When will the Messiah come? Today’s daf continues that discussion. My favorite answer comes in the guise of this famous story: 

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to Elijah the Prophet: When will the Messiah come?

Elijah said to him: Go ask him.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asked: And where is he sitting? 

Elijah said to him: At the entrance of the city of Rome.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi asked him: And what is his identifying sign by means of which I can recognize him? 

Elijah answered: He sits among the poor who suffer from illnesses. And all of them untie their bandages and tie them all at once, but the Messiah unties one bandage and ties one at a time. He says: Perhaps I will be needed to serve to bring about the redemption. Therefore, I will never tie more than one bandage, so that I will not be delayed.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi went to the Messiah. He said to the Messiah: Greetings to you, my rabbi and my teacher.

The Messiah said to him: Greetings to you, bar Leva’i.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to him: When will the Master come?

The Messiah said to him: Today.

Sometime later, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi came to Elijah. Elijah said to him: What did the Messiah say to you? … 

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to Elijah: The Messiah lied to me, as he said to me: “I am coming today,” and he did not come.

Elijah said to him that this is what he said to you: He said that he will come “today, if you will listen to his voice.” (Psalms 95:7)

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi runs into Elijah the Prophet at the entrance to the burial cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, located on Mount Meron in the Galilee. He asks when the Messiah will arrive, and Elijah tells him that he can just ask the Messiah himself! After giving directions to where Elijah is located (some versions of the Talmud name the city as Rome and others just note “the city”), Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi hastens there to talk to the Messiah. This would have been a journey of several days, since getting to Rome from the Galilee would have required Yehoshua ben Levi to hike his way back down the mountain and board a boat across the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, he undertakes the trip, arrives in Rome, and finds the Messiah just where Elijah said he would be: at the gates of the city tying and untying his bandages one at a time.

Rabbi Yehoshua wastes no time in asking his question and gets this surprising answer: The Messiah will come today! But night falls and it is apparent that the Messianic era has not arrived, and so when Rabbi Yehoshua returns to Israel and reports his findings to Elijah, he accuses the Messiah of lying to him. Elijah then explains, quoting a verse from Psalm 95, which Jews all over the world recite as part of Kabbalat Shabbat, the service that ushers in the Sabbath. What the Messiah really meant, says Elijah, is that he will come imminently “if you will listen to his voice.” (Psalms 95:7)

What does this mean? Most commentators believe that the verse from Psalms that Elijah quotes in the Gemara means that the Messianic era will arrive when Jews observe the commandments — a classical understanding of what God asks of us. 

I would like to focus, though, on the example the Messiah himself sets in this story. The Messiah is sitting at the gates of the city among the lepers and other chronically ill outcasts, in the guise of an ill person who has to wrap and rewrap his own bandages. Perhaps the message to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was not to come get his answer and leave, but to stay and help the unfortunate souls who are literally crowded all around. Elijah himself could probably have answered Rabbi Yehoshua’s question without sending him to another continent to ask. Maybe he sent Rabbi Yehoshua there so he could see for himself what needed repairing — and the rabbi failed the test. 

Maybe what we need to do to bring the Messiah today is not only to listen to the voice of God adjuring us to fulfill the mitzvot, but turn that message into action, finding those that need help and working to fix what’s wrong right here in this world, so that we can attain the next one.

Read all of Sanhedrin 98 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 25, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.