Rabbi zev leff is not a gadol beyisroel, and he’d be the first to say so. Edited That’s the best guess i have. He’s the only rav who i recognize on the haskamos.
“Litvishe rabbonim” – why doesn’t the esteemed mechaber go to any member of the moetzes, or rav elya ber, and ask them if they agree with his theories?
The kuntres is full of weird diyukim, selective source quotations, assumptions, and forceful language, with a sweeping historical narrative about “what chazal thought” as if he could access their minds.
He does not bring a single source outside of the plain text of gemara in hachelek which says clearly that moshiach can be from the meisim. He totally butchers rashi’s 2nd and preferred pshat, and makes a pretzel out of an accompanying yad ramah which makes a similar statement to rashi.
He makes it out to be that the very idea the ramban and rambam vociferously deny is not only a valid idea , but mainstream judaism.
Funny how he can’t manage to find a single source aside from an abarbanel irredeemably (pardon the pun) twisted out of context, in the rishonim and achronim who discuss bias hamoshiach, which corroborates this contention. If this idea was normal, it would be mentioned casually in the writings of the maharal, ramchal, Ben ish chai, rav yaakov emden, yaaros dvash, drashos haran, ramban shaar hagemul, rambam in yad, or the myriad sifrei chasidus that talk about what moshiach does.
It’s chasing phantoms. He’s clearly biased and a messianic Lubavitcher attempting to normalize his religion. No different in theory from messianic Christians who marshal sources such as a talmid of the ramchal, the ramad valle, who says that yushke was the sod of moshiach ben yosef, but was shmadded , went off, etc…now would anyone say that that’s normative judaism? It’s not! It’s assur for us to have such an opinion about yushke. It’s a daas yochid, we ignore it and move on.