Resending: Facing Jerusalem

Daniel 6:11

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^{Daniel’s surprising survival inside the lions’ den is the one story most of us know about this book - but it’s fair to assume most of us are fuzzy on the details - such as - why did he end up in there? How did he survive? And what’s this story all about anyway?}

^{Showing up in today’s chapter - it is a grand tale, and generations of readers have added multiple layers to it making it even more colorful than the biblical original. It’s not only a story about survival and faith but also includes one of the first surprising sets of facts about the evolution and efficacy of Jewish prayer. Since when do Jews face east - and think of Jerusalem, when we pray, whenever we are all over the world? This literal orientation - finding the east and the rising of the sun within and beyond is what keep sustaining us even in the darkest days.}

^{The basic story is that Daniel’s successful career as the royal advisor brings about the jealous wrath of other courtiers, even though, precisely because this seasoned smooth operator has so far managed to serve three kings and two empires. This chapter introduces Darius, the Persian king who has conquered Babylon, took over the court and inherited Daniel’s service. All goes well until his jealous haters find a way to frame Daniel as a traitor who prefers praying to his God rather than obeying the king’s command. It is a lie and will be proven so but at a price. What was Daniel’s crime? His way of prayer - offering us a rare fossil of what was known or imagined to be the ways Jews prayed in the 2nd century BCE - when this text was likely written:}

^{וְדָנִיֵּאל כְּדִי יְדַע דִּי־רְשִׁים כְּתָבָא עַל לְבַיְתֵהּ וְכַוִּין פְּתִיחָן לֵהּ בְּעִלִּיתֵהּ נֶגֶד יְרוּשְׁלֶם וְזִמְנִין תְּלָתָה בְיוֹמָא הוּא  בָּרֵךְ עַל־בִּרְכוֹהִי וּמְצַלֵּא וּמוֹדֵא קֳדָם אֱלָהֵהּ כׇּל־קֳבֵל דִּי־הֲוָא עָבֵד מִן־קַדְמַת דְּנָה׃}

^{When Daniel learned that the new law had been put in writing, he went to his house, in whose upper chamber he had had windows made facing Jerusalem, and three times a day he knelt down, prayed, and made confession to his God, as he had always done.}

^{Daniel 6:11}

^{The Talmud in Tractate Berakhot derives four different rules about prayer from this one verse. This is the first mention of the Jewish obligation to pray three times a day - morning, noon and night. The second rule is that one should try to pray in a room with windows. The third is that prayer predated the destruction of the Temple, as Daniel says that he prayed “like he had done before.” Finally, we learn that one must face east - the direction of Jerusalem when praying.}

^{It’s this last rule that I find most fascinating today - what appears to be an ancient north star - a device for orienting ourselves to distant realities even when we are in a deep diaspora - far away from what we feel is, still, our spiritual home.}

^{Over time this idea became a physical object of art - a literal orientation device with the word ‘Mizrach’ or “East” hanging on the eastern wall of Jewish homes as a way to remember which way to turn. Some of these include what will become the mascot of Jerusalem - the lions of Judah.}

^{In Exile and Restoration: A Study of Jewish Thought in the Sixth Century B.C.E., Jon D. Levenson,}

^{“Daniel’s orientation toward Jerusalem is a liturgical defiance of empire. He re-centers his world, not on Babylonian power but on the sacred geography of his people. This is not nostalgia—it is resistance.”}

^{Interestingly - by the time Darius is ruler over Persia - the Judean exiles are allowed to return to Jerusalem, and whether the book was written during the 5th century BCE or centuries later - Daniel is not among those who goes back to the holy land. He preferred to stay in his new home, among the majority of Jews, but nevertheless kept orienting his heart towards this sacred center. As Walter Brueggemann comments:}

^{“To pray toward Jerusalem in exile is to insist that the center of meaning and hope is not where power presently resides. Daniel performs a subversive geography of hope.”}

^{Brueggemann’s lens is political theology: Daniel refuses the spatial domination of the empire. By opening his windows to the sky and towards other lands and realms, he is connected to realities far beyond the limitations of specific space and time. Perhaps that is the enduring power of prayer?}

^{For this transgression he is found guilty of not adhering to the king’s law and is flung into a dungeon full of lions, sealed with the reluctant king’s ring. But Daniel, like the three children before him, will survive. When the lion’s den is opened up the king is relieved to see his advisor unharmed. In a brutal and cruel gesture of revenge those who framed Daniel - along with their families - are fed to the lions instead. This added flourish of fury is infuriating, even as fiction, reminding us of how many innocent lives keep perishing when hatred and injustice replace wisdom, patience and the pursuit of peace and justice - for all.}

^{As we end the Passover week and echo the words that we changed at the end of Seder - Next Year in Jerusalem - we can be reminded, thanks to Daniel’s directional prayer that it is not just about the physical city now busy and bustling again - but about its role as the image of a city of peace, the place where complex realities can one day co-exist with more harmony, a role model for the world. In one of his poems,beloved Jerusalem based poet Yehuda Amichai echoes Daniel:}

^{“And every day / Jerusalem became more and more the place to which I turned my face—not in nostalgia / but in hope. / A kind of compass, not just a city.”}

^{From Jerusalem, looking out through the open windows towards the old city, to your hearts and homes wherever you are reading this-- may it be so and may peace prevail.}

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