Rosh Hashanah Morning 5769 (2008)
October 1, 2008
The Biblical Prophets: Hearing Their Voice In Our Time
In his famous vision for a Messianic era, the Prophet, Isaiah, expresses the ultimate hope for a future time of peace, tranquility and love, extending even to the world of nature, when the various animal species, overcoming their instinctual, biological urges, would live side by side in total harmony.
“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the lion shall lie down with the calf…They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” (1)
On the outskirts of Jerusalem you can visit the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens, also known as the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo that for more than sixty years has made its mission to maintain Biblical species and habitats. Back in its early days, or so the story goes, an American visitor to the Zoo was astonished to see the exhibit featuring a wolf and a lamb displayed together in a single cage. Above the cage hung Isaiah’s Messianic vision: “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” “How do you manage that?” asks the American tourist.
“It’s simple,” responded the zookeeper. “Every day, we replace the lamb!”
Comedian, Woody Allen’s take on Isaiah? “The lion and the calf shall lie down together. But the calf won’t get much sleep!”
From its inception, our Reform Movement looked to the Biblical prophets more than any other of our traditional sources for inspiration and direction. My great-grandfather, Harry Silverman, exemplified that time in our history. In fact, he was confirmed at the same Reform Temple in Kansas City where I, too, was confirmed some eighty years later, and like many Reform Jews of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, his religious and spiritual life was largely guided by the inspiration of the biblical prophets. Grandpa Harry used to claim that the prophet, Micah told him all that he needed to know in order to live a proper, Jewish life: “Do Justice. Love Mercy. And walk humbly with your God.” (2)
Over the past two or three decades, however, as Reform Jews have taken a renewed interest in many Jewish ritual practices that had been discarded in earlier generations, and as the impulse toward social action began to take a back seat to our pursuit of personal, spiritual elevation, the identification of Reform Judaism with the prophetic word began to waver. I hope that, as our movement continues to reinvent itself and move forward in the diverse areas of worship, study, and observance, that we will recover some of that identification with Prophetic Judaism which was so meaningful to our forbearers. And that is one reason why I chose the Prophets as the topic for our autumn semester’s Continuing Education seminar.
Just who were the prophets? Bursting forth on the stage of Israelite history in the 9th century BCE, they did nothing less than change social conscience and morality forever. Over the course of some 300 years, they left an impact unique not only in the history of Judaism, but for humankind in general.
Who were the prophets? The prophets were not men who told the future; they were men who told the truth,(3) and they told the truth to a Jewish nation and leadership that were most reluctant to hear it. To utilize a contemporary expression, they were the first who would speak truth to power.
We think of the prophet, Nathan’s confrontation with the mighty and powerful King David, whose secret lusting had driven him to send an innocent man to his death.(4) And we shudder at the bravery of Elijah, who stood utterly alone against the power and command of King Ahab and his Queen, Jezebel, who had replaced the worship of Israel’s God with the adoration of foreign deities, Baal and Ashera.(5) The era of the Prophets brought us the enduring and passionate messages from men such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, Amos and Hosea, Micah, Ezekiel, and more. In fact, their legacy comprises more than half of our Biblical, Holy Scriptures.
What, then, were the essential messages of Israel’s prophets?
First and foremost, they waged a war against idolatry, the idolatry which had always surrounded the monotheistic enterprise of the Israelite nation, and which in their own time, still threatened to overwhelm it. Idolatrous practices infiltrated Jewish life long after Israel had been established. The Bible is clear that even in the days of King Solomon, the builder of our first Temple in Jerusalem, houses of worship were also built to pagan deities to satisfy the idolatrous ways of his foreign wives. So we read in the Book of Kings:
“King Solomon loved many foreign women…Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Phoenician and Hittite women, and in hishold age, his wives turned away Solomon’s heart after other gods. Solomon followed Ashtoret the goddess of the Phoenicians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites… He built a shrine for Chemosh the abomination of Moab on the hill near Jerusalem, and one for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites.” (6)
Given the testimony of the Bible, describing how some of the Kings of Israel offered their own children as sacrifices to pagan gods, we know that the battle against such practices was neither quick nor decisive. Jeremiah speaking in God’s name, testifies that:
“The children of Judah have done evil in my sight… They have built the high places… to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, which I commanded them not…” (7)
The war against idolatry was only the first front in the prophetic battle for the soul of the Jewish people. The prophets also recognized the widespread moral corruption of the upper classes within Israelite society, and called them to account for the oppression of the poor and vulnerable. So Isaiah cries out:
“Woe unto those who write unrighteous decrees, to subvert the cause of the poor, to rob of their rights the needy of My people; that widows may be their spoil, and fatherless children their plunder!” (8)
The Prophets insisted that the welfare of the entire nation was inescapably connected to the morality of individual citizens, and they decried the callousness of the wealthy and powerful.
So, too, declares Micah:
“Ah, those who plan iniquity and design evil on their beds; when morning dawns they do it, for they have the power. They covet fields, and seize them; Houses, and take them away. They defraud men of their homes, and people of their land.” (9)
Finally, even though the prophets never imagined a cessation of the priestly, sacrificial cults that expressed the Jewish religious practices of their day, they insisted that ritual without morality was empty; that sacrificial services must always be subordinate to social conscience. The prophet, Amos called out:
“I loathe, I spurn your festivals, I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies… Spare Me the sound of your hymns, and let Me not hear the music of your lutes. But let justice well up like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream! ” (10)
Sadly, the prophets were quite correct in their envisioning a time when the destruction of the nations of Judah and Israel would be the end result of having abandoned their covenant with the One God. Indeed, the day would come when their worst fears would come to pass, first in the North, at the hands of the Assyrians, and then the Southern Kingdom of Judah and its capital Jerusalem, overwhelmed by the Babylonian armies. The Babylonian exile would be the final testimony to the prophetic vision of looming catastrophe. But then, their messages would turn from chastisement to comfort, from potential doom to certain hope in the future restoration of the Israelite nation.
But do the prophets still have something to tell us today? After all, we certainly no longer worship statues made of stone, or bring sacrifices before wooden altars or sacred, arboreal pillars. Neither are we helpless servants of a powerful monarchy which exploits the poor and vulnerable to the detriment of the entire society. And who would argue in our own day that the intricacies of Jewish, legal and ritual practice would permit the ignorance of social justice?
As Reform Jews, who have long identified ourselves as inheritors of the biblical, prophetic tradition, what then can we honestly learn from their ancient claims? Do the prophets still speak to us today? Is there still value in recalling their campaigns; in hearing their admonishments, in repeating aloud their poetic inspirations spoken in the name of God?
To find our answer, let us first consider the prophetic chastisements against anyone who would dare to believe that the careful performance of religious rituals might somehow render them off the hook from moral trespasses. They conjure for contemporary minds stories of corporate scandals led by observant Jews, even rabbis. We recall sordid episodes of pedophile priests, and evangelical ministers whose mega-churches and media empires cover up reprehensible personal practices. Could it be to them, as well as to the arrogant priesthood of ancient Israel that Isaiah declared in the name of God:
“Your new moons and your appointed feasts fill Me with loathing; They are a burden to Me, I cannot endure them. And when you lift up your hands, I will turn My eyes away from you’ though you pray at length, I will not listen. Your hands are stained with crime – Wash yourselves clean; put your evil doings away from My sight. Cease to do evil; learn to do good. Devote yourselves to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.” (11)
For American Jews, these verses ring especially powerful in recalling the recent scandal in Postville, Iowa, and Agriprocessors, the largest producer of kosher meat in the country. Only six months ago, government officials raided this meatpacking plant, and arrested hundreds of illegal immigrants. Agriprocessors was accused of hiring scores of undocumented workers, paying them far below minimum wage; withholding health benefits and threatening arrest and deportation if they complained; violating child labor laws and worker safety laws, as well as various other criminal trespasses.
Agriprocessors provides much of the kosher meat to their fervently Orthodox clientele, and even in the aftermath of the revelations, these religious authorities were hesitant to withdraw their certification ofkashrut so long as the letter of the halachic processes had been adhered to.
Under pressure from the liberal Jewish movements and a steadily growing number of concerned, Orthodox Jews as well, many ultra-religious authorities finally agreed to reconsider the kashrut of Agriprocessors products. In recent weeks, our own Reform rabbinate, which has been historically quite hesitant to issue proclamations in the realm of kashrut and dietary standards, joined with the Conservative movement in adopting a principle known as “Heksher Tzedek” – meaning Certification of Justice. This new seal of approval will be applied only to food certified as kosher according to our traditional, Jewish dietary laws, and would also confirm that the producer has met certain and decent standards for just wages and employee safety.
Yes, the prophetic message still rings true for us that ritual practice without social justice fails to satisfy the principles and purpose of Jewish, religious life
“Cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed.”
The second message of the prophets was the strong condemnation of the corruption among the wealthy elite who formed the upper classes of Israelite society. They observed the insidious cases of bribery, greed and even fraud, and they insisted that individual morality was absolutely linked to the wellbeing of society as a whole. They were right in their time – is that message still meaningful today?
That answer is almost too clear today, as our nation plunges into a time of economic turmoil, and as we enter a time of widespread uncertainty. What was, but a few short months ago, referred to as the “sub-prime lending collapse” soon ballooned into the “Credit Crisis”, and in days to come is certain to become the “700 Billion Dollar Bailout.” We may be facing the most severe economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. And whatever the cost to the ordinary American taxpayer, let’s not forget that our children will pay an even greater price generations from now. Another $700 billion or more will now be added to the National Debt, which had just been raised by $800 billion dollars this past summer.
As an aside, I think it appropriate to note that as nearly $700 billion dollars are soon to be allocated to bail out elite, Wall Street executives, just last year, President Bush vetoed an increase of $7 billion dollars in health care spending for the poor, telling us that the country couldn’t afford it!
“For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back [my wrath],” declares the prophet, Amos. “They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. ” (12)
Because this is an election year, political candidates, as in this past weekend’s Presidential Debate, have been quick to point the finger of blame at one another, whether it be the Republican White House or the Democratic Congress. I think there is plenty of blame to go around. In the past decade, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spent almost $200 million on campaign donations and lobbying to Congress. This past year, Fannie gave the legal maximum of $10,000 to both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to Republican House Whip, Roy Blunt,(13) neither of whom are facing significant re-election campaigns, but who have continued to stand in the way of any meaningful regulation that would certainly have limited the devastating impact of the lending houses’ collapse.
But even given Washington’s near-total capitulation, and even recognizing the contemptible behavior of so many of the large Investment Banking CEO’s — their indefensible multi-million dollar salaries and outrageous benefit packages, their incessant lying to both Congress and their own shareholders, and their arrogant disregard for the consequences of their personal excesses – nonetheless, responsibility for the financial crisis we face for the foreseeable future must at the same time be placed at the hands of the individual bankers and low-level mortgage brokers who saw the opportunity for a quick dollar to be made, and who jumped at it, generally at the expense of the poor, the hopeful, and desperate.
“They covet fields, and seize them; Houses, and take them away. They defraud men of their homes, and people of their land.”
Take for instance any one of many thousands of cases, where a mortgage broker convinced low to middle income families to get into some exotic, risky new mortgage, like those popular, last-ditch opportunities called a “NINA”, standing for “No Income, No Asset”. How could a broker possibly approve a quarter-million dollar loan for someone with no verifiable income and no ascertainable assets? Because they knew that in short order, they could sell the mortgage to a larger firm, which would then, perhaps, divide it into various pieces, or tranches, later to be re-assembled as a highly rated, mortgage backed security, or CDO. And by then, the victims of opportunistic brokers were rendered both anonymous and invisible.
I spoke recently with a staff member of the Massachusetts Housing and Community Development Commission, who described to me how many cases come down to a story like this, involving a family I’ll call Lawrence. The initial loan papers indicated Lawrence’s base salary as $16,000 per month. It was a number created out of the world of fiction, rather than even the realm of possibility. So rather than the nearly $200,000 which the loan officer claimed as Lawrence’s potential (and therefore, “presumed” income), Lawrence had never actually made more than $40,000 a year. Anxious to share in the American Dream of home ownership, and often perplexed by the financial terminology and processes, men such as Lawrence simply went along with the broker’s creative documents. But soon he found himself in a house he would never be able to afford — defaulted and foreclosed before having made even a single payment! And while Lawrence was losing his home and his savings, the mortgage broker took home, on that particular deal, $18,500 in commissions.
“They have sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.”
Do the prophets still speak to us today? Indeed they do, for we see clearly, yet again, how the greed and corruption of individuals can bring disaster to an entire nation. And we would be reminded at the same time that the goodness, compassion, justice and generosity of individual men and women are likewise the key to the well-being of our communities, our nation, and even the world itself.
Finally, if we think about the most fundamental message of the biblical prophets, it would be their relentless battle against the encroachment of idolatry, and the pagan practices of the surrounding nations of the ancient Near East. Surely, though, idolatry has been banished, and the war is over and won? Have we still the need for reading and learning from the ancient prophetic campaign against idolatry?
“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell; they have hands, but cannot touch, feet, but cannot walk; Those who fashion them, all who trust in them, shall become like them.” (14)
Aside from being woefully misguided, what really was the problem with idolatry that so consumed the prophets? It was not simply about the foolish belief that the product of human sculptural arts could possess real meaning or power of any sort.
“Those who fashion them shall become like them.” That’s the passage that hits the nail on the head! The problem wasn’t only with the idols themselves, but with the makers of the idols, who by worshipping the work of their own hands, came to see themselves as powerful, even god-like. Idolatry was, at its core, a worship of the Self, and that is certainly not a malady from which we are nowadays immune. (15)
We live in a time of the supremacy of Self. Is it merely coincidence that the most-watched television show in our nation is “American Idol”? And I suggest that it is precisely the elevation of Self, of one’s own desires and wants, that ultimately leads to circumstances such as kosher giant, Agriprocessors’ exploitation of indigent workers, and likewise to the stampeding over poor families, many now left homeless by suspiciously imprudent financial guidance.
So yes, the prophets’ incessant war against idolatry speaks to us still today. For at the heart of idolatry was the worship of self, and a system of belief that human beings could cajole the gods in order to have their own selfish needs provided. Adoring of self, idolatry made demands on the gods. The prophets, however, taught it is God who makes demands of us.
Idolatry tries to manipulate the gods. The prophets called us to serve God.
Idolatry sought to change the natural world in accordance with the will of men. The prophets wanted to change men and women in fulfillment of the Will of God.
Do the prophets speak to us today? Without question. For although times have changed, and society is more complex, and the media of communication could not be more different, people – no, people haven’t changed. Men and women today are the same as people were in the days of our Biblical past, with the same inclinations, motivations, shortcomings and needs and hopes.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose own life work reflected something of a modern day Amos or Isaiah, said: “The spirit of the prophet, the message of the prophet, is very much alive. It’s a kind of men who combine very deep love and very powerful dissent, painful rebuke, with unwavering hope.”
And that vision of hope is likewise a prophetic message that yet speaks to us today! Yes, the nations of Israel and Judah would fall, but only to be renewed and reinvigorated in a return that would be more glorious than the past. So the prophet, who began with a message of doom, also brings consolation, promise and the hope of reconciliation.
From the vision of Isaiah: “How welcome on the mountain are the footsteps of the herald announcing happiness, heralding good fortune, announcing victory… For the Lord will comfort His people…” (16)
From the prophet, Joel: “The Lord declared: I will grant you the new grain, the new wine, and the new oil, and you shall have them in abundance… O Children of Zion, be glad, Rejoice in the Lord your God.”(17)
And from the fiery, Amos: “In that day, I will set up again the fallen booth of David: I will mend its breaches and set up its ruins anew…. They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them; They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine; They shall till gardens and eat their fruits. And I will plant them upon their soil, nevermore to be uprooted from the soil I have given them, says the Lord your God.” (18)
In fact, the prophet, Zacharia coined a new term when he called us “Asirei ha-tikvah” – “prisoners of hope.” (19) And you here today, who may be in a time of pain, or suffering loss, or fear for an uncertain future, the prophets speak to you as well, urging you to embrace hope in the future as both a promise from God and a sacred inheritance.
May their words and their passion inspire us today as they inspired the generations of Jews who went before us, with the confidence and determination to work for that day when the lamb, dwelling with the wolf, will not need to be replaced day after day after day.
“For they shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
(1) Isaiah 11:6,7,9.
(2) Micah 6:8
(3) As per A.J. Heschel in The Prohets. An Introduction.
(4) II Samuel, Chapter 11ff.
(5) 1 Kings Chapter 18ff.
(6) I Kings 11:1ff.
(7) Jeremiah 7:30-31.
(8) Isaiah 10:1-2.
(9) Micah 2:1-2.
(10) Amos 5:21ff.
(11) Isaiah 1:14-17.
(12) Amos 2:6-7.
(13) According to Investor’s Business Daily website.
(14) Psalms 115:4-8
(15) This insight comes from Norman Podhoretz, The Prophets. Who They Were. What They Are.
(16) Isaiah 52:7ff.
(17) Joel Chapter 3
(18) Amos 9:11ff.
(19) Zachariah 9:12.
