Prophecy is for everyone!
A respected teacher, activist and newly-ordained rabbi, Ilana Sumka, included this phrase (without the exclamation mark!) in an invitation to sign up for her new course on renewing the prophetic today, “Prophecy School.”
The declaration is either a deeply heretical notion, or an apt description for the contemporary legacy of soapbox speakers, snake oil scammers, and street corner preachers.
These days, in the darkness of the dark web as well as in memes, posts and podcasts, a raft of self-proclaimed preachers and pundits prophecy (rhyme it with sigh) prolifically. X truth or Y product will either bring heavenly endurance or doomed demise. From facial care to who will reign (or rain terror), future prognosticators tell us with fierce faith what shall ensue.
The phenomenon is not new, but the trend line is spiking. Very little of what we took for granted in the unfolding of time – say, the arc of our seasonal weather – is holding.
Biblical prophecy may have ended millennia ago, but the 2000s have us careening towards a highly unpredictable future. The prophets of yore were primarily concerned with present-moment circumstances pertaining to the moral and physical well-being of their people. They were also primed to pay attention to the “still small voice” – call it inner wisdom, call it Divine inspiration, call it a now-that-I’ve-seen-it-I-can’t-do-other-than-respond-to-it inclination to do justly.
Though our community dropped the liturgical inclusion of the Haftarah on Shabbat mornings, the passages paired with the Torah reading drawn from the books of the Prophets, I am thinking of a section of verses for this coming Shabbat:
“Thus said GOD, the Sovereign of Israel, Their Redeemer, GOD of Hosts:
I am the first and I am the last, and there is no god but Me.Who like Me can announce, can foretell it—and match Me thereby?
Even as I told the future to an ancient people, so let anyone foretell coming events to them.Do not be frightened, do not be shaken! Have I not from of old predicted to you?
I foretold, and you are My witnesses. Is there any god, then, but Me?
“There is no other rock; I know none!”” -Isaiah 44:6-8
The essence of the message is a spiritual one. The 18th commentator, Metzudat David, reinforces this by explaining briefly that “I am the first” means: before Creation, and “I am the last” means after all is destroyed, that is, the end of the world.
This is, to me, reassuring. Yes, the words of the prophets may be written on the subway walls and tenement halls. I link the lyrics of Paul Simon with the teaching of Abraham Joshua Heschel: “The prophet is a person who sees the world with the eyes of God, who holds God and humanity in one thought at one time, at all times.”
Heschel calls us in, inviting us to fuse the ancient prophets’ calls with a contemporary vision of justice for all. We may not hear prophetic voices so clearly these days, so let’s dial in more purposefully, more intentionally, and more open-heartedly to know what we are called to do.
My friend Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, whom I had the honour of introducing as the incoming President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at our convention last week, taught us about her daily practice of asking herself: what I am called to do, and what am I called not to do. It’s a beautiful distillation of the personal and the political, the spiritual and the ethical.
Prophecy IS for everyone! Take part. Heed your call.
Rabbi Liz
