aggadah

[I]t is no doubt true that our image of what a messiah might look like may keep us from recognizing the real thing when it stands before us. Could it be that we have embellished the long-awaited event with so many aggadic flourishes that we can no longer recognize the reality when it happens? Could our overly literal reading of our sages_ poetic descriptions have led us to overlook completely the miracle as it happened? One of the dangers of taking the statements and speculations of our sages as literal truth__hen they were not meant as such__s the distortion of our expectations.