Dave's Slightly Cheeseball Shabbat Reflection
Last Friday night I walked into Mt. Zion for Shabbat services, and felt the weight of my kippah like the lightest touch of G-d's hand on my head. It was a gentle touch that could not possibly guide me, and it was faint enough that in my usual frantic pace and consciousness, I might lose awareness of it entirely. Still, it was present enough to me then that it reassured me as I walked into the synagogue. A thought flashed through my head as I walked in: what does it mean to speak with a prophetic voice?
I thought about the young French Jewish man who was kidnapped and tortured and killed, and the way that the news of his death pierced me, hit me like a physical blow. I could see and feel the scene viscerally. How much more of a powder keg of hatred must the world become? Yet another reminder of the seemingly unalterable distance between the work we do and the world as it remains.
It's not enough, is it, to rail at the steady downpour of injustices upon the world, if one really wants to speak with a prophetic voice. But what does it require of us? What if we had to first imagine a future in which G-d becomes fully present in the world, and the world truly becomes a world of complete peace, and truth, and justice? And yet, how fruitless it would be, to perceive such a world in some distant, foggy, nearly unattainable future, a future so obscure that the pathways of our actions and judgments, our hopes and our great loves, would dissipate before reaching it, like footsteps lost in dense fog or snow!
Maybe prophetic vision requires of us a more difficult faith; not just the dissolute faith in a far-off future, but a kind of severe faith in the present, which brooks no excuse or explanation why true justice has not or cannot be achieved now, in a single instant in which the shackles of history and brutality fall away from us like paper. Maybe it is only in the context of this severe faith, against the backdrop of this deeply felt image of justice manifest in the world, this song of songs one can almost hear erupting from every throat in the unfolding of the next moment, that a frail human being can begin to speak with a prophetic voice.
Wouldn’t such a voice inflame us, and charge us with G-d’s imminent presence? It would shock us with the revelation that G-d’s presence remains at the threshold, the brink of *our* being, and can only be realized when we overflow ourselves and spill our wills into the world, transform ourselves and our society, and create the future of justice that remains locked inside us as a flickering possibility.
I thought about the young French Jewish man who was kidnapped and tortured and killed, and the way that the news of his death pierced me, hit me like a physical blow. I could see and feel the scene viscerally. How much more of a powder keg of hatred must the world become? Yet another reminder of the seemingly unalterable distance between the work we do and the world as it remains.
It's not enough, is it, to rail at the steady downpour of injustices upon the world, if one really wants to speak with a prophetic voice. But what does it require of us? What if we had to first imagine a future in which G-d becomes fully present in the world, and the world truly becomes a world of complete peace, and truth, and justice? And yet, how fruitless it would be, to perceive such a world in some distant, foggy, nearly unattainable future, a future so obscure that the pathways of our actions and judgments, our hopes and our great loves, would dissipate before reaching it, like footsteps lost in dense fog or snow!
Maybe prophetic vision requires of us a more difficult faith; not just the dissolute faith in a far-off future, but a kind of severe faith in the present, which brooks no excuse or explanation why true justice has not or cannot be achieved now, in a single instant in which the shackles of history and brutality fall away from us like paper. Maybe it is only in the context of this severe faith, against the backdrop of this deeply felt image of justice manifest in the world, this song of songs one can almost hear erupting from every throat in the unfolding of the next moment, that a frail human being can begin to speak with a prophetic voice.
Wouldn’t such a voice inflame us, and charge us with G-d’s imminent presence? It would shock us with the revelation that G-d’s presence remains at the threshold, the brink of *our* being, and can only be realized when we overflow ourselves and spill our wills into the world, transform ourselves and our society, and create the future of justice that remains locked inside us as a flickering possibility.
posted by Jewish Community Action Staff at 12:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home