The expectation of the coming of the Messiah, by which and because of which Judaism lives, would be a meaningless theologumenon, a mere idea in the philosophical sense, empty babble, if the appearance again and again of a 'false" Messiah did not render it reality and unreality, illusion and disillusion. The false Messiah is as old as hope for the true Messiah. He is the changing form of the changeless hope. He separates every Jewish generation into those whose faith is strong enough to give themselves up to an illusion, and those who hope is strong enough so that they do not allow themselves to be deluded. The former are beter, the latter stronger. The former bleed on the altar of eternity of the people, the latter are the priests who peform the service at the altar. And this goes on until the day when all is reversed, when the belief of the unbeliever will become truth and the hope of the hoping a lie. Then - and no one known whether this day may not be this very day - the task of hoping will come to an end and, when the morning of that day comes, everyone who still belongs among those who hope and not among those who believe will run the risk of being rejected. The danger hovers the apparently less endangered life of the hopeful.
Franz Rozenzweig
(quoted in The Personal Messian, p. 21, here)
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