The Jewish Power Blog: Echoes of History

Reflections on the Ninth of Av:

In the final years of the kingdom of Judah, in the 580s BCE, the nation seems to have been strongly polarized between two parties:

1. Those who believed that God’s covenant with Israel was a covenant of promise – unshakable. God had promised, literally, that David’s “throne would be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:16)   Therefore, God would be on our side in the war with the Babylonian invader; we should throw ourselves fully into the war effort and we were assured of total victory.
2. Those who understood the covenant as conditional: as it had been stated in the Torah, “If you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant… I will set My face against you and you shall be routed by your enemies.” (Lev. 26:15, 17) They argued that the Babylonians were God’s instrument of punishment, and that rebellion was hopeless; better we should accept the conquest without resistance, minimize the damage, reform our society, and await God’s forgiveness.

This internal conflict found dramatic expression in several episodes in the prophet Jeremiah’s life; for example, chapter 26, wherein the “priests and prophets” heard his prophecy condemning the rebellion and demanded, “This man deserves the death penalty, for he has prophesied against this city.” (Jer. 26:11)  In response, certain “officials” defended Jeremiah’s right to speak out.  In the end, members of Jeremiah’s faction extricated him from the hands of the mob.  The rebellion did indeed fail, resulting in the destruction of the Temple, and exile.

Why did we lose the war, with the attendant long term consequences?

1. Maybe Jeremiah’s faction undermined the people’s unity and will to fight, weakening our hands in the struggle – and angering God by failing to have sufficient faith in the divine promise.
2. Maybe Jeremiah was right, and a wiser policy would have been to surrender, keep as much autonomy as possible (especially the Temple worship), work to strengthen our society internally, and wait for the empire du jour to pass away.

Indeed, we couldn’t have known it at the time, but the Babylonian empire lasted only half a century more, when the Persians took over, and granted the Jews religious autonomy in their land; the Temple was rebuilt.  As empires ebbed and flowed in the region over the next 600 years, exactly what our “sovereignty” looked like also shifted; but the Temple stood and was even expanded and beautified by Herod.

But then, in the first century CE, a similar dilemma faced us: could we count on God to take our side in a military rebellion against Roman rule – or should we put our heads down and focus on saving what we could of our belief, culture, and way of life, under Rome.  Rome, like Babylonia, was a world empire.  We were not.  Victory in such a war was only possible with divine intervention.  Could we count on the promise?  The nation was divided again, even to the point of violent confrontations between the “zealots” and their opposition.  Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai famously fled Jerusalem, secretly, convinced that the rebellion would fail and that the city would fall, and got Roman permission to establish a center of Torah study in the coastal town of Yavneh.  Sure enough, the city fell, and Judaism as we know it developed from Rabbi Yochanan’s work at Yavneh.

Fifty years later, in 132 CE, the Jews rebelled again – apparently once again convinced that “the time had come,” that the rebel leader Simon Bar Kokhba was the messiah, and that God would redeem us.  Once again, the expectation of miraculous victory crashed and burned.  The Talmud relates that when the rebel stronghold of Beitar fell, “a river of blood flowed down to the sea” (Bab. Talmud Gitin 57a).

Now, after two millennia, we have regained sovereignty in our homeland, but it turns out that we don’t have a consensus on what that means. There are a few options:

1. The prophets’ vision of restoration of the Temple with its sacrifices, and the Davidic monarchy, is beginning to be realized; the state of Israel is the first sprouting of that redemption. History is about to end, with Israel in its land, peace and justice throughout the world, and even lions lying down with lambs.  En route to that vision, as the prophets suggested, we are likely to experience violent upheavals (e.g., “Gog and Magog,” Ezekiel 38-9).  But since this is the end of history, we won’t have to worry about sustaining this dawning ideal reality into the future; once the dust will have settled, paradise will be eternal.
2. The state is an opportunity for the Jewish nation to try once again to fulfill the conditions of the Torah’s covenant, by creating an ideal society, where justice prevails, where the weak are supported by the strong, where all persons are seen and treated as though they were created in God’s image. A light unto the nations.  The implication of the covenant is that only such a polity will be sustainable.  If we fail to seize this opportunity, then…
3. The state of Israel is merely one more act in the ongoing drama of the history of nations. It is a normal and natural part of the world, subject to all the dangers and potential of any nation state, no more immune than any other state to corruption, oppression, even destruction.  It may need to employ force; it may need to make painful compromises – and it may not survive as a democracy or at all – just like every other nation state.  Unexceptional.  The return to history.

The prophets are long gone.  We’ll have to decide for ourselves.