How does theater shape the ways in which we understand and experience time and our place in it? This book explores the question by examining the figure of the Messiah and messianic time in modern Hebrew and Israeli theater. Situating theater against the hopes, anxieties and crises of Israeli society and the shift in the temporal imagination that accompanied Zionism, illuminates the political, theological and theatrical signifi cance of time. By analyzing key Jewish and Hebrew plays, the book sheds new light on Israeli culture and on messianic and theatrical temporalities.