Last December, several of us were preparing for a gathering of a group called Taproot – a program for which I’m on faculty and which is, you might say, my side hustle, now that my drag queen glory days are behind me. We were preparing the program and the space and setting some shared intentions. My friend and co-founder Adam Horowitz set this intention: that we might create the conditions for prophecy.
The conditions for prophecy. By which, I think, he (and we) meant some thing about cultivating an experience in which people could expand beyond themselves, notice the Divine, visit their deep intuitions, become vessels of a deep knowing.
It was an important moment when he said that. Because while we wanted everyone to have some spiritual experience, we had not really ever used the language of prophecy, or nevuah in Hebrew, in relation to that. We here at Ner Shalom also invite a spiritual experience – every week I hope. But I’ve never thought to aspire to prophecy.
Adam and the rest of our leaders weren’t talking about old school prophecy. Soap boxes. Finger wagging. But if people found some connection to the Divine or to the Universe that was deeper than words or beyond intellect, might they not possibly return from that experience with words of warning for humankind? They would certainly returned changed, at least for a little while. And when we change in ways that are precipitated by close encounters with God or Universe or Life itself, do we not become a kind of prophet in this world?
This week’s Torah portion, Pinchas, comes – at no extra charge – with a haftarah portion from the the Book of Jeremiah. Now if ever there was a prophet in the classic mold, a prophet with a capital P, it was he. Jeremiah lived before and after the Babylonian conquest and the fall of Jerusalem – the destruction 2600 years ago that we remember this time of year. He lived in a moment, not unlike ours, in which danger encroached, things were broken, things were destroyed.
Over the course of 52 chapters, Jeremiah warns of the coming destruction. He scolds the people for their wicked ways and shortsightedness. He condemns corruption. He demands atonement and change. He bewails the persecution that his unpopular preaching has brought down upon him. He predicts the eventual overthrow of the Babylonian occupiers and assures the Jews that God has not forgotten them.
How did prophecy come to Jeremiah? Did he always have it? Or did it happen suddenly? The answer is both.
The first thing God says to Jeremiah is this, in a rhyming triplet no less:
בְּטֶ֨רֶם אֶצָרְךָ֤ בַבֶּ֙טֶן֙ יְדַעְתִּ֔יךָ
וּבְטֶ֛רֶם תֵּצֵ֥א מֵרֶ֖חֶם הִקְדַּשְׁתִּ֑יךָ
נָבִ֥יא לַגּוֹיִ֖ם נְתַתִּֽיךָ׃
B’terem etzorkha vabeten y’datikha.
Uv’terem tetzei me-rechem hikdashtikha.
Navi lagoyim n’tatikha.
“Before creating you in the womb, I selected you.
Before you were born, I consecrated you.
To be a prophet to the nations I appointed you.” (Jeremiah 1:5.)
In other words, Jeremiah was destined for prophecy, hardwired for prophecy. He’s just been waiting for God to hit the “on” switch.
What about us? Are we hardwired for prophecy too?
We read about those great prophets of Torah – Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and a whole bunch of others. All of them courageously delivering what we imagine to be the word of God to people who don’t want to hear it. And we don’t feel like them.
But then, Talmud tells us (BT Yoma 9b, Sanhedrin 11a, Sotah 48b) that after the deaths of the last three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi,
נִסְתַּלְּקָה רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל
The Divine Spirit – that is, the spirit of prophecy – departed from the Jewish people. We often paraphrase that bit as saying that prophecy ended. But it doesn’t quite say that it ended. It departed from the People of Israel. Yet it still existed. Prophecy remained available in some way. In fact, the same verse of Talmud goes on:
וַעֲדַיִין הָיוּ מִשְׁתַּמְּשִׁין בְּבַת קוֹל
There remained a Divine Voice that could be accessed. We read about that Divine Voice in umpteen stories in Talmud. Rabbis fighting over a point of law, and a Divine Voice, a bat kol, literally “the daughter of voice,” descends to assist in the deliberation. A gentle echo of prophecy. Prophecy in the form of insight.
Where is that Divine Voice now? What conditions are necessary to hear it?
Jeremiah, in this week’s haftarah, describes how prophecy ultimately came to him. He says,
וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח יְהֹוָה֙ אֶת־יָד֔וֹ וַיַּגַּ֖ע עַל־פִּ֑י וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֵלַ֔י הִנֵּ֛ה נָתַ֥תִּי דְבָרַ֖י בְּפִֽיךָ׃
“Adonai extended a hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘I have put my words into your mouth.’” The Divine hand on the human mouth, loosening the tongue so that words of prophecy may flow. Undamming the prophet so that the prophet may damn if necessary. Hand touching mouth. Maybe an easier activation than that of the prophet Ezekiel (considered by midrash to be Jeremiah’s son) who was shown a megilah – a scroll of prophecy – and instructed to eat it. And he did, reporting that it tasted sweet as honey. (Ezekiel 3:1-3.)
They don’t make prophets like that anymore. But still, let’s try an experiment. Close your eyes, and take a breath. (Unless you are reading this, in which case take a breath, and slow your reading to a gentle pace.) Now take your hand, and touch your mouth.
Feel now how this hand touching your mouth is God’s hand. The Divine Hand. After all, if we are all part of the Divine, then whose hand is it if not God’s? Feel God’s hand readying your mouth.
In this moment of touch, does something stir in you? Is there a knowing, a message – for yourself or for others? Take a minute now to feel this invitation.
You can come back to this posture from time to time tonight and tomorrow and beyond and see if it invites some prophecy, some insight that comes from deep in your cells, as if it had been placed there before you were born?
If something came to you in this experiment, it was a kind of prophecy. It does not need to be filled with shoulds and warnings in order to be prophecy. A simple new awareness could be n’vuah.
And if something came to you, that means that we did, you did, for an instant, create the conditions for prophecy. So how do we do that more? How do we smooth the path, knowing the path might not always be smooth?
One way might be making the effort to perceive the Divine energy that pours through the air and the earth and our breath; that saturates the wood and the plaster and the coffee cup and even the junk piles. The Divine that dances in squirrels and wasps and the leaves of trees. The Divine that fills us with awe in the presence of birth; and that we turn our noses up at in the presence of decomposition.
We are, I really believe, hardwired for prophecy. It is the habit and the requirement of day-to-day living that keep us from accessing it round the clock. But as we wake up to the aliveness of all things, we cultivate our innate ability to hear the Divine voice around us and in us. These are the conditions for prophecy.
Over the High Holy Days this year, we will be practicing noticing and feeling the divine aliveness in everything. Because that’s what we’ve got. God no longer speaks to us with a booming voice at a mountain, or through the Isaiahs and Jonahs and Huldahs. We don’t have a Moses and, looking around, I’m not seeing one in the pipeline. But the Divine does still speak to us. Through the breathing trees, through the dying species, through our dreams, through the oceans and the air and the asphalt, through love and laughter and grief.
Perceive that, and the conditions for prophecy are met. And everyday prophecy will ensue.
Good luck prophets. Let me know how it goes.