Urgency in Exile
George
Santayana famously declared: Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it. Surely
everyone in this room today who studied history in high school, has heard this citation
from the noted 20th century pragmatist. You probably heard it on the first day of
your history class. I’m guessing it was
recited to you by your teacher as a way to get your attention and motivate you
toward the serious study of history.
We Jews have a reputation of being good at remembering the past. We have all kinds of rituals and occasions
whose stated purpose is to cause us to remember. The Passover Seder. Yom Hasho’ah.
Every year, on the approach of the yahrzeit,
the anniversary of the death of a parent, a sibling, a spouse, or (God
forbid) a child, you receive a notice of the anniversary from the temple
office. You are invited to accept an
honour here at the temple. You send the
form back in – preferably with a donation! – and make sure you attend on that
day. You come up to bless the Torah, and
I give you a blessing. In that blessing I say something about your
loss which, I hope, will ring true and resonate for you.
So in our religious life as a Jewish congregation, we do all kinds of
things to keep memories alive. For the
collective, and for individuals within the collective. And we think we’re the world class at
memory. And much of the world would
agree. In the late 1980’s, the Dalai Lama famously
hosted a Jewish group at his headquarters in Dharamsala, India. He wanted to learn from them, how Jews have
kept their memories alive during a 2,000 year exile. Facing what may very well prove to be a
lengthy exile of many of his people from their ancestral home, Tibet, he wanted
to benefit from the experience of us Jews.
The event has been extensively chronicled. If it sounds interesting, I recommend you
read The Jew in the Lotus by Roger
Kamenetz, a university professor who was part of the Jewish delegation.
But – and here I’m going to burst your bubble a bit – the truth is that we’re
really not that good at
remembering. At least, not as good as we
like to think that we are. Like many peoples, we remember very
selectively. Sometimes, memory serves us
as nothing more than a tool to support an agenda. That is, instead of serving as a tool for
apprehending and understanding the truth.
This week’s Haftarah is a reading from Isaiah. This is the post-exilic Isaiah, Isaiah the
comforter. In the sixth century BCE, our
people experienced an exile to Babylon at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar. Not that the entire people was marched across
the Fertile Crescent to the Rivers of Babylon.
No, the Babylonian emperor selected only the religious and civic elite
for resettlement. His method was to
remove the head, so he could control the tail.
Once the elites reached Babylon, they were not oppressed. They were given autonomy to form communities
and engage in whatever activities might please them. The exiles laid the foundations that would
enable the Jewish people to survive as a group through future exiles. They translated a temple-based, sacrificial
cult into a portable faith driven by dogmas that they began to develop, and
buttressed by rituals that they conceived.
Removed from their land and the people left behind, they did not sit
back and enjoy the leisure of a ruling class with nobody to rule. They created and built with an urgency borne
out of a knowledge that they were building something that would have to endure
if it was to serve the people Israel well.
They built so well, that a thousand years later the community they built
in Babylon was to produce what is arguably the most important Jewish text next
to the written Torah: the Babylonian
Talmud.
In this week’s reading from Isaiah, the great prophet exhorts the exiles
in Babylon to focus on what’s important.
To not fret over their inability to perform sacrifices, but rather on
the purpose behind those sacrifices. To
work toward being a nation truly worthy of the unique destiny God has assigned
them. To rise above the disappointments
they have experienced, and keep their eyes on the prize.
The exiles of the sixth century BCE certainly did rise above the deep funk that their exile might have
engendered. In so doing, they modelled for
us the way to make the most of any exile.
Their lesson is certainly valid and vital to us today. It calls to us out of the past and exhorting
us to make the most of our exile.
Here we sit, 26 centuries after the exile of Nebuchadnezzar, in a land of
comfort and plenty. And we whine
incessantly about how hard it is. Hard
to maintain our traditions. Hard to pass
them down meaningfully to our children.
Hard to feel at home with ourselves and our God, even as we struggle to
be at home in the physical world of our making.
Many of us have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the struggle
entirely. Thrown up our hands and said, Never mind!
An example. Our ancestors and
a remnant of us today look forward to the arrival of the Seventh Day as an
opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with our God and His wonders. But many Jews today think only of popping
open a few cold ones and kicking back with American
Idol. And then they grouse about the
lack of interest in Judaism by their kids.
Our distant ancestors 2,600 years ago faced similar temptations. Oh, they didn’t have American Idol…I least I don’t think
they did. But surely they could have
let the memory of a faith that once was fade into the past. They could have focused on the comforts of
the present. But they didn’t. The work that they did, promised that Judaism
and the Jewish people would survive.
This, if only future generations would care enough to accept their gift –
and build upon it.
The juxtaposition of this week’s Torah and Haftarah readings reminds us
of the importance of making the most of our exile. The Torah reading, from the first chapter of
the Book of Leviticus, instructs us in the minutiae of the sacrificial
cult. The Haftarah reading, from Isaiah,
exhorts us to focus on the message
behind the sacrificial cult. On keeping
the faith, even when we can’t keep the practices.
Some days, I have to admit, I’m not too optimistic for the future. The past is sometimes inconvenient to
remember. It doesn’t call out to us with
enough urgency. Or perhaps, we are
intent on ignoring its message. Because
the challenges of exile do not change.
They remain essentially the same over time. Our ancestors, in their industriousness, in
their urgency to keep the memory of all that is important alive, would not let
the torpor of exile lull them to sleep.
My prayer is that, when this generation is but history, someone will be able
to say the same of us. This is a worthy
prayer. May it come to pass. Shabbat shalom.
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