Are you a pessimist, an optimist, or a bit of both? In his monumental book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, psychotherapist and Holocaust Survivor Viktor Frankl coined a specific sort of hopefulness - based on his personal trials. For Frankl “tragic optimism is the ability to maintain hope and find meaning in life, despite its inescapable pain, loss, and suffering.”
For Isaiah, living in 8th century BCE Jerusalem, finding hope on the horizon as the drums of war grew closer was a spiritual necessity. In the previous chapter he described the ax that will cut down the natural and human forests of Israel, demolishing all that they knew. But in today’s chapter he focused on the one new tree that will rise from the burnet forest - the future of continuity despite the odds. And as he goes on to describe that better future he creates one of the more memorable optimistic and detailed utopian prophecies of all time. This is the famous chapter where lions and lambs lay down together and everybody gets along in the vegan vision of a future where we are all one - no more food chain, just love.
In his commentary on today’s chapter, Rabbi Dr Bradley Shavit Artson writes beautifully about one aspect of this utopian future:
“The most sublime rhetoric in the Bible is found in the Prophets. And the most exalted of the Prophets is Isaiah. And Isaiah’s most memorable line is found in Chapter 11:
לֹא־יָרֵ֥עוּ וְלֹֽא־יַשְׁחִ֖יתוּ בְּכׇל־הַ֣ר קׇדְשִׁ֑י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֣ה הָאָ֗רֶץ דֵּעָה֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֔ה כַּמַּ֖יִם לַיָּ֥ם מְכַסִּֽים׃
“Upon My sacred mount
Nothing evil or vile shall be done;
For the land shall be filled with knowledge of the Divine,
As water covers the sea.”
Isaiah 11:9
This powerful vision has inspired across the ages. Maimonides selected it as his culminating verse in his description of the Messianic era and it resonates with us today as well.
Isaiah understands that there are several ways that our time, an age of alienation from nature and each other, an era of violence and fear and destruction, a time of uncertainty and argument, has to be fundamentally fixed in a time of redemption. That future redemption will be marked, as it must, by three fundamental shifts:
Redemption cannot be limited just to the Jews, just to humanity, just to life. The entire cosmos has to participate in this upwelling of wellbeing, an age of universal harmony and abundant thriving. In such a time, our home is seen as a holy mountain: stable, noble, calm.
On that day, the contentiousness, violence, and rage that pervade our world will have no place. Instead, harm and destruction will be a distant memory, like our childhood tantrums. We will, each and all, honor ourselves and each other, cherish our deepest needs and those of our fellows, and will seek to participate in a harmony that will allow each individual to shine in their own uniqueness.
Finally, this harmonious living won’t be superficial, an outer coating that hides a deeper fear and uncertainty. No, this harmony will be the blossom reflecting rootedness in first hand knowledge of all that unites us and inspires us with purpose. That “knowledge of God” is not simply factual information, although it involves that too. Knowledge of God is about devotion, existential engagement, emotional honesty, and an orientation toward service and gratitude.
When we ascend to the summit of integrated awareness, we are transformed – and our world with us. Like the sea, we undulate with dynamic waves of joy, possibility, and love, expansive enough to embrace each other, all humanity, and all life.”
What will a future look like when we are all on the same page, drenched by the same waters of deep knowledge - that underneath the skin and our so-called differences we are all one, one species, one life form, deeply intertwined?
For Isaiah and for so many other visionary prophets and healers like Victor Frankl - this is the promise of redemption worth waiting for - and working for - every single moment of our lives -- Even if we don’t think we’ll get there ourselves.
Today’s chapter echoes in one more visionary hope - a song written in 1977 that has only grown more popular with the years. On that year, as Israel signed a peace deal with Egypt, my dear friend, Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza composed a song written by the recently deceased Yonatan Geffen. “Yihiye Tov” - Everything will be OK - became iconic. The end of the song imagines a bright future of peace and co-existence, paraphrasing the messianic vision described in this chapter: “The wolf will come to live with the lamb, and the tiger will lie down with the kid”.
Well, we still sing it, now more than ever. Neither Isaiah’s vision nor these modern prophetic voices has yet to manifest but we have to hold on to optimism, tragic and not, and keep working for the world in which we somehow are reminded, always, that like water in all its different states - we too are all one. Here’s hoping.
Image: Will Bullas , “Peaceable Kingdom with Two Olives.”
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I'm catching up on more than a week's BBB, and this one moved me very much, the energy in your prose and the eloquence of your undertstanding. "Knowledge of God"---"the summit of integrated awareness" Bravo!