False prophets and dreamers: Parshat Re’eh

About half an hour north of where we once lived in Leeds is a sign pointing to “Mother Shipton’s Cave.” I regret now that we never took a detour to visit that cave.

On its website, Mother Shipton’s Cave bills itself as, “England’s Oldest Tourist Attraction, open since 1630.” It claims to be “the legendary birthplace of England’s most famous prophetess.”

Since this week’s Torah reading speaks about prophets, I thought I would learn more about Mother Shipton.

She wasn’t always called by that name. According to her 17^th-century biographers, she was born in 1486 as Ursula Southeil. Her mother, Agnes, who was a 15-year-old orphan, gave birth to her in a cave in Knaresborough, (which is now the site of the tourist attraction). Baby Ursula was born during a thunderstorm, and according to Richard Head, who wrote, “The Life, Prophecies and Death of the Famous Mother Shipton,” her father was none other than the devil himself. And this parentage is what gave Urusula her magic abilities and prophecy.

Baby Ursula terrified all who saw her. According to Head:

She was of an indifferent height, but very morose and big-boned; her head very long, with very great goggling, but sharp and fiery eyes; her nose of an incredible and unproportionable length, having in it many crooks and turnings, adorned with many strange pimples of divers colors

Her neck was so strangely distorted that her right shoulder was forced to be a supporter to her head, it being propped up by the help of her chin, so that the right side of her body stood lower than her left, like the reeling of a ship that sails with a side wind.

For two years, Agatha did her best to raise her daughter in the cave, but eventually, the Abbot of Beverley intervened and instructed the local parishioners to look after the young mother and her baby. Agatha was sent to an orphanage, and Ursula was fostered by a kind family who cared for her and raised her. But even as a small child, Ursula displayed magical powers, scaring those who tried to help her. When she started school, she stunned the teacher with her ability to read, though she had never received lessons previously.

As she grew older, her fame spread further, and people would come to her for advice or predictions. “Especially young maidens who have always a great desire to know when they shall be married, as also, what manner of husbands they shall have.” Ursula’s answers were so accurate, that all the young women in the district began coming to her.

Statue of Mother Shipton in Knaresborough. (CCO, Mx. Granger/ WIkimedia Commons)

When Ursula was 24-years-old, she married Toby Shipton, and from that time forth became known as Mother Shipton. Barely two years later, Toby passed away, and either due to grief or ostracism of her neighbors, Ursula left her home and began living in the nearby woods.

And there she became famous as a prophetess. Head lists her prophecies and their fullfilment. She said that water will one day flow over the bridge which crossed over the River Ouse near York:

‘Before the Ouse Bridge and Trinity Church meets, they shall build it in the day and it shall fall in the night, until they get the highest stone of Trinity Church the lowest stone of Ouse Bridge.’

This came to pass; for Trinity steeple in York was blown down with a tempest, and Ouse Bridge broken down with a flood, and what they did in the daytime in repairing the bridge fell down in the night, till at last they laid the highest stone of the steeple for the foundation of the bridge.

She foretold national events, like Henry VIII’s victory in Battle of the Spurs in France, and personal fortunes for individual soldiers who consulted her. She predicted Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries. And, although she lived and died in the 15th century, Mother Shipton also prophesied the death of Cardinal Wolsey the English Civil War and the Great Fire of London, which wouldn’t take place until almost a century after her 1561 death:

‘A time shall happen when a ship shall come sailing up the Thames, till it comes against London, and the master of the ship will ask the captain why he weeps, since he had made so good a voyage. And he will say, and what a good city this was, none in the world comparable to it, and now there’s scarce a house left that can let us drink for our money.’

These last words were sadly verified after the dreadful fire of London in 1666; when there was not a house left along the Thames side from the Tower to the Temple.

She became so widely known across the country that some think Henry VIII was referring to her when he mentioned a “witch of York” in a letter to the Duke of Norfolk.

Mother Shipton’s house, in “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. (Public Domain/ Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to being a prophetess, Shipton also made herbal remedies and cast spells to for those who came to visit her.

However, we know that at least one of her prophecies did not come true. The last line of prophecy in Head’s book reads:

The world to an end shall come; In eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

Why were her predictions only accurate for the 17th century, but not the 20th? Perhaps because the books containing those prophecies were only published in the 17th century, a year after the Great Fire of London.

Mother Shipton never wrote down her prophecies, and none of them were published in her lifetime. The first account of Mother Shipton’s prophecies was published by a woman named Joanne Walker in 1641, 80 years after Shipton’s death. Walker claimed she had heard these prophecies as a young child and transcribed them. Predicting the 1666 fire would still be impressive, except that those lines are not written in Shipton’s 16th-century style, and in 1873, publisher Charles Hindley admitted he himself had added that text.

Another added prophecy from the 19th-century edition describes trains and ships, which Hindley knew about, but Shipton would not have:

Carriages without horses shall go;

And accidents fill the world with woe…

Iron in the water shall float,

As easy as a wooden boat

Mother Shipton remains a legend in Yorkshire, and the cave where she was born still draws tourists to this day. But we do not have any direct evidence that any of her predictions about the distant future actually came true.

In this week’s Torah portion of Re’eh, we read about the danger of listening to prophets who try to lead the people in the wrong direction. Although the Torah never refers to them as false prophets, that is what we would call them nowadays.

Deuteronomy 13:2-4 states:

When a prophet or dreamer arises in your midst and gives you a sign or omen. And the sign or omen comes true, and he says to you, ‘Let us go after false gods who you did not know, and worship them.’ Do not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord, your God is testing you, to know if you love the Lord, your God, with all your hearts and all your souls.

Recently I attended a class by Dr. Shmuel Vigoda, where he asked a simple question: Does a false prophet know he is a false prophet?

When a prophet stands up and prophesies falsely in the name of God, is he a deceiver who knows he is lying, or is he also convinced and believes that he really heard the word of God?

I suppose throughout history there have been people who pretended to be prophets for some material gain or personal benefit. Presumably they knew themselves that they were lying. But Dr. Vigoda quoted Martin Buber who said that sometimes a false prophet may really believe his or her own prophecy.

Martin Buber in Israel. (Public Domain, Central Zionist Archives/ Wikimedia Commons)

Buber was born in 1878. At the age of 20, he joined the Zionist movement, and it was there that he first met Theodore Herzl. When World War I started, Buber initially saw it as part of the German destiny, and imagined it had the potential to unify European Jewry and thus hasten the ultimate redemption. But in 1916, during the war, he changed his mind as he saw the massive scale of war’s tragedy and destruction.

In 1938 Buber went to Jerusalem. And watched from there the unfolding of the Holocaust and the destruction caused by German nationalism and messianism.

After the Holocaust, Buber wrote a book on prophecy entitled “The Prophetic Faith.” In it, he discusses chapters 27 and 28 of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah had been a prophet since he was a child (Jeremiah 1:5-6). He spent his entire life speaking to God. He knew what prophecy was, and knew the word of God.

God told him (chapter 27) to go to Zedekiah and prophesize that Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, was going to destroy the Temple, and take the people into captivity. He symbolically wore a yoke around his neck, to symbolize that soon the entire nation would be under the yoke of Babylon.

Rembrandt van Rijn, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem c. 1630. (Public Domain/ Wikimedia Commons)

But his words fall on deaf ears. Instead of listening to him and repenting, a prophet named Hananiah the son of Azzur stood up and proclaimed exactly the opposite. He foretold that the yoke of Babylon was broken and within two years the Temple would be restored to its former glory.

Hananiah symbolized his prophecy by smashing the yoke around Jeremiah’s neck.

Instead of protesting or countering, Jeremiah’s response was to respond, “Amen, may God do so,” (Jeremiah 28:6). And then Jeremiah walks away (verse 11).

Buber asks why did Jeremiah walk away? He knew his own prophecy was true. Why did he first consult with God before replying to Hananiah?

Jeremiah knew there was a fundamental difference between a positive and a negative prophecy. If a prophet foretells destruction, the goal is for the people to repent, and if they do so, God will forego the destruction. An example of this happened with the people of Ninveh, who repented when they heard Jonah’s prophecy that the city would be overturned, and as a result, the they were saved.

Thus a prophet who speaks of destruction can never be proven to be false.

However, there is a principle that God never changes His mind about promised good tidings. If a prophet speaks of good things to come, he will be proven false if the prophecy fails to materialize.

According to Buber, Jeremiah heard Hananiah’s prophecy, and fervently hoped it would come to pass. “Amen, may God do so,” he said. Perhaps, in an instant, God had changed His mind and would not destroy His nation. In that instant, Jeremiah heard Hananiah’s prophecy and was able to abandon his years of doom and gloom for a hopeful future. He did not know if Hananiah was prophesying the truth or not, so Jeremiah went away to consult again with God.

Only after he heard the word of God telling him that Hananiah’s prophecy was false, did Jeremiah reject that prophecy.

The Call of Jeremiah, depicted in an 1860 woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld. (Public Domain/ Wikimedia Commons)

In contrast, Hananiah was so confident and certain that he knew God’s intent that he could not listen to any alternative opinions. He was the true patriot, predicting the Kingdom of Judah would be saved, and utterly rejecting Jeremiah’s doomsaying to the contrary.

According to Buber, the distinction between a true prophet and a false prophet is the ability to listen. Not only to the word of God but also to alternative opinions.

Hananiah believed his prophecy was true, but it also aligned with his personal views, and it suited him that the word of God was identical to the thoughts of Hananiah. Jeremiah did his best to ignore his own thoughts and ideas, and only to listen to the true word of God. He would gladly rid himself of his yoke the moment God would allow him to do so.

Buber initially thought World War I would bring victory for Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire. He believed in its righteousness, and even saw it as a step towards the Jewish messianic fullfilment. Yet midway through the Great War, he was able to look again and realize that the opposite was true. The scale of death and destruction was too great. He understood that God’s thoughts were not the same as his own ideas.

This is what Buber warns us about in his philosophy of prophecy. If the message is entirely identical with the worldview of the messenger, and nothing can change that view, then perhaps it is the false prophecy we are warned about in this week’s Torah reading.

When we look around us, we see so many people who “know” what God wants. Today, for example, I received an email from a friend, who told me that the war in Gaza went against Judaism. While at the same time, another friend told me that according to Judaism we must continue to fight. Which one knows the true will of God? Perhaps neither.

We find the same thing in the lead up to the US elections. Some people are filled with an almost messianic zeal saying that only Donald Trump can save America and Israel. While others say that if elected, he will lead to the destruction of both, and only Kamala Harris is fit to lead.

Elections are about opinions. As are views on war. Everyone should think and act as they see fit. But they cannot be certain that their view aligns with the word of God. And if they are certain that they speak for God and are deaf to any alternative, it is likely they are among the false prophets that God sent to test us.

Socrates famously said, “I know that I don’t know.” The world might be a better place if we all had humility to accept listen to and consider alternative opinions, even if, as in Jeremiah’s case, they turn out to be false.

The Torah reading is clear. God tests us with false prophets to know whether or not we love God with all our hearts and souls. It is not our role to prophesy. It is our task to walk in God’s ways and observe His commandments.