Mashiach’s Donkey

There’s a well-known phenomenon where people come to Jerusalem and start having delusional ideas that they just turned into the Mashiach. All of a sudden, they can sprout foot-long side-curls, foot-high shtreimels (fur hats), and a solid conviction that they are the most holy person to have ever walked the earth.

The more extreme versions of ‘Mashiach Syndrome’ can be seen walking around with bibles exhorting their fellow shoppers to ‘repent, or be doomed’. The more subtle versions don’t actually tell you to your face that they are on a completely different level than mere mortals, but they’ll drop big hints about how they did six hours of hitbodedut for 10 days in a row, which got the Hamas in Gaza to stop rocketing Ashdod, and stuff like that.
 
Last week, I moved to the holy city. It’s already been quite an experience, as I’ll write about in more detail another time. In my old hood, I thought of myself as fairly ‘religious’; I gave weekly emuna classes, I talked to G-d for an hour every day, I didn’t have internet in my house…
 
Was I going to fall prey to ‘Mashiach Syndrome?’ Uhh, no. But I have fallen prey to ‘Mashiach’s Donkey Syndrome’, which is much less well-known. When you get stricken with Mashiach’s Donkey Syndrome, you start to understand that whatever spiritual ‘level’ you thought you were on was wildly optimistic.

You start to realize that letting your girls run around outside in flip-flops (even with a long skirt) is probably not the best idea, and that you’re actually way more materialistic than you realized.
 
Let me give you an example: I left my five bedroom, 200 square-meter semi-detached house with full air-conditioning to come to an apartment less than half that size with no air-con. Poor me! I had to ditch half my furniture to fit in the apartment, which means I have no bedroom furniture to speak of and I’m having to rummage around a suitcase to find a pair of socks in the morning. Poor me!
 
That’s the down side. The up side is that the Kotel is a few minutes’ walk from my house (not that I’ve been there yet…) The up side is that the main room of my apartment has massive four meter tall ceilings, which I love; and that I have a small, but very private garden; and that I’m living in Jerusalem.
 
The up side is really incredibly ‘up’ – but I’ve been in such a bad mood since I moved I barely noticed it.
 
So I was sitting on my couch this morning, talking to G-d, and having a frank chat about what a low spiritual level I currently find myself on, viz: I’ve been in Jerusalem for a whole week, and I still didn’t make it to the Kotel yet. Or the fact that instead of appreciating the sweet rental apartment G-d found me, I’m still obsessed with the house to buy next door that is currently way too expensive (although if the Arabs carry on rioting, that could conceivably change. See, there’s a silver lining to everything.)
 
Before I moved, I thought I was such a caring, loving, patient mother and spouse, but the last seven days, I’ve had hours where I really hated everyone in my house. I thought I was such an altruistic do-gooding sort of person, but since I arrived, I’ve ignored far more homeless people on the street than I have given them a shekel.
 
What happened to me? Where did all my niceness and holiness go? Since I’ve been in Jerusalem, my optimism, my sense of humor, my striving to better myself – it all disappeared.
 
I realized this morning, that I’ve developed Mashiach’s Donkey Syndrome. It’s one thing to strive after being the holy redeemer of mankind, but I knew a long time ago that was never going to happen. This week, I realized that even Mashiach’s Donkey is a level – and one that is currently completely beyond me. There’s a bizarre passage in the Gemara where one of the Torah sages talks about sitting in the shade of the dung of Mashiach’s Donkey. I don’t really understand the deeper significance of it all, but I feel like it kind of sums up where I appear to find myself at the moment. Strange as it might be to say, I feel like that guy really described where I’m holding right now, aspiring (and failing miserably…) to even get close to the spiritual level of Mashiach’s mule.
 
But there’s the up-side to that too – no matter how low I am, Hashem is there with me.