In Israel and Palestine today terror has unleashed a terrible price of death and devastation, still escalating. Israel is at war with a terrorist organization and we pray for the cessation of violence, return of the kidnapped, healing for the wounded, consolation for the bereaved, repair of this rupture and a peaceful solution in our lifetime. It is impossible for me to go on about life as usual while this tragic situation goes on, amplifying the trauma that these chapters in Jeremiah echo from our past - the fear, the wars, the walls, the yearning for security and serenity. I hope you and your loved ones safe and hopeful.
This weekend, the Jewish calendar marked the holiday of Simchat Torah - the celebration of the continuity of the sacred story, retold each year as the Torah scrolls unroll to reveal, again, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. We begin again, from ‘In the beginning’.
We’re also just ending #bannedbooksweek.
How sad and ironic that in today’s chapter of Jeremiah we witness a banned book — the first time a section of these scriptures is put to the flames, as an act of censorship - the first of many such tragic moments.
What makes it worse is that the one to burn the book was one of the last Judean kings of Jerusalem. So what’s the story and how did it survive?
The prophet Jeremiah had a lot to say to Jerusalem, and his prophetic messages were rarely popular. Nobody likes to repent.
At some point, mid-career, he hires an assistant, Baruch Ben-Nerya, to become his scribe, secretary and public spokesman. Baruch, who would go on to have his own book someday, takes to the task, and in today’s chapter of Jeremiah, we are told of the process by which the prophet, inspired by YHWH’s message in his head, dictates to Baruch who writes it down, and the written word becomes a sacred scroll, likely full of warnings and lamentations.
Baruch is sent to the temple gates to proclaim the written prophecies to the people, on Jeremiah’s behalf. It’s possible that this is because Jeremiah is already wanted by the king for his subversive and disturbing criticism of the king’s policies and the public’s general abuse of ethical laws. This is a new reality -- until now it’s been Jeremiah who was both the receiver of transmission and the one to deliver it onwards.
The message is dark and the messengers are blamed, and persecuted by those in power. King Jehoiakim’s ministers hear what Jeremiah has to say and confiscate the scroll. What happens next is the first book burning in our history:
“Since it was the ninth month, the king was sitting in the winter house, with a fire burning in the brazier before him.
And every time Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut it up with a scribe’s knife and throw it into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed by the fire.”
“As the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies was read to him, King Jehoiakim only heard it as a prophecy of his own downfall, and his loss of power. His response was to systematically tear the scroll itself into pieces and burn each piece until nothing was left. If it was going to threaten his reign, then no one else was going to hear a dissenting opinion, even if it was the word of God.”
And so it begins. As the written word becomes a popular method for spreading ideas, so does its violent repression.
Morris continues:
“Book-burning has been used to suppress dissent and protect totalitarian regimes throughout history. From the early thirteenth century when Pope Gregory IX directed King Louis IX of France to burn every copy of the Talmud in Paris to the mid twentieth century when Stalin burned the entire Judaica collection in the capital of the Jewish Oblast of Russia, Jewish texts have been prime targets.
Unfortunately, Jews themselves have not been guiltless of this crime. Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed was deemed heretical by some Jewish factions and burned in France in 1233. In 1954 The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada burned the books of Mordecai Kaplan, co-founder of the Reconstructionist Movement, at a public event in New York City. The first recorded instance of Jewish book-burning occurs in Jeremiah 36.”
But Jeremiah was not deterred and the chapter ends with a second version, a new scroll repeating the same messages as before, and with additional material:
So Jeremiah got another scroll and gave it to the scribe Baruch son of Neriah. And at Jeremiah’s dictation, he wrote in it the whole text of the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah had burned; and more of the like was added.”
Heinrich Heine's ominous sentence, "those who burn books will in the end burn people" comes to mind here. Jeremiah’s journey is about to become more complex and dangerous, as the political situation becomes worse and his warnings are seen as personal attacks on the king and the court. The message will survive, and so will the messengers, but barely.
This sacred story, despite attacks from within and without, triumphant, lives on.
Let the scrolls roll on. Let hope persist in the face of turmoil.
Even the recent ban of the bible in some schools in the Unites States won’t silence Jeremiah, or the spirit of prophecy, or at least we hope so.
Keep hope alive.
Save the Date:
Jeremiah & the Queen of Heaven
Next Below the Bible Belt Zoom Live Conversation with Rabbi Amichai
October 18, 5pm ET
As we wrap up our long journey with the Prophet Jeremiah, as witnesses to the fall of Jerusalem, we get to ponder and ask some big questions. Some of these were heard among the survivors and the refugees of Jerusalem’s destruction, some still echo today. What do we learn from these tragic chapters about the ways we face our own big questions and keep cultivating hope?
Join the Free Zoom Conversation with your questions and thoughts:
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