Jeremiah and Coping
( after 17th
Tammuz)
It is a very frightening world—rockets from Gaza into
Israel, Israeli soldiers now inside Gaza, a passenger airline downed on the
Ukraine-Russian border, an Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. No end of tsorres,
troubles.
This last Tuesday was the 17th of Tammuz, when
we recall the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem, and in two weeks, it will be
the 9th of Av, when we recall the fall of the Temple, twice.
Our tradition doesn’t let us forget that there can be immense
disasters that have always befallen us.
How can we cope with it?
There is an old story, of a man who comes to his Rebbe:
"Rabbi, you must help
me? I have a thousand problems!"
--A thousand problems! What
are they?--
---I tell you, the holidays
are coming. I need food for my family, clothes for my wife, pants for my boys,
dresses for my girls. It's impossible!
---Wait, said the
Rabbi--don't despair. Let's make a list of everything, and how much it will
cost. -- Food-$500-Dress--$80--pants-$50, etc. , etc. --now, let's add it up It
comes to $1000. It tell you, thank God, you don’t know how lucky you are. You
came in and said you had a thousand problems-We've just solved 999 of them. You
only have one problem left to solve-- where to get $1000. You have my blessing.
Often, our woes can as easily be joked
aside. Many times, what looms as catastrophes in our eyes, in retrospect are
minor incidents, easily overcome.
Many of our woes descend on us in the form of the old
line,” What's the difference between a recession and a depression--The
recession is the other guys troubles. The depression? Those are my troubles!
The recessions can be handled with some agility, the depressions,
though, can tear us apart. What happens when one depression follows another,
when disaster strikes in succession, or in such overwhelming force, as to
devastate entire communities? How then can we cope?
What happens when an economy enters a major recession or
depression as happened only a few years ago, almost bring down the world economy?
What happens in the wake of an invasion or a civil war take-over, when all hopes
of liberty and normalcy are dashed to the ground? What happens when events
strike which are out of human control-an earthquake in California, a hurricane in
Florida, a Tsunami in Japan?
What then is our reaction?
As Jews, we may well have cornered the market on
disasters. Our history
overflows with tragedy, and
if the Noble Prize for literature were given to nations,
we would surely win it for
the quality of our tragedies.
There are two historic
responses that we have formed. One the on hand, we
are familiar with that response
: “Mipnei Chataenu "-Because of our sins we were
punished. We find it
repeatedly in Biblical, Talmudic, and Medieval Jewish literature.
However, there is another
response, a uniquely Jewish posture, a stance
against misery on a massive
scale, a refusal to accept disaster passively,
an insistence on calling heaven to task for a rotten state of affairs.
The originator of this posture was the Prophet, Jeremiah,
from whom we have today’s Haftarah.
Jeremiah lived and eye witnessed the first what we could
call” Holocaust” of our history,
the destruction of the first
Temple, and the elimination of Judea as a sovereign state. He was a double
sufferer, for not only did he live through it, but, like Cassandra of the Greek
myth, he knew it was coming for years in advance and no one would heed his
warnings.
We have an amazing record,
not only of his message, but of his feelings and gut level response as well.
He is a lonely man.
He knows that disaster will come, so he remains a bachelor-why
marry and have children, only to lose them? Why fall in love only to suffer the
pain of loss?
He refrains from social contact. Why have friends, only
to lose them to the
sword?
Because of his message, he is a roundly hated man-hated
by the king, the
priests . He is the only
prophet to have the dubious distinction of being thrown in jail.
Surely his mother never
boasted. "My son, the prophet" and he himself
wanted only one thing-to
stop being a prophet. But it is out of his hands.
God informs him,
"Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you." (1:5)
This is hardly a great privilege,
and Jeremiah retorts, "Woe is me, my mother, that you ever bore me-- a man
of conflict and strife with all the land ! (15:10).
Or “ Cursed be the day I was born, let not he day be
blessed when my mother bore me.
Why did I ever issue from
the womb, to see misery and woe, to spend all my days in shame. "(20:14-18)
Jeremiah, like Cassandra, is doomed to report the truth ,
and be hated for
it. Yet, he cannot keep
quiet.
"There is a fire in my heart, a burning fire, shut
up in my bones, and I weary
myself to hold it in. But I
can't!" ( 20:9)
When there is so much tearing inside a person’s heart, it
inevitably produces anger.
Jeremiah’s anger, understandably
, is directed at those who persecute him and
who are responsible for the
nations downfall.
But there is, as well, a Promethean streak in Jeremiah, a
Promethean streak
that has become a part of
the Jewish reaction to disaster, a trait that has remained
a Jewish response, side by
side with the response of "mipnei hataneu’, because of our sins.
Jeremiah accuses. "0 Lard, you have enticed me, and
I was enticed. You overpowered me "You would be right, O Lord, if I
contended with you. But I will present charges against you, nevertheless. ! Why
do the ways of the wicked prosper, why
are the treacherous ones at ease. "(12:1)
Jeremiah
is hurling accusations against God! God is deceitful. God is unjust. "Why
is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable? Will you indeed be like a river
bed whose waters are deceitful, whose waters run dry?"(15:18).
Had
this been a Greek tragedy, at this very point, the earth would have opened up,
Jeremiah would have been swallowed up, and the chorus would chime in,
"Thus shall be done to those who question the wisdom of the gods.”
Prometheus gets his liver yanked out anew every day for caring for humanity.
But
this is not a Greek tragedy, this is a Biblical text. Fate is not inexorable,
destiny is not an abstraction, and God is expected to be just.
God’s response to Jeremiah is-"Keep a stiff upper
lip, hang in there. "
"I shall save you from
the hands of the wicked and rescue you from the clutches of the violent".
(15:19)
It
forms a scenario for future Jewish disasters-God is a god of justice; therefore
he is accountable for his actions. We don't accept disaster passively, as a
consequence. After the destruction of the Second Temple, a Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani
could envision a scene such as this in heaven.
Abraham comes to
God in anger. Why did you break your covenant with me!"
-Well, they did, after all,
break the law, and here is the law in evidence.
Abraham turned to the law, "Shame on you. How could
you testify against my children. They were the only ones, of all the people on
earth, who accepted you.'' The law withdrew its testimony.
So God brought in the letters of the alphabet to testify,
and Abraham embarrassed each and every one. Soon, God was left without any
evidence against the children of Israel.
Abraham now went out the offensive. "Didn’t I offer
my Isaac as a sacrifice , only to see my children destroyed.”
Isaac then chimed in, "Didn’t I offer my life, only
for my children to be destroyed ? "
Then Jacob, David, Moses,
and Jeremiah and Rachel all joined in. Even the sun and the angels began to
complain.
Finally. God himself joined in the lamentation, and swore
to return his
people to Zion.(Peticha,
Eicha Rabbati).
Such a legend grows out of a peculiar belief, a
peculiarly Jewish outlook,
a belief in a God of
justice, but not an abstraction, rather,
a God whom human beings have the right to bring to task. This is implicit in
Jeremiah 's complaint and explicit in Jewish lore.
It repeats itself in Hasidic literature.
It is told of the Baal Shem Tov, that in his synagogue,
on Yom. Kippur,
there was one modest and
humble tailor, who argued vocally, in the midst
of the service, just prior
to the chanting of the confession of sins.
"I have, sinned, I have
betrayed! Very well, God, I admit. I may
have overcharged
here, I may have skimped on
cloth there, I may even have lied about how
the clothes fit well.
"But look at you! Look what you did! You make
orphans, widows, plagues,
earthquakes-all that is your
doing. So, I'll tell you, we'll make a deal.
You forgive me my sins, and
I'll forgive you yours. "
The Baal Shem Tov turned to him, 'You fool! Why did you
stop You had God by the throat. Why, a little more squeezing, and he' ld have
been forced to send the Messiah. !"
This Jewish perspective on God and God’s justice is
incomprehensible in Islam, which considers God as the sole and total force of
all events and whose ideal is “Islam”, complete submission to the will of God.
Certainly it is incomprehensible in the Christian theology of a Paul or a
Martin Luther or a Calvin, for whom human actions cannot possible bring about
redemption as that would be forcing God to respond to human action.
What has been the characteristic , not only of our great prophets
and sages, but of the “poshte yid”, the simple Jew on the street, has been to
hold on to faith, despite the doubt, despite the anger.
The Jewish
response, as we have seen, in this century in particular, has been to reaffirm
our Jewishness, to reaffirm our Judaism. We have seen a nation created out of
the devastated remnants of Europe , Africa, and Asia. We saw Jews who had been
forced to hide their identity in the Soviet Union and other eastern European
countries persevere and survive the Iron Curtain, to reemerge as
Jews here and in Israel. What is true on a scale of the people as a whole can
then be true on an individual scale; we absorb the slings and arrows of our
daily illnesses or sufferings, but, rather than resign ourselves to them, we
argue, we protest, we move ourselves. Nevertheless, we have “emunah”, a faith,
to drive us beyond our woes, and build our lives in a better and nobler form.
We can have a Jeremiah utter a Jeremiad, a Lamentation,
an Eichah, and then we can have a Jeremiah remind us: Is
not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak
against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have
great compassion for him," declares the LORD.
That
is the hope that keeps us going.
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