Exile and the prophetic: What about an Encyclopedia Prophetica?

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

A huge sea turtle on the beach this morning.  It was heading back to the ocean when it couldn’t go on.  The vultures are out, picking the body clean. About thirty yards away, two young lovers who slept under the stars are just waking up.  Life goes on.

This morning I am thinking of the prophetic and the stream of history it occupies.  How the prophetic becomes a tradition.  How it deconstructs itself.  How the prophetic tradition pays homage to the past.  How it evolves.  How, even with this ancient tradition, the prophetic is always startling new. 

The prophets are recognizable through time.  The prophets can recognize themselves. In the prophetic historical mirror.

In its fundamentals, the mission of the prophets hasn’t changed over time. In its fundamentals, the cost to the prophets hasn’t changed over time.

The prophetic community. Its internal building blocks. Passing the torch from one generation to another. But also reaching back and within historical time zones.

Think of Henry’s letter that I wrote about a few weeks ago.  It was the 1980s.  Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.  Henry resigned from the editorial board of a Jewish journal and said good-bye to Jewish life.  Henry had enough.  Then Aaron’s letter, 2000. A re-engagement.

Henry would have loved Aaron.  Aaron would have loved Henry.  In my mind’s eye, I see Henry on the resignation mat, looking up at Aaron, Aaron extending his hand, Henry clasping it, rising.  Henry’s daughter, the beautiful Hannah, looking on from a distance.

The prophetic ballet – on the field of battle.

The prophetic torch is always being passed, reaching back and regaining strength. It’s always up and running somewhere – on the global field of battle. Now we remember Rachel Corrie’s letters.  Those who witness for justice today extend a hand to her.  They lift her up. She is also lifting others up – on the field of battle.

Henry, Aaron, Rachel.  They are defined by their time.  Their witness also exists beyond their specific time.  The prophetic has its own time.

I picture Keren’s life as a letter.  On what it means to choose “Jewish.”Never looking back. My favorite convert. Signing up early on with the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank, she sheltered Palestinian bodies from the blows of Jewish soldiers and settlers.  Always off and running for justice.

If she ever published her letters from the West Bank and Egypt when she was trying to get into Gaza, well, there’s a whole prophetic world there.  Think of Keren as Rachel Corrie, just older.

Moving backwards in real time, but staying within the prophetic time zone, I think of Etty Hillesum’s last letters which she dropped from the train on the way to Auschwitz.  Choosing to go with her people. Never looking back. Memories of her during these last days.

Etty’s story isn’t as known as Anne Frank’s.  Etty discovered her Jewishness as the Netherlands were infiltrated by Nazis. Then when she could have escaped, Etty stayed with her people.  She volunteered for Westerbork, the Nazi transfer camp to points east. There Etty wrote about creating a new world after the cataclysm facing Jews and all of Europe.  A world where all humanity would live in peace and harmony.

She thought of the war as a purification of the evil found in the world.  Experiencing the evils of the war, the world would wake up and embrace a new way of life.  She was convinced that her sacrifice was worth this new world.  In July 1943, Etty wrote:

The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night when day has slunk away into the depths behind me, I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire. And then time and again, it soars straight from my heart—I can’t help it, it’s just the way it is, like some elementary force—the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. We may suffer, but we must not succumb.

Etty pictured herself – on the battlefield.  She wanted to absorb the violence of the world and refashion it into a new world.  Here dreams were full of catastrophe.  They were also full of hope. 

In the last few days there have been commentaries comparing Rachel Corrie with Anne Frank. Just yesterday, there was a perceptive essay – another prophetic letter – by yet another Jew of Conscience, Jennifer Loewenstein, whose father-in-law grew up with one of Anne Frank’s “secret annex” companions.  But, really, the better comparison is Etty. Rachel and Etty were more or less the same age when they began to see the world through different eyes.  This occurred in Etty’s case, as it did it Rachel’s, when they placed themselves in harm’s way.  Once they saw the world differently there was no turning back.

Etty’s life was interrupted – by justice.  And compassion. As was Rachel’s. We picture Rachel arms raised, trying to halt the bulldozer.  But that was the outer manifestation of an inner commitment.  Reading Rachel’s letters you see a justice filled with compassion for the suffering. Rachel was well aware of the war crimes being committed.  What motivated her stand for justice was compassion for the suffering.

Jennifer Loewenstein, herself, stands with the prophetic tradition.  As she raises up Anne Frank and Rachel Corrie, she is also staking a prophetic claim. Loewenstein lived in Israel for some time during her childhood; her father, a musician, played in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. She returned to Israel as a college student.  Over the years she has lived in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and traveled extensively in the West Bank and Gaza.  In the early 2000s, Loewenstein worked at the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City.   She writes often and radically in support of Palestinian rights.

Prophetic lives.  Jewish prophetic letters in a time of deep darkness.  They’re worthy of publication.  Together.

Possible titles – Jewish Prophetic Letters:  From the Field of Battle.  Prophetic Letters:  At the End of Jewish History.

Prophetic letters from every time and place.From every people.

To Whom It May Concern.  Is this generic opening the prophets use since they’re addressing power and the state?  They’re also addressing God, the Jewish people and all those working toward justice around the world.  The prophets cast a wide net. The cast of characters they catch all have their individual names and times.  The catch is also generic. 

Look for the catch on the morning beach.  You’ll find an assortment of characters in the same net.  When you find Hitler, Stalin and Franco in your net, it can startle you.  But you can also find satellite figures, Benito Mussolini, George Bush and their act-a-likes, David Ben-Gurion and Henry Kissinger’s crowd.  Even the ones who have been recycled as university presidents like Robert Gates and Ken Starr.

You’d be amazed at what washes up on the beach.  But we needn’t dally over what gets caught up in the prophetic net. 

A global encyclopedia of prophetic letters throughout history.  It could replace the print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica which just went belly-up.

Encyclopedia of Prophetic Letters.  If we go historical and global, I wonder how many volumes we would need.

Encyclopedia Prophetica.

Subtitle:  Prophetic Letters Across the Millennia. 

Rachel’s prophetic letters – on the field of battle. They fit in well with Henry’s, Aaron’s, Keren’s, Jennifer’s.

And let’s not forget our Decolonizer of Peace. She’s still waiting for the United Nations to stop posturing and cross their soldier’s Congo prostitution line.  The offending soldiers seem to be whisked away in the dead of night when the commander’s bell is rung. 

The prophet knows the powerful’s score.  Never believe that transparency or investigations will uncover the cover of injustice.  For more than a New York moment.  It’s just a cover for another cover.

The indigenous Jewish prophetic continues to check in its diverse guises.  To remind whoever the powers that be are that the indigenous Jewish prophetic is still around and has gone global.  In the Golden Age of Empire Judaism the prophetic is still writing letters – to unjust power. 

Give the prophetic its due. If it is anything, the prophetic vocation is stubborn. It doesn’t know when its time has passed.  When it should shut up and sit in the corner.  It doesn’t even know how to restrict itself to Jews.

The (un)Jewish prophetic letters – on the field of battle.  They remind Jews of the vocation we don’t want and can’t shake.

Etymology – ica – Latin – when used as a suffix meaning a collection of things that relate to a specific place, person or theme.As in erotica, Hebraica, Judaica.

Prophetica.

A nice ring to it, don’t you think?