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.
Did you see Medea Benjamin pestering our Commander in Chief about drones? Like the prophets of old, she didn’t respect Presidential decorum.
The President was caught up short. He sputtered as if awakened from a teleprompter dream. But, then, he kicked into gear. For a paragraph or two, he spoke what was on his unscripted mind.
Obama is surrounded by Empire Jews. What would he be like, policy-wise, if he was surrounded by Jews of Conscience?
We’ll probably never know what unscripted Obama is like. I doubt he knows anymore. Did he ever know?
Benjamin is yet another marginal Jew making a splash on the world scene. Even as she was led out of the room, she continued speaking the truth.
Marginal Jew that she is, Benjamin has an international justice agenda that includes Israel/Palestine. Though I doubt she quotes from “real” Jews like Maimonides, Rashi and Sir Jonathan Sacks – the accusation leveled against the Church of Scotland’s “The Inheritance of Abraham.”
Maybe she simply embodies the prophetic without using footnotes. Like most Jews of Conscience.
Like the American establishment, Jewish establishments don’t fare so well in the prophet’s red glare. At times the Jewish establishment appears triumphant while the prophet’s path is hardly a yellow brick road. Ultimately the tables are turned. The Jewish establishment of the day is swept away.
Is this the fate of the American establishment now represented by President Obama? Though Obama seems to have a dual role – he’s also fronting for the Jewish establishment. Right now, I can’t imagine one establishment without the other. To change one you have to change both.
That’s heavy lifting.
Speaking of heavy lifting, it’s an oxymoron to refer to prophets in the Jewish context as marginal. Read Isaiah or Jeremiah. Tell me if God thinks the prophets are marginal.
Even if we scrap God, who knows best, the prophets or the establishments?
Does the Jewish establishment really believe their truths will outlast the judgment of history, let alone Jewish history that has the prophetic at its core?
On the American establishment, think of Secretary of State Kerry in the Middle East right now. He’s a high official in the rather exclusive Major Super Power club, though he, too, started out as a – marginal – insurgent.
With Kerry, I always feel he’s carrying on an inner monologue that he periodically checks to see if anyone’s listening.
That’s the way he ran for President. This doesn’t bode well for change in the Middle East.
President Obama is in monologue mode, too. His recent trip to Israel was a 48 hour monologue. Mostly, he wondered around museums and posed for photo-ops.
Unscripted – with a Jewish prophetic urging – what did the President really want to say in Israel – and Palestine?
Instead, it was like the President was back in his Harvard days looking at the shoes of his white peers and wanting very much to walk in them. Obama’s “walking in another’s shoes” motif may have begun there.
And, then, yesterday there’s that marginal Jew, Medea Benjamin, interrupting the President’s monologue. What if she had interrupted his monologue in Israel/Palestine?
Prophetic shoes. Perhaps one day President Obama will try them on.
“Though I doubt she quotes from “real” Jews like Maimonides, Rashi and Sir Jonathan Sacks – the accusation leveled against the Church of Scotland’s “The Inheritance of Abraham.”
Interestingly, the accusation was not that the C.O.Scotland failed to quote from Maimonides, but rather that they “relied heavily from marginal anti-Zionist figures”.
Also Marc, I think your article could be a reference to Fr. Meier’s book about Jesus called “A Marginal Jew.”
Yeah, remember the old Hagel? He use to sometimes display his inner monologue. They called him on those handful of public mumbles when he was vetted for SOD. They did not bother to vet Kerry for SOS.
POTUS has had Penny Pritzker as a guide since he got his first job in Chicago as a Community Organizer. Rahm’s now the mayor there. Axlerod is now Obama’s inner monologue. Obama likes his shoes.
Nothing Prophetic about Obama—-he’s only about politics and money, politics and money and staying in the DC ‘club’.