Page 9 - HaMizrachi_3_USA

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Listening to the Prophetic Voice

your eyes. Karl Marx applied this idea to The second prophetic insight was
society and history. It is known as historical the unbreakable connection between
monotheism and morality. Somehow the
inevitability, and when transferred to defeating right. The fittest surviving while "
human affairs it amounts to a massive prophets sensed that idolatry was not just
denial of personal freedom. false but corrupting. It saw the universe as Only by being
a multiplicity of oft-clashing powers. Might
Finally, there is time as a mere sequence of the weak perish. Nietzsche believed this, as faithful to God
events with no underlying plot or theme.
This leads to the kind of writing pioneered did the social Darwinists.
by Herodotus and Thucydides, scholars of do we stay
ancient Greece. Their third great insight was the primacy
of ethics over politics. The prophets have faithful to one
Each of these concepts has its place, but surprisingly little to say about politics. Yes,
Samuel was wary of monarchy but we find
none was time as the prophets understood almost nothing in Isaiah or Jeremiah about another
it. The prophets saw time as the arena in
which God and humanity played out the the way Israel/Judah should be governed.
great drama of life, especially in the history Instead we hear a constant insistence that
of Israel. If Israel was faithful to its mission, the strength of the nation is not military
it would flourish. If it was unfaithful it or demographic but moral and spiritual. them. Jeremiah may have lost faith in
would fail. It would suffer defeat and exile. If the people keep faith with God and one people; he never lost faith in God.
That was Jeremiah’s tireless – and timeless another, no force on earth can defeat them.
– message. If they do not, no force can save them. Prophecy ceased in the Second Temple era.
" tormented of all the prophets, has gone to one another. Only by understanding
But the prophetic truths are eternal. Only
Jeremiah, the most passionate and
by being faithful to God do we stay faithful

down in history as the prophet of doom.
the deep forces that shape history can we
defeat the ravages of history. Only by being
Yet this is unfair. He was also supremely a
As the saying
open to a power greater than ourselves can
prophet of hope. He is the man who said
a long time for biblical Israel to learn these
the sun, moon and stars (Jeremiah 31). He
goes, time that the people of Israel will be as eternal as we become greater than ourselves. It took
is the man who, while the Babylonians were
truths. We must never forget them again.
is God’s way laying siege to Jerusalem, bought a field as
a public gesture of faith that Jews would
return from exile: “For this is what the Lord 1 Kierkegaard actually said: “The tyrant dies and his rule
of keeping Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.” Papers and
and vineyards will again be bought in this land” Journals, 352.
everything from (Jeremiah 32).

happening at Jeremiah’s feelings of doom and hope were Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is
not in conflict: they were two sides of the
once same coin. The God who sentenced His the Emeritus Chief Rabbi of the
United Hebrew Congregations
people to exile would be the God who
brought them back, for though His people of the Commonwealth
.
might forsake Him, He would never forsake @RabbiSacks www.RabbiSacks.org

9