Okay, it didn’t quite look like this at all, but this is definitely what it felt like travelling underground on the subway late last night on the way home after meeting up with a friend downtown. Engrossed deeply in Jacob Neusner’s Messiah in Context (1984), all of a sudden I looked up and realized that I was lost and disoriented. Physically exhausted and almost panicky, was I even on the right train? In the right place? Scholem was right. Messianism is first and foremost a theory of catastrophe.