This is part twenty-four of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Yesterday, Hindu morning rites on the beach. At least, I think they are. Would love to ask but don’t want to interrupt morning devotions to the Gods. Rabbi Elyashiv is turning over in his grave, no doubt. Just the cosmic thought of idolatry gives the Rabbi the creeps, no doubt.
Myself, I prefer food offered to the Gods to Gaza’s night sky being illumined by Israel’s phosphorus bombs. When it comes to idolatry my definition is the use of power over others for the sake of empire, meaning as well that you have a God who blesses empire, because the powerful always trumpet God as on their side. In other words, idolatry is doing injustice and claiming God is behind it. This kind of God isn’t Israel’s God of justice and liberation. Hence the powerful have and worship a false God.
Quite different than the Abraham destroying the idols story we heard over and over again in Hebrew School. Yes, though way too simple and ultimately misleading, the repetition did drill it into our reluctant Jewish heads that something was at stake in the world. Thus I am grateful for my Hebrew School teachers.
If you disagree with my definition of idolatry, no problem. Send me yours. Or just chalk it up to my idolatry-definition preference. However, beyond personal preference and with due to respect to the Rabbi of blessed memory, the Torah, at least as I read it but certainly without the specialized knowledge he had, directly links justice and God.
Biblically speaking, when Israel acts unjustly and enshrines that injustice into a system, the future unfolds like this: If the people Israel don’t practice justice they will soon be practicing exile in some far away Babylon or, more succinctly, if the people Israel don’t practice justice they will be sent into exile; There prophetic Jews who announced the idolatry of injustice will learn how to practice exile; That practice will attest to the real relation between justice and God and thus preserve a possible future for the people Israel in and outside of the land.
Whether you want Bible lessons or not, you have to give the Bible credit – it rarely minces words. Often, the words are way too strong for a moderate like me. Like being driven into the hands of your enemies. Like drought that cannot be survived. Like children burying their parents and parents eating their children. The Biblical landscape is lush and barren, filled with compassion and untold violence. The Bible is never, ever neutral, though to be honest, once in a while, I pray for a let-up, some soap opera-like interlude, personal drama that has no practical consequences.
Back to the Rabbi, for a moment, has was as described, a master of Talmudic law, that is a commentator on the Torah and its commentators. Don’t get me wrong, these Rabbinic commentators can be quite insightful at times. No doubt Rabbi Elyashiv was. My point is that like the Jewish Renewal folks, the Rabbis erect fences around the prophetic. To a greater or lesser extent, their interpretations diminish the prophetic, place the prophetic in “perspective” and ultimately ritualize them out of existence. For the Rabbis of every stripe and time, the prophetic is dangerous.
Where might the prophetic critique lead? Jewish authorities – again of all stripes and times – feel that while the prophetic is part of Jewish life, it is inherently unstable. The prophetic makes Jewishness unstable. It makes the Jewish community unstable. It also introduces the possibility that Israel’s God is unstable. Indeed, as we shall see, all of their fears are founded.
All religious systems seek to stabilize the inherently unstable religion they profess. Harken back to the Presbyterian’s multi-billion dollar portfolio. In and of itself a scandalous stability in relation to the scriptures Christians embrace and then – hands off! – the Presbyterians themselves can’t touch 99% of it. They are not even allowed to decide to make unstable the stability they have accumulated!
What if striving for Jewish stability is inherently unstable or instability is the Jewish form of stability?
Here’s an example. Last year I was contacted by a minister and a Rabbi who are editing a book searching for, what they term, a common sense religiosity across the multi-religious landscape. In general, the editors are searching for a way of faith that is rational, good for society and isn’t prone to the “hijacking” of various faiths into the realm of terrorism. Not sure if broaching ethnic cleansing and occupation is acceptable on the Jewish aspect of this but since they asked me to write I think it’s possible, at least up to a point. Anyway, without awaiting further instructions I agreed and wrote my essay. The essay didn’t set well with my well-meaning editors. Rejection city.
Once I cleared the ethnic cleansing and occupation brush, in a nutshell here’s what I argued. That the common sense religion/religiosity/spirituality/thinking of Jews reflects the indigenous of the people Israel, which is the prophetic, and that the unstable prophetic is in tune with Israel’s unstable God. In broad strokes I traced the Biblical journey of the Israelites as the foundational knowledge of this divine and earthly instability and how this instability, as the norm of Israelite life, was also, again from the beginning, fought against by the empire parts of Israel who couldn’t abide that instability. I then argued that this dynamic of inherent instability and desire to foreclose that instability exists throughout Jewish history into the present. You can’t understand the Jewish civil war in the 21st century without this “instability” background.
How can the prophetic be the common sense of the Jewish people? It doesn’t make sense in the plain meaning of common sense. Unless, we see the prophetic within – everything – that is at the center, for example, of every profession, which is then fought by reification of that prophetic impulse. This reification has gone so far that, as an example, the profession of healing is so driven by the mighty dollar that the really sophisticated top-notch surgeons have a financial time clock on them at all times. Another example is the commodification of knowledge, as in our current debate about the pay-off or lack thereof of a college education.
Is college worth the tuition fees? This question can only be asked if education has already become an industry where pay raises and football stadiums are the sum total of education.
The sum total of the Jewish industrial complex seems to be stability at any place. Knocking the prophetic out of the Jewish park so that it will never be seen again, ever.
But the prophetic is seen – and heard – once again. The explosion of the Jewish prophetic in our time is the reassertion of Jewish common sense.
And yes the prophetic is a religion, Jewish-style.
Even if the interfaith ecumenical brew-crew prefers naval gazing and hugs around the campfire.
Prof. Ellis,
When you describe “stability” here in a religious context, it seems you mean stability in the group’s doctrines, general makeup, and inner state. And you see instability as a situation of change to those things. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I am not sure unstable “true” Christianity is. I think the basic doctrines as found in the Nicene Creed are supposed to stay “stable”, that is, when one significantly changes the Nicene Creed, they are no longer “true” Christian. However, Christianity does allow for changing even the basic doctrines of the Nicene Creed at an ecumenical Council. The counterargument could be that if the doctrines are changed too much, it is no longer an Ecumenical Council and Christianity.
I am doubtful that “the Presbyterian’s multi-billion dollar portfolio… [is] itself a scandalous stability in relation to the scriptures Christians embrace.” Perhaps you can explain this better? It seems that, for example, the Christian community in the NT kept money, and also sent it to the church in Jerusalem when they were having trouble. This reminds me that perhaps Christians should also try to help those in Jerusalem having trouble today. But in any case, it seems in keeping with Christian ethics that money should be given to take care of older people, and I think the Presbyterian portfolio keeps money for pensions in according with this principle. So simply having a big portfolio doesn’t seem to me to be a scandalous instability.
What would seem bad is if the portfolio cannot be changed by the overwhelming majority of the Church at a general assembly neither of the church membership nor of its leaders.
Further, it also seems that unless the portfolio is being kept for charitable needs, like: the pensions, the church’s own budget and savings, savings for the poor, then the money should be dispersed for charitable needs. Except that it seems to make sense that people could also put savings in it for their needs like paying for kids’ colleges or for housing, which in America is not guaranteed by the church or state. It would seem to go against the NT, though, to simply store up millions of dollars in one’s own savings for no apparent purpose except luxury.
Wait a minute, W. Jones! Don’t start the Christian/Jewish slappy-fight until I make the book, and I’d like to set up chairs and charge admission, too. And I’ll need to install signs and lights as a guide to the perplexed.