Avodah Zarah 9

The beginning of today’s daf contains a math lesson for scribes and merchants who need to know how to calculate the correct date in order to write it on contracts and other documents. This discussion leads to the calculation of an entirely different date: what year the messiah will arrive.

The school of Eliyahu taught: The world is destined to exist for 6,000 years. For 2,000 years the world was waste (as the Torah had not yet been given). The next set of 2,000 years are the time period of the Torah. The last set of 2,000 years are the period designated for the days of the messiah, but due to our many sins there are years that have been subtracted from them and the messiah has not yet arrived. 

According to Eliyahu, if all had gone according to divine plan, he and his contemporaries would have been living in the era of the messiah. But because of the sins of the Jewish people, the messiah’s arrival was delayed. How much of a delay? That remains unclear.

Though we cannot tell exactly when the messiah will arrive, some talmudic rabbis advise making particular business decisions — including the purchase of land — with the possibility in mind:

Rabbi Hanina says: After the year 400 from the destruction of the Temple, if a person says to you: Purchase a field that is worth 1,000 dinars for one dinar, do not purchase it. It was taught in a beraita: After the year 4,231 from the creation of the world, if a person says to you: Purchase a field that is worth 1,000 dinars for one dinar, do not purchase it.

According to Rabbi Hanina, because the messiah could come at any time, it’s unwise to purchase property in the diaspora. Presumably, this is because the buyer will be leaving it behind to relocate to the holy land as soon as that occurs. But the messiah didn’t arrive and, over time, Jews did purchase land. So what are we to make of this teaching?

Over the years, Jewish interpreters have given various explanations of and prescriptions based on Rabbi Hanina’s words. The Ritva, living in 13th-century Spain, understands this advice to mean that Jews shouldn’t buy property during any time of danger and upheaval. Two centuries later, living in (and then exiled from) Inquisition-era Spain, Abarbanel interprets Rabbi Hanina’s advice as an adjuration to Jews to pray, repent and beware of purchasing land outside of Israel, “lest it encourage him to stay where he is and weakens his desire to return to the Holy Land.” 

As Jews continued to face violent upheavals throughout Europe, some believed that these events were a portent of the messiah’s imminent arrival and acted accordingly. In the most famous of these episodes, in 1648 a Turkish Jew named Shabbetai Zevi proclaimed himself to be the messiah and thus gained a small following. This movement took hold in the aftermath of the horrific Chmielnicki Massacres that wiped out 30,000 Ukrainian Jews. By 1665, accompanied by his sidekick “prophet” Nathan, Zevi convinced thousands of Jews to go one step further and abandon their property to prepare themselves for the imminent Messianic Era. (A fascinating description of this movement appears in the Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, the first printed Yiddish language memoir and the first extant written by a Jewish woman.) Unfortunately for them, Zevi was arrested by the Turkish authorities for sedition and subsequently converted to Islam, dashing the hopes of Jews throughout Europe and the Middle East that the Messianic age was upon them. 

The experience of false messiahs like Shabbetai Zevi has tempered Jewish enthusiasm for similar movements in the ensuing centuries. And yet, traditional Jews still await the coming of the messiah. Prayer and repentance certainly can’t hurt. Not sure about selling your property, though; best to consult a real estate broker on that score.

Read all of Avodah Zarah 9 Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on June 27, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.