Messiah Thwarted By Lone Jew Violating Sabbath

An attempt to fulfill the millennia-old dream of ushering in the messianic age by having all Jews observe a single Sabbath was spoiled this Saturday by Morty Hope, a 41-year-old Jew from Anchorage, Alaska, who violated the holy day by lighting a cigarette. The announcement, sure to dispirit many, was made by a “bat kol,” or heavenly echo, first heard over Jerusalem on Sunday morning and quickly retweeted around the world.

According to Jewish lore, if a single Sabbath is perfectly observed by every living Jew, the long-awaited Messiah will instantly appear. While the precise consequences of such a development have long been debated, Biblical prophetic texts indicate that the Messiah will bring about, at the very least, world peace and universal justice. Many scholars believe that his coming would also lead to the eventual end of all death and suffering and mark the beginning of an eternity of indescribable bliss for the entirety of humankind.

The attempt to reach perfect observance, which would have succeeded but for Mr. Hope, was an initiative of the “One Shabbat” project. Shabbat is the Hebrew word from which the English “Sabbath” is derived.

“It’s frankly astounding that almost every single one of the twenty million or so Jews in the world, which include not only countless atheists and virulently anti-religious activists, but a significant number of committed antisemites, got on board with this,” said Ben Carmi, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who specializes in the Jewish world. “It’s really too bad that that guy ruined it, because no-o-o way this is ever going to happen again,” he added. 

Gilad Atzmon, a British-Jewish jazz musician and prominent antisemitic author, stated that he “obviously wasn’t too keen on the idea – we’re talking about the king of a barbaric culture that I’d like to see eradicated, after all, but I thought, ‘meh, why not, I’ll join in.’ What a jackass,” Atzmon said of Hope.

Further inquiries revealed that the cigarette was lit mere minutes before nightfall. Since Anchorage is located in the world’s westernmost time zone, the fact that it was responsible for the failure indicates that the other twenty-three time zones had already completed the Sabbath perfectly and that the project was a hairsbreadth away from achieving its goal. When asked about his choice to light up at that moment, Hope said that he “knew about the project, but a guy’s gotta have a cigarette, you know?” He added he did not end up smoking the cigarette, as it fell into a puddle seconds after being lit. “Which is kind of ironic,” he concluded.