The Name in the Note

Hidden in plain sight

Yesterday I was pulled over in the middle of Jerusalem, half on the curb blocking the entrance to a building while I waited to pick my son.

But no one cared and cars manuevered around me or honked until I pulled forward. That’s how it works in Jerusalem. I maintained that position for an hour while I waited for him. I browsed my phone or stared out the window. On the bus stop was spray painted “Our King is Messiah” and I didnt think much about it.

You can’t turn a corner in this city without seeing something like that. Stickers pasted onto the back of traffic signs. Posters taped to stone walls. Declarations about the Messiah are scribbled in paint everywhere, and become as common as advertisements and as permanent as dust.

Eventually my eyes fell back on the spray paint and my mind wondered over the longing of Jerusalem and her desire for a leader, a king, a political someone to come and fix all that is broken…especially now.

It reminded me of a story that I had heard about like a whisper in the wind that even the leaves pretended not to hear.
I took to google to see if it could be true and realized the story had validity.

Back in 2006, there was a rabbi in Jerusalem who was deeply loved and respected. He was the kind of teacher whose words, and whose silence, carried weight. People looked to him for spiritual guidance, and nearly a quarter of a million people attended his funeral.

Before he died, he said that he had discovered who the Messiah was, but that he would not reveal the name until after his death. So the city leaned in, anxious, waiting for the time of mourning to pass, waiting for the moment the handwritten note could finally be opened, as if it might settle the argument once and for all.

The day finally came and they opened the small folded note and it said (in hebrew)

“Regarding the initials of the Messiah,
he will lift the people and prove
that his word and his Torah stand.” signed and dated.

that was it.

The people didnt understand why he would lead them on and fail to deliver on such an important and long awaited announcement. So it was largely dismissed and disregarded as an old man not following through, maybe he had exaggerated, or age had softened him.

But not his disciples, they knew that he had taught not just to look but to see. He had taught them the secrets of hebrew and that every letter held information. Every first letter held a word or a name and the code would lead them to the name. Even his opening statement said regarding the initials of the Messiah. So they looked harder.

Here is the hebrew:

ירים העם ויוכיח
שדברו ותורתו עומדים

And they begin to mark the first letter of every word.
י , ה , ו , ש , ו , ע

In english:
Yehoshua

I wonder what the room did when the letters formed the name that left them speechless.

The Rabbi apparently had taken that into an account, and spoke as he always had leaving the interpretation not in the words, but in the reader.

For those who wanted to walk away convinced that no name had been given, he left a way of escape. And for those who had eyes to see, he left the knowledge that seeing comes with a cost.

---

(Pictured above is the original note)

Matthew 1:21

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Yehoshua, for he will save his people from their sins.”