W. is sure he heard somewhere or another – at a lecture, symposium or suchlike – about the stupid Messiah, and this has oriented his research ever since. The stupid Messiah, whatever can that mean? When did this figure appear? In what circumstances?
Of course, there is a long tradition of the occultation of the Messiah, W. says. The idea, that is, that the Messiah has already arrived, if only we could find him (if only we could set out to find him.) And then of course, the idea that certain conditions would have to be satisfied such that the Messiah could appear. The moral improvement of humankind, for example.
But what could it mean to think of a Messiah so stupid that he is occulted from himself? Of a Messiah who does not have the intelligence to know he is the Messiah? There's a tradition, of course, that the Messiah would be the one who broke the law rather than simply fulfilling it. Whence the apostasy of Sabbatai Zevi, whose followers likewise committed apostasy, it being a sign for them of a kind of test the Messiah would ask them to undergo.
Would the stupid Messiah have stupid followers?, W. wonders. Followers so stupid they wouldn't know who they were following, or what it meant to follow? Mystery upon mystery, says W. But at least it goes some way to understand my significance vis-a-vis Messianism. Because I'm attracted to it, aren't I, in my own stupid way? Even I have a sense of the importance of the Messianic idea and circle around it in my stupidity.
W. is a little less unwitting than I, he says, a little less stupid. And perhaps that means I'm a truer follower of the stupid Messiah, he says, he's not sure.
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