Exile and the Prophetic

ellis
Marc H. Ellis

We are incredibly excited to introduce “Exile and the Prophetic,” a Mondoweiss feature from noted theologian Marc H. Ellis. Ellis has been a leading thinker on Israel/Palestine and his work challenging the Jewish community and Constantinian Judaism has never been as vital as it is today.

Exile and the Prophetic coincides with Ellis’s departure from Baylor University and documents a moment of reflection and transition. From Ellis’s introduction to the series:

It may be a coincidence that my new exile arrives during the twenty-fifth anniversary year of the publication of my Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation. In that book I outlined what I still hold to be true – that the central facing us as Jews is justice for and reconciliation with the Palestinian people. Without both we as Jews are nowhere, at least ethically speaking. Of course, on the empire front we are everywhere, a vision I have seen come true in my own lifetime. But where does empire lead us? That is the question I asked twenty-five years ago. I am still asking it today. But the situation is much graver. As Jews, darkness surrounds us. We have entered an abyss.

There is also hope. I have witnessed that too in struggles I have participated in and the struggles that Jews of the new generation are waging. Years ago a Palestinian told me that the Jewish prophetic would never die. He was – is – right. The prophetic is our indigenous. It is exploding right before our eyes.

The prophetic is also in exile. As old as our scriptures. Yet it is important to think through what both the prophetic and exile mean for Jews today. That is for Jews of Conscience who seek to practice Jewish in an age where Empire Judaism seems triumphant.

Exile and the Prophetic is a daily diary that began July 4, 2012. All entries will be posted here.

Introducing ‘Exile and the Prophetic’: a new feature from Marc Ellis (7/4/12)

  1. The beach mezuzah (7/5/12)
  2. Tighter than tight (7/6/12)
  3. South Africa in the mirror (7/7/12)
  4. Chosen/Kairos (7/8/12)
  5. Traveling Jewish (7/9/12)
  6. The Jewish wheel of fortune (7/10/12)
  7. Jewish (Empire) Geography (7/11/12)
  8. How deep is (y)our – colonial mentality? (7/12/12)
  9. Squandered. Beginning again (7/13/12)
  10. The Jewish pandora’s box (7/14/12)
  11. Tell me, have you ever been fed by ravens? (7/15/12)
  12. Birthright prophetic (7/16/12)
  13. Overcoming partial practice (7/17/12)
  14. Helicopter gunships in the ark of the covenant (7/18/12)
  15. Prying eyes (7/19/12)
  16. The heartbeat of the prophetic (7/20/12)
  17. Mezuzah (God) watch (7/21/12)
  18. They left me with nothing (7/22/12)
  19. The (un)niversalist (Jewish prophet) Edward Said I knew (7/23/12)
  20. Gathering Light (7/24/2012)
  21. Revered to radioactive: peace gardens of the world beware! (7/25/2012)
  22. Chief Last Night (7/26/2012)
  23. Prophet Gray (7/27/2012)
  24. Rejected! Jewish ‘common sense’ religion (7/28/2012)
  25. Reading the Torah out loud (no rabbis allowed!) (7/28/2012)
  26. No prophet spoken here (7/29/2012)
  27. Genocide – donate now! (7/30/2012)
  28. After genocide, no justice (7/31/2012)
  29. Exporting the Holocaust (8/1/2012)
  30. Jewish (Holocaust) missionaries (8/2/2012)
  31. Plan B (8/3/12)
  32. I’m leaving on a (Nazi/German) jet plane, don’t know…. (8/4/2012)
  33. Henry’s letter (8/6/2012)
  34. Decolonizing the Holocaust (8/7/2012)
  35. On both sides of the Congo Line, Jetlag JewTu (8/8/2012)
  36. The ever-expanding world of the bereaved (8/9/2012)
  37. Have you been conquered by the bible? (8/10/2012)
  38. Uprooted Jew, coming to a Palestinian town near you (8/11/2012)
  39. Imagine there’s no prophetic, I wonder if you can (8/12/2012)
  40. Collecting (Palestinian) books (8/13/2012)
  41. Israel’s ‘Never-again’ drones in German uniforms (8/14/2012)
  42. Normalizing the Hitler Youth (8/15/2012)
  43. BGS/BDS — It’s never easy on the Jewish front (8/17/2012)
  44. Jewish (Re)education (8/18/2012)
  45. Romero rising (8/19/2012)
  46. Where will Jews rise? (8/20/2012)
  47. (Jewish) birth certificate in the new diaspora (8/21/2012)
  48. Dancing with wolves (8/22/2012)
  49.  A (Jewish) pedagogy for/of the oppressor (8/23/2012)
  50. Romney’s Romero blood money (8/24/2012)
  51. When the Jewish student is ready (8/25)
  52. Archipelago Palestine (8/26/2012)
  53. On empty suits and olive trees (8/27/2012)
  54. Rachel Corrie rising (8/28/2012)
  55. Rachel Corrie, righteous gentile (8/29/12)
  56. Shoah business (8/30/12)
  57. Rachel Corrie – On the field of battle (8/31/12)
  58. War crimes (9/1/2012)
  59. What about an encyclopedia prophetica? (9/2)
  60. Zen and the art of special book collections (9/3)
  61. Now Isaiah knows (9/4)
  62. Zen and the star of David helicopter gunship maintenance (9/5)
  63. Preparing our defense for the coming days of awe (9/6)
  64. Einstein on (my) beach (9/7)
  65. Plus Suffering (9/8)
  66. Rabbis for Jewish Rights (9/9)
  67. Sounding the Prophetic Gong (9/10)
  68. A Cross on the Beach (9/11)
  69. Missing Muna (9/12)
  70. Our Jewish Anechoic Chamber (9/13)
  71. Mahatma Condi (9/14)
  72. Living in the Oprasphere (9/15)
  73. James Baldwin’s coalition is ours (9/16)
  74. If Rosh Hashanah Returns (9/17)
  75. The Prophetic under the Banyan Tree (Thought poem on the Jewish New Year) (9/18)
  76. When David Gregory Came to My Seder (9/19)
  77. The Next Four Years (9/20)
  78. Researching the Jewish future in the Israel State Archives (9/21)
  79. The Americanization of Israeli power (9/22)
  80. The Jewish civil war interviews (9/23)
  81. My (un)invited exchange with John Mearsheimer (9/24)
  82. B’Tselem and the end of Jewish history (9/25)
  83. The day without a future (9/26)
  84. My encounter with Alan Dershowitz — sort of (9/27)
  85. The circled wagons (9/28)
  86. Hashtag #BibiBombCaption (9/29)
  87. Live From New York! (10/1)
  88. Without the prophetic (10/2)
  89. Kitsch Israel (10/3)
  90. ‘israel’ (10/4)
  91. Presidential debate hangover (10/5)
  92. Adelson’s triumph signals Israel’s end as a battlefield for Jewish identity (10/8)
  93. The Russell Tribunal on Palestine (10/9)
  94. When the Russell Tribunal leaves town the machinations of the powerful remain (10/10)
  95. The ‘Free Gaza’ tweets and the challenge for those seeking justice for Israel/Palestine (10/12)
  96. Listening to Sara Roy (10/13)
  97. Who speaks for ‘palestine’? (10/14)
  98. Reporting the end of Jewish history, so that a new beginning is possible (10/15)
  99. ‘Body Worlds’ and the prophetic (10/16)
  100. ‘Body Worlds’ after life (10/17)
  101. Interfaith IMAX (10/18)
  102. Distinguishing between Jews and The Jews (10/20)
  103. Chomsky in Gaza (10/21)
  104. Remembering George McGovern (10/22)
  105. Chomsky’s presidential debate appearance (10/23)
  106. Chomsky’s absent ‘Jewish’ (10/24)
  107. Chomsky and the epic battle between Jewish empire and the Jewish prophetic (10/25)
  108. Red lines (10/26)
  109. VIPs (10/27)
  110. Do Jews and Palestinians ‘share’ the Holocaust and the Nakba? (10/29)
  111. How much justice will there be in a ‘just’ resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? (10/30)
  112. Palestine in pieces (10/31)
  113. When the Holy Land 5 attorneys reached out to me (11/1)
  114. The Holy Land 5 were railroaded (11/2)
  115. Brazil’s barbarians at Israel’s gate: South American Israel lobby tries to shut down World Social Forum on Palestine (11/3)
  116. Getting past triumphalism (in our traditions and our selves) (11/4)
  117. Election eve (Jewish) blues (11/5)
  118. Chomsky’s ‘Letter from a Gaza Jail’ (11/6)
  119. Two more years (11/7)
  120. The Clinton Presidency(s) (11/8)
  121. Obama’s (and our) Jewish politics (11/9)
  122. Forget the ‘fiscal cliff’ — could Israel fall off the American political cliff? (11/10)
  123. People have been predicting a ‘game change’ in Israel/Palestine since the early 80s. Why hasn’t it happened? (11/11)
  124. The interfaith ecumenical deal is dead (11/12)
  125. The 15 most wanted (Church leader) list (11/13)
  126. The face of war (11/14)
  127. The Jewish community’s entire life is bound up with war (11/15)
  128. Jewish warrior culture and Israel’s unraveling (11/16)
  129. Is Israel going Gaza rogue? (11/17)
  130. The last gasp of the ‘purity of arms’ — robocalls over Gaza (11/18)
  131. Few are guilty – all are responsible (11/19)
  132. A state of moral emergency (11/20)
  133. Gaza’s referendum on Jewish leadership (11/21)
  134. Gaza and the ethics of Jewish power (11/22)
  135. Square one (11/24)
  136. Benjamin Netanyahu’s self-constructed hologram (11/25)
  137. Gaza is world’s largest live military test site (11/26)
  138. Gaza City is right around the corner from the Warsaw Ghetto (11/27)
  139. What kind of future does empire and isolation hold for Jews in Israel and beyond? (11/28)
  140. Empire detoxification (11/29)
  141. Taking the U.N. cure (11/30)
  142. Avoiding the Hague (12/1)
  143. Amos Oz leaves out Edward Said and Sara Roy (12/2)
  144. The recycled air of the Jewish establishment (12/3)
  145. Israel’s original sin (12/4)
  146. An acknowledged future (12/5)
  147. Rabbi Gordis’s ‘innermost circle’ of caring (12/6)
  148. Question for B’nai Jeshurun – What red line needs to be crossed for you to speak out without reservation? (12/7)
  149. The rabbis before them (12/8)
  150. Hope against hope (12/9)
  151. Clinton’s dinner with Elie Wiesel (12/10)
  152. Elie Wiesel and the history of the court Jew (12/11)
  153. Is Israel too big to fail? (12/14)
  154. Israel’s failure and the Jewish civil war (12/15)
  155. Stuck inside of Israel with the Diaspora blues again (12/16)
  156. An Israeli plots her escape from Israel (12/17)
  157. Michael Walzer, repeat intimidator (12/19)
  158. Branding the Holocaust (12/20)
  159. The Holocaust and Jewish power (12/21)
  160. The day I spoke at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (12/22)
  161. The United States Nakba Memorial Museum (12/23)
  162. Narrating Palestine (12/24)
  163. A Christmas tree at Auschwitz (12/25)
  164. Redeeming the Christmas season? (12/26)
  165. The Western Wall is as political as the Apartheid Wall (12/27)
  166. Gender equality is worth struggling for. Gender equality within Constantinian Judaism isn’t. (12/28)

{ 5 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. W.Jones says:
    July 7, 2012 at 11:26 am

    Thank you for your writing and work, Marc.

    The term “Constantinian religion”, meaning equating a state’s goals with a religion’s could be a misnomer: As the article Constantinian Christianity (link to the-orb.net) points out, Constantine himself merely legalized Christianity, continued to allow several religions, and only converted to Christianity from paganism much later before dying.

    In any case, it’s true there’s a parallel to Christianity’s official position in Christian states- that Christianity had such a position in Christian states is a justification given for having a rabbinical state.

    Now having a state religion may not be so unjustifiable either from the perspective of a prophet, since ancient Israel itself had Judaism as its state religion. In the first few centuries leading up to Christianity, wasn’t a state religion actually an ideal in Judaism, going back to the time of King David if not earlier?

    To propose a religious model without a political king would go back to the time before King Saul. And to propose a religious model without a state seems to go back to early pre-Mosaic Judaism and pre-Constantine Christianity.

    • W.Jones says:
      July 7, 2012 at 11:41 am

      “And to propose a religious model without a state seems to go back to early pre-Mosaic Judaism and pre-Constantine Christianity.” This also brings to mind Jesus’ words about his kingdom not being an earthly one when asked by Pilate about whether he was a political king to replace Caesar.

    • AllenBee says:
      July 10, 2012 at 12:16 pm

      This is the first I’ve read of Marc Ellis’s work and I’m eager to read more.

      I’m also eager to pursue the “Constantinian Judaism” line of thought. A few weeks after hearing Sanam Anderlini tell an Occupy AIPAC audience that the history of Persia has been eliminated from American public school curricula, it hit me like a ton of bricks: Persia has also been written out of the New Testament. Why is that? Very few scholars or popular books discuss the Roman-Persian wars; the history of Middle East vis a vis Rome in the era of Christ has Judaism at the center of the debate. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. But Persia was still a major force in the region, providing for all civilizations that emerged from the region enormous and foundational cultural elements: Karen Armstrong argues that Zoroaster predated and prefigured the Axial Age ethicists of which the Jewish prophets are part.

      Furthermore, Jews were more free in Persia in the time of Christ and the Constantinian era than they were in Jerusalem under the Romans; in fact, it was Persians and a large contingent of Persian Jews who carried out a blood-soaked assault on Jerusalem in 614 CE (yea, post-Constantine) to liberate co-religionist Jews in Palestine.
      My working hypotheses are that: 1. Constantine would have sought to distance his ‘new religion’ from anything associated with Rome’s enemy, Persia; therefore, since Constantine oversaw the composition of the Christian Canon, and much else of Christian doctrine in this formative stage, he would have required the exclusion of Persia.
      2. Simultaneously, even though exiled from Jerusalem’s precincts, Jews remained a force to be reckoned with – Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The Israel lobby would doubtless have persuaded Constantine that it was in his interest to cast his lot with Jewish merchants, etc. rather than with enemy Persians — in spite of the fact that many Jews lived securely and prosperously in Persia, and that Persians had stuck their necks out to aid Jews in the Roman empire. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

      Anyway, it’s a work in process, and I’m eager to read your perspective on the issue. Thanks.

      Personal note — Is Marc acquainted with Dr. Chris van Gorder from Baylor? I met Chris while he was working on his specialty study.

      • W.Jones says:
        July 11, 2012 at 11:18 pm

        By the way, when the attack you mentioned occurred in the 7th century, the Persians didn’t destroy the Church of the Nativity depicting the Magi because of their resemblance to Persian wise men.

        So although Persia may not have been a big focus in 1st century Judea, there could be an allusion to it after all. Another reason could be that early Christianity considered itself an outgrowth of ancient Judaism rather than some form of pagan religion. That pagan wise men were searching for the star doesn’t exclude Christianity’s Jewish basis either: I think it is in Isaiah that people came to Israel from a pagan government- perhaps Babylon- because they noticed a major miracle occurring there.

  2. Freija says:
    July 16, 2012 at 7:47 am

    I am very very pleased to read professor Dr. Marc Ellis’ texts of such honesty. A sunny island in a dark sea of lies. I will translate all the texts into german to give pleasure to the truth hungry readers.
    You are an enlightenment in the dark night of unconsciousness
    Thank you Dr. Ellis

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