I was only 17, but suddenly I felt old.
It was the night of the Seder, three years ago. I stood by a wide-open door, a door that had not been knocked on, by a threshold that was unmistakably empty, and wondered whether the person I’d hoped—maybe even expected—to appear had been a figment of my imagination, a fading piece of the naïve child I had been.
The weeks before Passover that year had found the Orthodox Jewish world buzzing, more than usual, with talk of the Messiah. The Iranian nuclear threat, the growing anti-Semitism worldwide, Israel being torn to pieces by the media—It only leads to one conclusion, the old men in synagogue exclaimed and the schoolgirls whispered. We are now experiencing the birth pangs of the Messianic era. Any day now, he’ll come on a magnificent white horse. Students were told to do more good deeds, to give more charity, to refrain from slander. We women were encouraged to learn more Torah, wear longer skirts, pray more; according to the Sages, after all, it is in righteous women’s merit that the Messiah will come.
