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Re'eh - August 13, 2004

I think its safe to say no one ever grew up aspiring to be a prophet. What kind of job is that for a nice Jewish kid, going around and telling people things they don't want to hear: that their choices and values are skewed, that they must change or face dire consequences? Listen to the words of an embittered Jeremiah who said of his calling to be a prophet, " Adonai, you have seduced me and I am seduced. You have raped me and I am overcome." (Jeremiah 20:7) Yes, it was seductively sweet to be chosen to be a messenger of God, but it was violating, too. After all, a prophet's life wasn't completely his own. Remember the time Jonah tried to shirk his task and landed in the belly of a great fish. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "[The prophet] whose message is doom for the people he loves not only forfeits his own capacity for joy, but also provokes the hostility and outrage of his contemporaries." (The Prophets, pg. 114.) It is a burden for the prophet to deliver a gut wrenching and sometimes wrathful message, and he didn't make any friends in the process. In fact, in Biblical times, "prophet" was somewhat of a dirty word, much like the words "liberal" or "feminist," have become today, as is hinted by Amos after he was given the brush off by the priest of Bethel when he said, "Lo anochi navi, v'lo ben navi anochi", I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet." (Amos 7:14) It is as if Amos thinks its some chutzpah that the priest should think so lowly of him as to assume he was being prophet-like. In this week's parasha, the Torah also describes that not everyone who admitted to being a prophet, should be accepted as one. And if the so-called prophet didn't pass muster, Torah commands the people put him to death. Scripture was, of course, providing God an insurance policy against anyone who'd lure people away from His teachings and mitzvot to follow after other gods. But even if the said prophet could provide a sign, proof that his message was authentic, if the message didn't square with the Torah's, he was declared an enemy of the state, and summarily executed. So, not only was prophecy a tough and lonely way to earn a living, being labeled a prophet could be hazardous to one's health.

I sometimes wonder who today's American prophets are? According to Jewish tradition, the line of Jewish prophecy ended with Chaggai, Zechariah and Malachi. The text and our interpretation of it are our mal'achei Adonai, our messengers of God's word. But I am convinced that there are visionaries, who, in the spirit of the Biblical prophet, stand both within our society as its greatest allies and outside of it to help us see our fatal flaws, the underbelly of American cultural values that we'd simply rather ignore. Could Michael Moore, the documentary film director and winner of the Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," be one of America's prophets? No one said prophets had to be perfect and that they couldn't make millions doing it. On the eve of Jerusalem being razed, Jeremiah had the cash to make strategic real estate deals. Some have said Michael Moore merely plays on our emotions and sentimentality, and that he strings snippets of facts together, connecting the dots in deliberate ways to form his own version of the truth. Overstatement, drama, and sentimental hyperbole are the very same tools the Biblical prophet employed to craft his messages. So before Michael Moore went into a bank in Colorado that was offering a free rifle for every person who opened a checking account to show Americans our almost pornographic interest in guns, Hosea was marrying prostitutes to make the point to the Israelites that they had prostituted themselves by their actions.

And what about the fact that Moore elected to use his precious two minutes of basking in glory at the Oscars as a bully pulpit decrying the debacle of the 2000 elections, just when American complacency about the process had sunk in. He certainly puts himself out there to stir the pot. And we must admit that his is a voice within our midst speaking a most unpleasant message: that the American way of life is compromised, and sometimes very wrong. And just like any prophet of yore, Michael Moore has inspired the ire and hatred of some who are unwilling to see or listen. In fact, Michael Wilson has made his own movie refuting Michael Moore's claims about American society, entitled, "Michael Moore Hates America." The website insists that its not attacking Michael Moore per se, just his message. It must feel lonely sometimes to be Michael Moore.

Personally, I've always had a soft spot for Moore's 1989 debut, Roger and Me, about how the downsizing of a General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan essentially turned Moore's hometown into a ghost town. It borders on the absurd when he captures on film a woman's excitement about the prospect of raising rabbits for meat, which to her seems like a perfectly good alternative to the factory job at GM she lost. Fifteen years later, Moore's most recent work Fahrenheit 911 has a more global message. Notwithstanding Moore's blatant hatred of the Bush family and Moore's obvious liberal leanings, the prophetic undertones of the movie are disturbing and strike deeply on three levels: First, the movie is a reminder that even beyond the Bushes, that there is, pardon the pun, a well-oiled machine of wealthy, connected people making choices for our country not based on the ideals of freedom and democracy, or even of free market enterprise, but based how much profit it affords them and if it maintains the status quo. In other words, the relationships of big business, the connections between the elite of our country and the elite of other countries will always have a higher premium than the relationships of sympathy and shared values.

Why else wouldn't we have detained members of the Bin Laden family from traveling out of the country in the hours after the September 11 attacks? If the Saudis were really our friends, wouldn't that be a fitting demonstration of their understanding of our need to secure our country against individuals seeking to attack us? Someone must have thought it would have been bad for business. It is not only embarrassing but disgusting to think that just might be all that counts in America. Second, I left the movie uncomfortable at the reminder that middle class America is implicated in the designs of the upper class because we enjoy some of warmth from their sunshine.

With the exception of Washington Crossing Bridge in Bucks County Pennsylvania where SUVs are banned from crossing the Delaware River, we drive whatever sized car we can afford, anywhere we want because the well-oiled machine has brokered a deal including many subsidies whereby we can enjoy fuel prices that are the least expensive in the world. And we allow our country to make these choices regardless of the political bedfellows America must keep and regardless of the impact Americans make upon the global climate upon which the entire world depends. Moreover, we, in the middle class, have the economic ability and the communal resources to provide our children with enough opportunities so that they don't have to enlist in the military in order to get an education or career training they need to become members in good standing of the middle class. The most pathetic scene of Moore's film was his vain attempts to recruit Congressmen who voted for the war to enlist their own children in the armed forces as a show of their integrity and support for the war. Until a mandatory draft is reinstated in this country, and we all risk having to send our children to die for our country, middle and upper class Americans will continue to pay a disproportionately small price to enjoy American freedom and opportunity. And is that fair?

If this echoes middle-class guilt, I am sure Moore designed it that way. Most like Biblical prophets who forced their contemporaries to look at themselves in ways they'd rather not, Moore pushes the envelope, by posing the question about on whose backs we enjoy our prosperity- is it the working class in Flint, Michigan? Is it the struggling Iraqi citizen? Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, was similarly prophetic in a poem he wrote entitled: "Shir Shekatavti b'chom Gavoh", A Poem Written while in High Fever" (Cannot be printed by request of translator).

I cannot say everything that Michael Moore proposes in his films is the only voice worthy of a listen. But neither can we be Amichai's empty houses, shutting our eyes to what we don't wish to see, especially while on one side of us there are those speaking for us, doing things we abhor, and on the other, there are those dying for someone else's pursuit of profit.

We have to be open to seeing beyond CNN and the media machine with its distracting sensationalism, to notice other perhaps unsightly versions of the truth. Our Torah portion this week begins with the words, "Re-eh, See, I set this day before blessing and curse." It is as if the Torah is teaching that it is not enough to only see the blessing. We must be willing to see the curse, the cost of our lifestyle, the sides to our choices we'd rather not see or be bothered by. A navi, a Biblical prophet, was not only a visionary who saw the wrongs of his society, he was also visionary about the possibilities of his society- but only if the people could begin to see their errors and change. Only by our willingness to listen to the voices of those who make us uncomfortable and to see ourselves in a new light will we make ourselves deserving of the most hopeful messages of our Biblical prophets. And only then will it be possible for us to transform their words into realities. Let us aspire to create a world akin to the prophetic voice of Isaiah from the Haftarah this Shabbat: "All your children shall be disciples of God and great shall be their happiness. You shall be established through righteousness, safe from oppression and without fear. No weapon formed against you shall succeed, for such is the lot of the God's servants."

Amen, may it be so, soon and in our day.

Rabbi Batsheva Meiri