ANI MA’AMIN – I BELIEVE

Martin M. van Brauman

 I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and though he tarry, none the less do I believe. [The 12^th of the 13 Principles of Faith outlined by Rabbi Moses Maimonides, 12^th century Jewish philosopher and sage][1]

The 12^th “I believe” [principle] under the Principles of Faith is the complete belief in the coming of the Messiah.  Jews on their journey to Treblinka and Birkenau sung Ani Ma’amin, the Song Lost and Found Again, the song about the coming of the Messiah who will deliver us, and showed that the dead at the moment of dying had maintained their faith.[2]

Prime Minister Menachem Begin once related how his father, the secretary of the Brisk Jewish community in Belarus, walked to his death leading 500 fellow Jews in singing Hatikva, the anthem of Jewish resistance, and Ani Ma’amin as the Germans drove them into the River Bug while machine guns turned the river into blood.[3]  The melody for Ani Ma’amin was composed in Auschwitz and it spread throughout the camps and Nazi occupied Eastern Europe.

Ani Ma’amin (I Believe)

I believe with complete faith

In the Coming of the Messiah, I believe 

Believe in the coming of the Messiah

In the coming of the Messiah, I believe

Believe in the coming of the Messiah

And even though he may tarry

Nonetheless I will wait for him

And even though he may tarry

Nonetheless I will wait for him

Nonetheless, I will wait for him

I will wait every day for him to come

Nonetheless, I will wait for him

I will wait every day for him to come.

I believe

Jewish faith is a faith of expectation, a waiting for God, a waiting for the Davidic Messiah’s arrival and the coming of the promised day of the Lord, a day of judgment followed by salvation when evil is consumed.[4]  For the Jew, the coming of the Messiah represents the promise of the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai being fulfilled.

A staff will emerge from the stump of Jesse (David) and a shoot will sprout from his roots.  The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him – a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord . . . He will strike [the wicked of] the world with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.  Righteousness will be the girdle round his loins, and faith will be the girdle round his waist. Isaiah 11:1-5.

Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, . . . the Lord will go out and wage war with those nations, as He waged war on the day of battle.  His feet will stand on that day on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east . . Zechariah 14: 1-4.

Under Deuteronomy 6:4 (The Shema), the Torah says that God is the One and Only as “an inner harmony for all that He does, though human intelligence cannot comprehend what it is . . .  [but] . . . will be understood at the End of Days, when God’s ways are illuminated.”[5]  This concept of God’s ways is like a ray of light seen through a prism in which, though the viewer sees a myriad of different colors, it is a single ray of light.  Likewise, God’s many manifestations are truly One and the Jew bears witness to God’s Oneness by the recitation of The Shema.

The term for martyr in Hebrew means “to sanctify the Name” that is to die with the words of the Shema on one’s lips.[6]  With the Shema, a person acknowledges his acceptance of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven.

THE SHEMA – Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is the One.  You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions.  And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart.  You shall teach them to your sons and you shall speak of them while you sit in your home and while you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign upon your arm and let them be ornaments between your eyes.  And write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

This primary article of Jewish faith, Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is the One.  You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your possessions, is the prayer for the morning, evening and bedtime.  When the Pharisees asked Jesus what is the greatest commandment in the Law, from Deuteronomy 6:5 Jesus replied, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Matthew 22:35-40).

In Genesis 1:3 when God said, “Let there be light,” the “light” was not natural light, but the Divine utterance, the “commanded emanation of light from the light of Torah,”[7] which also points to the coming of the Messiah, the “Light” to the world in the End of Times.

Franz Rosenzweig considered Jewish history as the history of the Remnant of Israel:

From Israel to the Messiah, from the people that stood on Sinai to the day when the Temple in Jerusalem ‘shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,’ [Isaiah 56:7] a concept can be traced that originated with the prophets and has been governing our inner history ever since: the concept of the remnant. The remnant of Israel, of those who remained faithful, of the true people within the people, guarantees at every moment that there is a bridge between the two poles.  Though in all other instances Jewish consciousness may fluctuate wildly between the two poles of life established in the first inner turning of the pagan man into man open to and resolved upon revelation, the pole of the inner-most experience of divine love and that of a devoted activation of love in holy living, the idea of the remnant represents both together: acceptance of the ‘yoke of the commandments’ and acceptance of the ‘yoke of the kingdom of God.’[8]

Balaam spoke about seeing Jacob’s glory and his greatness at a later time.  I see it, but not now; I view it, but it is not near. Numbers 24:17.   Balaam further spoke that Jacob’s fortunes will rise and the Messiah shall come and rule from sea to sea and there shall be no remnant of the house of Esau, all the children of Seth, all of the nations, shall be conquered for Israel and the remnant of the city of Edom, Rome, shall be destroyed.