How We Love to Hate the Prophets

How we love to hate the prophets. History has shown this trend as it is doing now - when prophetic voices raise the flags of warning and rebuke - we rather look away and blame them for our faults. 

The prophet can be one who brings comfort to the suffering people, such as Nahum, the minor prophet from the Bible whose name means ‘The One who brings Comfort’. He lifts his people’s traumatized reality with visions of a better future that includes their enemy’s dramatic loss. It isn’t pretty. And there are other kinder ways to offer consolation to people who need hope. 

But the most important role of the prophet is to be the one who speaks the inconvenient truth to power,  to the people who would rather live with pain and sometimes inflict pain, then face the consequences, and change. It’s true for each one of us who rebukes who’s who give us constructive feedback, and it’s true for nations that silence those who call for higher moral ground. We shoot the messenger. We silence the prophets. Sometimes we shoot them down. 

Today in Moscow a brave prophet was buried because he used his voice to speak up against an evil regime. Aleksey Navalny is dead, and his widow, Yulia, stepping up to continue the opposition, claims that he was killed by the Kremlin. That’s how powers handle prophets. 

In Berlin, earlier this week,  Yuval, Abraham and  Basel Adra, Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers stood up to receive a prestigious prize for their documentary film about the Israeli Occupation. 

They didn’t think they’ll win and their acceptance speech was improvised and powerful and caused a lot of noise as they both named the occupation as the problem at the core of this horrific war, and Abraham called Israel an apartheid state. The backlash from Israeli media was immediate, Yuval’s speech was named antisemitic and he began receiving warnings on his life. That’s how powers handle prophets. In my opinion, for all its worth, Yuval is not an antisemite, but a Jew who calls out Israel for its continued occupation of the Palestinian people and the terrible cost of life and justice that this continues to claim on us all. Rather than face the facts he is considered a hater, just like Navalny or so many others when we rather blame than name tough, messy, complex, more than one sided truths. And do something about it. 

We don’t know the fate of most of the biblical prophets whose words are left behind as moral clarion calls for generations of people who seek lives of justice and peace and get mired in human faults that sometimes become tragic. Jeremiah ends up a refugee, after almost getting killed by the people of Jerusalem for his pacifist views. Amos was driven out of town. Micah, whose book we just finished this week spoke harsh truths in Jerusalem and though his words survive his criticism was ignored. 

 No more sacrifices focus on justice you have all gotten Too attached for the golden calves of illusion! Micahs warnings will be echoes  in synagogues this weekend as we the story of the golden calf will be chanted. But will we remember that the golden calf is the seduction of material man made power sometimes blinding us with its glittery collective unity or greed or whatever it is that takes us away from the the real deal that is coming down the mountain in the hand of the first prophet Moses, with the 10 laws of morality and ethical sacred religious behavior that include do not covet and do not steal and do not murder, because we are all in the image of one? 

Today on below the Bible belt, we honor  the prophets, ancient and contemporary, who pay a price, sometimes with their lives, for speaking truth to power, on behalf of the most sacred source of all, and we commit to the prophetic voice that we can help broadcast, amplify, listen to, identify and celebrate so we can be part of the solution not just the problem, and each of us in some way can help heal and help hope and bring about a better day. 

Thank you for joining me below the Bible Belt to learn from the prophets. To be continued next week. Kinder days, hope and healing. 

 Shabbat shalom