The Hebrew Prophets after the Shoah. Hemchand Gossai

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The Hebrew Prophets after the Shoah - Hemchand Gossai


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Is it to employ a variety of means to justify and uphold one’s ideology? At the very least these are myopic, and have the mark of being simultaneously destructive.

      The world faces something of a challenge with a critical component of the prophets’ message, namely the particular emphasis on individualism in many societies, and the challenge of embracing community that the biblical text invariably emphasizes. When a well-known axiom such as “it takes a village” is used in American political discourse, it is frequently pilloried in some quarters, and at other times cast aside as socialist or some such remark meant to be disparaging and dismissive. Yet, many who hold the very distinct view that individualism is the core of the American worldview also seek to emphasize their rootedness in the biblical tradition. It is, I believe, a challenging chasm to bridge.

      According to Israelite understandings, it is not as isolated individuals, but as members of a community that we realize our being . . . The moral soundness of the community, moreover, is mostly clearly manifest in its treatment of its most vulnerable members

      Ogletree’s idea regarding the essential tension between the individual and the community is one that strikes at the biblical core. Not only within the political realm does one hear the language of individualism extolled as a principal virtue, but within religious communities, where faith, narrowly construed as individualistic, is viewed as the ideal.

      Some such as Socrates or Jeremiah or Joan of Arc or Gandhi or Mother Theresa or King or Wiesel may be thought of in such regard, but none of whom sought to be a saint; whatever such titles are bestowed on them by others, it is not what they set out to be or do. Neither the saint nor the prophet sets out to be the saint or the prophet.

      The incontestable reality is that a person’s faith does not develop in a vacuum without the influence and nurturing of others within the community. Some Christian communities have embraced this idea, and e.g., within the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, before one can enter into the ordination process, one must first journey through a discernment process where members of the community engage with the candidate precisely to discern the person’s calling. It is this idea that must be extolled, namely that one functions within the community and in the context of what is in the best welfare of the community.


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