Jeremiah stands at the gate to the temple in Jerusalem, and sees two baskets of figs. Are they real or a vision? We’ll never know. But they are very different looking and represent a major shift in Jewish history.
One basket contains juicy fresh figs, but the other basket is full of rotten ones.
What’s this binary vision all about? The end of Zion as he knows it. Not just the fate of the city but its role as the central, primary symbol of the Jewish enterprise. The weight begins to shift to the diaspora.
The vision is seen by Jeremiah at a critical historical moment, clearly defined in this chapter: “This was after King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon had exiled King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, and the officials of Judah, and the artisans and smiths, and had brought them from Jerusalem to Babylon.”
A Babylonian Chronicle records that, in his seventh year (597 BCE), Nebuchadnezzar "besieged the city of Judah and on the second day of the second month of Adar, seized the city, and captured the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice, received its heavy tribute and returned to Babylon."
In the Second Book of Kings, the same account names the last two Judean kings, the deposed king Jeconiah, who is exiled with his court to Babyblon -- and Nebuchadnezzar’s "chosen puppet king," Zedekiah, who would rule for eleven more years until the final destruction.
“YHWH spoke: As with these good figs, so will I single out for good the Judean exiles whom I have driven out from this place to the land of the Chaldeans...And like the bad figs, which are so bad that they cannot be eaten—YHWH said—so will I treat King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials and the remnant of Jerusalem that is left in this land, and those who are living in the land of Egypt: I will make them a horror—an evil—to all the kingdoms of the earth, a disgrace and a proverb, a byword and a curse in all the places to which I banish them.”
Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, writing from Canada, unpacks how in some ways Jeremiah’s vision here plants the seeds for diasporic thinking, and even post - or anti-Zionism:
“In many of its forms, modern Zionism has involved a rejection of exilic life. Likewise, exilic life, at its outset, required a rejection of a certain form of Jewish nationalism. Jeremiah’s prophecies reorient the center of Jewish life from Israel to Babylon, even as Jeremiah himself remains fixed in Jerusalem. The process begins with the legitimization of Jewish life in Babylon as a viable national identity, separate from the national identity embodied by the monarchy of Zedekiah and the city of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah utilizes the metaphor of two baskets of figs to first equate the Jewish people living in Babylon (after their removal with King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE) with those who remain under Zedekiah’s rule in Jerusalem (1-10). The structures of state and those of exile are simply containers, which hold no more meaning than their ability to organize the people. In comparing these two baskets of figs, Jeremiah denigrates those who stay in Jerusalem as a disgrace, horror and curse.
By contrast, Jews living in Babylon will experience divine favor, will be built up, and will be graced with knowledge of God.
In moving the Jewish “center of gravity” from Jerusalem to Babylon, Jeremiah theologically decouples the Jewish people from its land, so that it might survive as “a people without a land.” This constitutes a crucial move in the Jewish story - allowing the Jewish people to remain connected to the land in their dreams and prayers, while residing on foreign soil. This too might be considered a form of Zionism - an inverse Zionism.”
Just two baskets of figs. But an entire new chapter. Jeremiah will stay behind with the bad figs, until the bitter end.
2,400 years later, as Israel exists and most world Jews still prefer to live outside its borders, this vision is riveting. This week, as protests against Israel’s ultra nationalist government have spilled to the streets of New York, Jeremiah’s prophecy is once again an invitation -- can we have more than one basket of good figs in more than one place and more than one set of loyalties?
Shana Tova.
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