To Be a Prophet for the People

Jonathan Sacks

Copyright (c) 1996 First Things 59 (January 1996): 27-29.


Some chose martyrdom. Others chose exile. But some acceded to terror and embraced another faith-though inwardly remaining Jews and practicing Judaism in secret. They were the "conversos," or as the Spanish were later to call them, the "marranos."


One of them addressed this question to a rabbi. He had, he wrote, under coercion declared his allegiance to another religion. But he remained at heart a faithful Jew. Could he obtain merit by observing in private as many of the Torah's precepts as possible? Was there, in other words, hope left for him as a Jew?




Maimonides was incensed by the rabbi's reply to the forced convert and was moved to write a response of his own. In it, he frankly disassociates himself from the earlier ruling and castigates its author, whom he describes as a "self-styled sage who has never experienced what so many Jewish communities had to endure in the way of persecution."

Maimonides' reply, the "Epistle on Forced Conversion," is a detailed treatise in its own right. What is striking, given the vehemence with which it begins, is that its conclusions are hardly less demanding than those of the earlier response. A person faced with religious persecution, says Maimonides, must leave and settle elsewhere. "If he is compelled to violate even one precept it is forbidden to stay there. He must leave everything he has and travel day and night until he finds a spot where he can practice his religion." This is preferable to martyrdom. Nonetheless, one who chooses to go to his death rather then renounce his faith "has done what is good and proper" for he has given his life for the sanctity of God. What is unacceptable is to stay and excuse oneself on the grounds that if one sins, one does so only under pressure. To do this is to profane God's name, "not exactly willingly, but almost so."



What was wrong in the first rabbi's ruling is his insistence that a Jew who yields to terror has forsaken his faith and is henceforth to be excluded from the community. Maimonides insists that it is not so. "It is not right to alienate, scorn, and hate people who desecrate the Sabbath. It is our duty to befriend them and encourage them to fulfill the commandments." In a daring stroke of interpretation, he quotes Proverbs 6:30: "Do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his hunger when he is starving." The conversos who come to the synagogue are hungry for Jewish prayer. They "steal" moments of belonging. They should not be despised, but welcomed.




So when Moses, charged with leading the people out of Egypt, replied, "But they will not believe me" (Exodus 4:1), ostensibly he was justified. According to rabbinic tradition, the Israelites in Egypt had sunk into depravity. The biblical narrative itself suggests that Moses' doubts were well founded. Before the exodus and after, the Israelites were a difficult people to lead. But the midrash says that God replied to Moses, "They are believers and the children of believers, but you will ultimately not believe."

Isaiah, too, was justified when he called Israel a "sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity" (Isaiah1:4). But the rabbis interpreted the later episode in which an angel touches Isaiah's lips with a burning coal as a punishment for the prophet's slander of his people (6:5-7).

Maimonides cites a series of such passages and then rises to a crescendo: If this is the sort of punishment meted out to the pillars of the universe, the greatest of the prophets, because they briefly criticized the people-even though the people were guilty of the sins of which they were accused-can we envisage the punishment awaiting those who criticize the conversos, who under threat of death and without abandoning their faith confessed to another religion in which they did not believe?


In the course of his analysis, Maimonides turns to the biblical hero Elijah. Elijah, we recall, risked his life by being a prophet. Under the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, Baal worship had become the official cult. God's prophets were being killed. Those who survived were in hiding. Elijah nonetheless risked a direct confrontation with the king, which resulted in the great public challenge at Mount Carmel. He faced four hundred of Baal's representatives. Elijah was determined to settle the question of religious truth once and for all. He addressed the assembled people and told them to choose one way or another: for God or for Baal. They must no longer "halt between two opinions." Truth was about to be decided by a test. If it lay with Baal, fire would consume the offering prepared by his priests. If it lay with God, fire would descend to Elijah's offering.

Elijah won the confrontation. The people cried out, "The Lord, He is God." The priests of Baal were routed. But the story does not end there. Jezebel sends a message to him: a warrant is out for his death. Elijah escapes to Mount Horeb. There he receives a strange vision. He witnesses a whirlwind that shatters rocks, then an earthquake, then a fire. But the vision leads him to understand that God is not in these things. Then God speaks to him in a "still, small voice," and tells him to appoint Elisha as his successor.

The episode is enigmatic, and it is made all the more so by a strange feature of the text. Immediately before the vision, God asks, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" and Elijah replies, "I am moved by zeal for the Lord, the God of Hosts" (1 Kings 19:9-10). Immediately after the vision, God asks the same question, and Elijah gives the same answer (19:13-14). The midrash turns the text into a dialogue:

Elijah: The Israelites have broken God's covenant. God: Is it then your covenant? Elijah: They have torn down Your altars. God: But were they your altars? Elijah: They have put Your prophets to the sword. God: But you are alive. Elijah: I alone am left. God: Instead of hurling accusations against Israel, should you not have pleaded their cause?


The repeated question and answer is now to be understood in its tragic depth. Elijah declares himself to be zealous for God. He is shown that God is not disclosed in dramatic confrontation: not in the whirlwind or the earthquake or the fire. God now asks him again, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Elijah repeats that he is zealous for God. He has not understood that religious leadership calls for another kind of virtue- the way of the still, small voice. God now indicates that someone else must lead. Elijah must hand his mantle on to Elisha.

Once again we are struck by the moral complexity set forth by the midrash. It is clear that God was with Elijah in the confrontation on Mount Carmel. He sends His fire, and He vindicates His prophet. Elijah is one of the Bible's religious heroes. He is not content to hide and save his life while Israel lapses into idolatry. Yet the midrash insists-and in so doing is faithful to the intimations of the text itself-that religious leadership is not so simply reducible to good or evil. To be sure, the Israelites have been unfaithful. They have "halted between two opinions." But if they served idols, they did so at the bidding of their king and under fear of death. If Elijah believes he is the only person of faith left alive, he is wrong.




Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. An earlier version of this essay appeared under a different title in his book Faith in the Future, published in London by Darton, Longman, and Todd.