A thought experiment about ALIENS & MOSHIACH

in every sci-fi depiction of aliens coming to Earth what do the aliens always say what's the first thing they say take me to your leader it's actually it's a real question does Humanity have a leader who could take the responsibility to represent a human consensus regarding how Humanity will respond let me just clarify my name is Rabbi Shay Staub I'm a teacher of Jewish spirituality I'm not an expert in whether there is or is not extraterrestrial life it's actually not something that I think about terribly often but I have a very interesting thought experiment for you that I started thinking about recently when I read an article about a new organization known as The post-detection Hub at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland it's a group of academics and scientists who've gotten together to figure out what in the world will Humanity do if aliens should make first Contact and it's not a simple question now again this is not a question that I think about a lot it's not necessarily something that I'm taking super seriously right now but the thought experiment is an important one and I'll tell you why one of the members of the team there at the post deduction Hub John Elliott he said you know if the aliens make contact with us it's not really so clear if we should respond or not some people say it's the worst thing you can do when a stranger comes knocking at your door in the middle of the night in the middle of the universe do you answer it if you don't know who it is and what their intentions are of course others say that this could be something that would radically improve our existence and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity of course you should respond but there's no consensus and what he points out is he said look at covet recently that there was no consensus of far from consensus it was absolute Discord in how to respond there was no way to get everybody on the same page so why does this interest me as a rabbi and as a teacher of Judaism it interests me because in our prophets it it speaks over and over again about a perfect world that will be ushered in when all Humanity comes together there's no more war there's absolute prosperity for everyone and this era is often referred to with the English term the Messianic era but that's an anglicization that's an English version of a Hebrew word meshiach the era of mashir or yamisa mashiach the days of mashiach and I think that term is woefully misunderstood mashiach means the anointed one because in ancient Israel Kings were anointed it was part of the inauguration ceremony it's like the swearing-in on January 20th they would put oil on them and that was how they were installed as king so mashiach doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means mashir doesn't mean some type of a deity or some spiritual entity is a human being of human lineage in fact we know his lineage because he has to be a davidic king he has to come from the House of David who in turn is a descendant of Judah one of the 12 sons of Jacob to whom the promise was made that the rulership within the Jewish people would remain within his tribe so mashiach is a person he's a descendant of King David who's from the tribe of Judah and furthermore not only is he a human being but his job is very human what's mashiach's job primarily at least in the first phases of the Messianic Redemption is primarily sociopolitical he's a king remember he's a political leader yes he rules according to the dictates of Torah so in that sense you could call him a religious leader but he's not so much a religious leader as a political leader who rules religiously whatever your feelings may be about that I'm not here to impose anything on anyone I'm offering an understanding of a term which is widely misunderstood and I'm saying maybe it's something that Humanity should think about I'm not going to push my mashiach on you but I would like you to think about the fact that maybe we need a mashiach we need somebody who could be a unifying leader who would get all of the nations of the world together to have some type of agreement now I know there are people who are cynical and they don't believe there could be such a leader of such Integrity that they believe like the old adage says power corrupts absolute power corrupt absolutely but if you're going to be cynical like that you could also say world peace is also unachievable but in theory if World Peace were achievable could it be that the way the Jewish Prophet spoke about it two thousand years ago is the way in which it will happen where there will be a strong leader who will be able to bring the world together so when the aliens come and say take me to your leader we'll say yeah that guy Mala hamashiach that's the Hebrew word for the Messianic King as I said I'm a rabbi I teach Torah that's where I get my values from but I'm an American Boy as well I grew up here and I understand how Western sensibilities especially American sensibilities find the idea of monarchy repugnant monarchy literally means Mano Mano means one Archie means a system of government a rule of one and that we had a whole Boston Tea Party in an American Revolution in order to get rid of that and instead we installed the rule of the many a democracy and democracy in many ways was an improvement over the types of monarchies that we had you know Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government until you compare it to all others and that's probably true until you compare it to all others that are available right now but consider the possibility that there is a concept of a ruler who does have the ability to rule with integrity and with honesty and with awareness and to elevate all of humanity and even if I can't convince you that that's a possibility at least then for the sake of accuracy I would like you to know when you hear the term Messiah you should know that it comes from the word mashiach and you should know what meshiach means mashiach is a human being of Flesh and Blood who is a political ruler who ensures prosperity for the entire world and who will ostensibly have an answer if the aliens make first Contact there's a lot more to learn about mashiach and preparing for mashiach and even bringing about the Advent of mashiach I have a much longer lecture about that topic you can check it out right here