From Rabbi Akiva to David Zini, the messianic mindset ignores who gets trampled

The column opens with Rabbi Akiva and the Bar Kokhba revolt as a warning about messianic certainty. Citing Maimonides, it recalls that Akiva and all the sages of his generation believed Bar Kokhba was the Messiah until his death proved them wrong, and says such movements should be treated with caution because they do not stop to ask who is being crushed along the way.

The author then reads a Talmudic story about Akiva’s daughter through a modern lens. Astrologers warned that she would die on her wedding day, but when a snake tried to strike, her hairpin lodged in its eye and she survived. She later explained that while everyone was busy with the wedding feast, a poor man called at the gate, so she gave him the food portion meant for her. Akiva praised her and taught that charity saves from death, not only from an unusual death, but from death itself.

The column argues that the daughter, not the famous rabbi, is the moral center of the story because she notices the poor, while Akiva misses both the hungry man and his daughter’s sacrifice. It says people with grand ideologies do not pay attention to small pains, and that the irony of the tale is that charity saves lives while messianic zeal brings death.

The piece then turns to current affairs and comments that News 12 reported that Shin Bet chief David Zini did not approve Pride Month events in the agency, shut down its LGBTQ cell, and canceled its funding. The author says this was unsurprising, identifies Zini as a disciple of the hardline religious Zionist rabbi Tzvi Tau, and argues that such movements elevate their own ideology while ignoring those harmed, especially women and LGBTQ people. It says the movement’s first targets are independent women and gays, and ends by insisting that the liberal feminist messianic project will not accept oppression.