealing secrets and developing hidden potentials influenced the Renaissance and the discovery of America and capitalism - all future conceptions. Israel became a startup nation and a dream only out of the messianic logic of a leap of faith regarding the future. The difference between Marxism and its parallels in German philosophy is the authentic messianic dimension, and so is Nazism compared to other totalitarian movements, hence their hostility to religion and especially to Judaism, as a competitor, and today technological messianism.

The reason why both Google and Facebook were founded by Jews is this gamble towards the future and the messianic dimension in their operation. The movements of the sixth century are all such movements: ideological startups founded by a specific person, who came with a global worldview, with a messianic intellectual dimension, and therefore we know the name of the specific man of the book who founded them (an almost unprecedented matter). Before that, the dominant view was of the past - remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt - or homeostatic present - every man under his vine and under his fig tree.

The whole idea of a person writing a book with a new message to the world that he signs on, which is the basis of literature, depends on the ideological legitimacy of the future dimension. Isaiah described a detailed fantasy about the future, and turned myth into something that deals not with the past or the fixed order behind the present, but with the future. This was actually the invention of Judaism, as opposed to Israeliness, which may have been a militarily stronger kingdom but gave nothing to the world, quite similar to today. And in this sense, there is nothing more Jewish than your Admor. So take a friendly tip from a primitive monkey who hasn't yet come down from the tree: every messiah is a false messiah.