Responding to Crisis and COVID-19: Echoes from Ancient Israel
Communal Catastrophe: Then and Now
Disaster has struck. In what seemed like an instant, COVID-19 sliced apart the ties that tethered Jews to their core communal, social and religious institutions: synagogues, camps, communal meals, and life with each other. How can we respond? How did Jews respond? COVID-19 is not the first crisis to push on religiously significant pressure points in Jewish history. Far more disastrous for Jewish society at its time was the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (ca. 980 – 586 BCE) and the downfall of the Davidic dynasty. In fact, such experiences of loss and exile were likely more traumatic for biblical Jews than for their descendants. Ancient Judeans, unlike Jews of later periods, could not draw upon a long-established collective memory that details how to thrive in diaspora.[1] They also had almost no established communities of ethnically-related kin living abroad ready to ease their suffering – no Alexandria, Babylonia, Ashkenaz, Italy, Salonica, Vilna or America. When the Babylonians set Solomon’s Temple aflame, ancient Israelites were thrusted into a novel existential crisis.[2] Can the responses of ancient Jews in the aftermath of communal collapse aid us in classifying, understanding and moving forward in the present?
Biblical literature shows that ancient Israelites reacted to their newfound exilic condition in at least three ways. I term them rejection, remembrance and revision. These responses became historical templates, frameworks with which to cope with communal catastrophe and institutional instability. They apply as much to COVID-19 era Judaism as to biblical Israel.
Rejection
Navigating the collapse of social intuitions and creating new norms requires a special kind of courage. Perhaps of all biblical prophets, Jeremiah was graced with this trait. As the most tragic prophetic figure in the Hebrew canon, Jeremiah not only warned about and witnessed the destruction of the Temple, he fought in vain to preserve the remnant of Israel that remained. Even with the Temple gone, the land of Israel remained God’s territory, a special place where Jews, when they heed God’s commands, may thrive. And the Babylonians did not exile the entire population of Judah; they left a portion behind (Jer 40-41).[3] From this shoot could grow a branch, a continuity in the midst of displacement. Instead of remaining in the territory of Judah, large parts of this population, reeling from the fresh wounds of trauma, sought security and prosperity elsewhere: Egypt. Jeremiah travels to Egypt to warn this population about the existential dangers of dwelling in Israel’s ancestral slave-land:[4]
And now, thus said the LORD, the God of Hosts, the God of Israel: Why are you doing such great harm to yourselves, so that every man and woman, child and infant of yours shall be cut off from the midst of Judah, and no remnant shall be left of you? For you vex me by your deeds, making offering to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have come to sojourn, so that you shall be cut off and become a curse and a mockery among all the nations of earth … I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt as I punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. Of the remnant of Judah who came to sojourn here in the land of Egypt, no survivor or fugitive shall be left to return to the land of Judah (Jer 44:7-8, 13-14a).
Fleeing to Egypt, according to Jeremiah, does not mitigate the effects of destruction. It compounds them. These Israelites abandon both God and country! They complete the task that the Babylonians had begun.
Jeremiah’s admonition falls on deaf ears:
We will not listen to you in the matter about which you spoke to us in the name of the LORD. On the contrary, we will do everything that we have vowed—to make offerings to the Queen of Heaven [5] and to pour libations to her, as we used to do, we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty to eat, we were well-off, and suffered no misfortune. But ever since we stopped making offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pouring libations to her, we have lacked everything, and we have been consumed by the sword and by famine (Jer 44:16-18).
Instead of ignoring Jeremiah, the population explicitly rejects him. They refuse to listen to the Lord’s prophet, a class of religious expert capable of diagnosing, mitigating and curing moribund Israel. Instead, those dwelling in Egypt rely on anecdotal evidence—observations molded by a bias that transforms correlation into causation, a paradigm of thought that suggests that only the Queen of Heaven can provide prosperity. Jeremiah cuts away at Israel’s illusion with a prophet’s scalpel. What they experienced during the time they worshipped the Queen of Heaven, according to Jeremiah, was actually God’s patience, which has now been completely exhausted. The community will be decimated (Jer 44:24-30). And, in fact, we never hear from them again.[6]
“As Jeremiah teaches, we consign ourselves to destruction in the absence of stable leadership, at the times that we reject expertise in favor of a contra-factual reality built upon limited observations and faulty heuristics. Eradicating COVID-19 and rebuilding prosperity requires that we heed the advice of those whose observations are informed by science, data and facts.”
One may find it useful to use a paradigm of rejection to think about this COVID-19 moment. As Jeremiah teaches, we consign ourselves to destruction in the absence of stable leadership, at the times that we reject expertise in favor of a contra-factual reality built upon limited observations and faulty heuristics. Eradicating COVID-19 and rebuilding prosperity requires that we heed the advice of those whose observations are informed by science, data and facts. We cannot find salvation by continuing to worship the false idols of vacuous diatribes by rhetoricians and desultory musings of demagogues.
Remembering
Another response to communal collapse exists in biblical literature by way of evoking memory, which is an ever-present feature of Jewish life. Relying on memory to cope with crisis is double-edged; memory can provide an opportunity to move past trauma, but it could also trap one within sorrow’s pressing grip.[7]
This latter form of memory shapes Psalm 137, “On the Rivers of Babylon,” a poem cast in the doleful voice of the exiled temple singers who were marched into the capital of the Babylonian Empire. At the center of this poem (vv. 3-4) rests a short dialogue. The Babylonian captors request that the singers regale them with a “Zion song” – a temple melody. The singers respond with pith: “How can we sing a song of the LORD on foreign soil?”
This question is serious. For the singers, physical displacement leads to a theological crisis. In the ancient world, gods were territorial. Local gods provided protection and prosperity. This fact was also true of the Jewish deity, who reigns supreme in Israel as its national God. According to 2 Kings 17:24-41, the Assyrian monarch settled foreigners in the land of Samaria after deporting its local Israelite population. Initially, these exiles did not worship the Israelite God and were attacked by lions. Their ancestral gods were powerless to prevent assault. They wrote the following missive to the Assyrian king: “The nations which you deported and resettled in the towns of Samaria do not know the rules of the God of the land; therefore He has let lions loose against them which are killing them—for they do not know the rules of the God of the land” (v26). In response, the Assyrian king sends a deported priest back to Samaria to teach the new population the laws of the local god. The exiles incorporate YHWH into their pantheon and the attacks cease. Outside of an ancestral homeland, a deity’s power was limited. For the exiled temple singers, this mentality was compounded by the centralizing reforms of the Judean king Josiah (640 – 609 BCE), which developed the ideology that the God of Israel can only be served in the Jerusalem Temple.[8]
The exiled temple singers operated within this theological frame of reference. God’s Temple lay in ruins, and divine presence and power along with it. It would be folly—a contradiction—to sing the Lord’s song in a land that does not bear God’s presence.
With music, worship and the steady practice of religious life no longer possible, the singers turn their attention to memory, the central motif of Psalm 137. The poem begins with the exiles recalling (zhr) Zion. Instead of acquiescing to their captors’ demand and singing a “Zion song” (v4), they swear fealty to their homeland. They promise never to forget Jerusalem (v5) and to remember (zhr) it on every happy occasion (v6). God, too, must remember (zhr) (v7). Those who destroyed God’s temple and exiled God’s nation must be punished: “A blessing on him who seizes your babies [Babylonia] and dashes them against the rocks” (v9). Exile thrusts the temple singers into the dark abyss of melancholy. They are mired in bitter memory, constantly recalling their trauma. This state of mind prevents them from imagining a positive future with a rebuilt Temple and the return of worship to Jerusalem (cf. Ezek 40-48).[9] They can only wish for the murder of their enemies. Vengeance—destruction upon destruction—remains their last glimmer of hope.
“Psalm 137 provides another historical template for grappling with crisis, one that also applies to COVID-19 era Judaism. Physical and social isolation can easily trap someone within the corridors of past memories and lead one to imagine life in both the present and the future as a photo negative. We must remain supportive and vigilant.”
Psalm 137 provides another historical template for grappling with crisis, one that also applies to COVID-19 era Judaism. Society under the regime of COVID-19 encourages the darker side of memory, the part that relives trauma without pause. Physical and social isolation can easily trap someone within the corridors of past memories and lead one to imagine life in both the present and the future as a photo negative. Depression and anxiety follow.[10] We must remain supportive and vigilant. We should validate and acknowledge the feelings brought about by profound dislocation and isolation, whether it be of ancient Judean exiles or of those grappling with this pandemic. At the same time, we must find a solution that rejects the Psalmist’s violent impulses, which merely digs further into despair.[11] We must constantly remember that the future is neither the past nor is it the present. It is ours to build.
Revision
Biblical literature does not only preserve somber reactions. It also highlights how some exiles fashioned hope and memory into tools for rebuilding stronger edifices from the rubble that remained. It is from these groups that modern expressions of Judaism eventually flowered. It is their response to crisis that we must take to heart.
Ezekiel holds a distinctive place among the prophets of the Bible. Like other prophets, such as Jeremiah (Jer 1:1), he was a priest (Ezek 1:3). Serving in the Temple was his duty, lifeblood and legacy.[12] Unlike his contemporaries and predecessors, however, he composed his prophecies in exile. He actively grappled with the despair of dislocation, a struggle through which he crafted a viable exilic Judaism.
This work begins as soon as the book opens. Ezekiel receives his first vision at the Chebar river, which is located in modern day Iraq. It describes God and his retinue in vivid detail. Another biblical account resembles Ezekiel’s vision, although it is muted by comparison. It belongs to Ezekiel’s prophetic predecessor: Isaiah. In his first vision, Isaiah describes meeting God and his six-winged angels in the heavenly Temple (Isa 6). There he receives his prophetic commission. Isaiah and Ezekiel are quite similar. Both prophets encounter God in their initial vision and describe him and his angelic hosts. Both imagine God sitting on a throne. In adopting this motif, Ezekiel is likely preserving a literary tradition.[13] At the same time, however, he also innovates. God’s throne in Ezekiel contains one detail that goes unmentioned in Isaiah: it has wheels. It can move. Isaiah locates God at the Temple; Ezekiel relocates God with the exilic community in Babylon. In fact, according to Ezekiel, the edifice the Babylonians ultimately destroyed was a hollowed-out shell. God was already gone (Ezek 10).
“Instead of letting crisis cast him into the abyss of misery, Ezekiel crafts a new theology, one that allows God to reside with the exiles in all God’s might and majesty. Ezekiel’s innovative vision provided stability for the Babylonian exiles. It allowed them to rebuild their shattered world and to resume a divinely inspired life in absence of the Temple.”
To best understand Ezekiel’s innovative claim, we must remember the temple singers in Psalm 137. For them—in line with a popular theological assumption—to reside on “foreign soil” was to be divorced from the presence of God. Himself an exile, Ezekiel refused to be limited by this framework. Instead of letting crisis cast him into the abyss of misery, he crafts a new theology, one that allows God to reside with the exiles in all God’s might and majesty. Ezekiel’s innovative vision provided stability for the Babylonian exiles. It allowed them to rebuild their shattered world and to resume a divinely inspired life in absence of the Temple. Ezekiel’s innovation, in time, became a foundational Jewish tradition, one that has kept vibrant Jewish diasporas from ancient Babylonia to modern America.[14]
Ezekiel provides a template for successfully managing crisis: rebuilding through revision. Moving forward requires creativity. Only by retaining the best parts of our prior communal existence and by innovating with them can we strengthen Jewish identity and combat the existential loneliness that accompanies isolation. And, contemporary Judaism has responded. Services and classes are conducted online or in a physically-distant manner. But further innovation is needed. How can modern technology, for example, embed the features that consistently reinforce Jewish identity into the home? What new theological frameworks can we build to transform this new place of exile into a miqdash me’at “a little temple” (Ezek 11:16)?[15]
Conclusion
Among its other victims, COVID-19 strikes at the heart of Judaism. It shutters the social institutions that form the foundation of Jewish life and identity. We are once again exiled. This time, however, it is from each other and to our homes. History provides a ready guide for thinking through our current situation. By examining a far worse event—the destruction of Solomon’s Temple—we were able to map out several paths that ancient Jewish exiles took in response to crisis: rejection, remembrance and revision. These reactions provide lessons that we can apply to our modern situation. Alongside Jeremiah, we must combat those who reject reality and fight against those who shun the words of true experts. With COVID-19 cases surging, we cannot favor the false comfort of the familiar and worship the idols of a politician’s promise. From the Psalmist’s remembrance we learn to be mindful of the heartache and pain associated with being trapped within memory. In this difficult moment, we fondly recall and revel in our days before the rise of COVID-19. We cannot allow these feelings of nostalgia, however, to anchor us down and determine our future path. We live in a fundamentally different world. From Ezekiel we gain the permission to take comfort in and to act upon the prophetic tradition of innovation. One day, COVID-19 will pass. Like all the plagues before it, it will become a chapter in the long history of Judaism. What a post-COVID-19 Judaism looks like—what innovations eventually become traditions—has yet to be determined.
[1] The closest related experience was the destruction of Shiloh, the resting place of the Tabernacle and an important religious site (Jer 7:12-14; 26:6-9; Ps 78:60). For a full study see Donald Schley, A Biblical City in Tradition and History (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989). Judeans might also have drawn some insight from exiles of the Northern Israelite Kingdom, which occurred in 732 BCE (2 Kings 15:29) and 720 BCE (2 Kings 18:9-12).
[2] It is important to note that in 597 BCE, several years before the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE, the Babylonians exiled much of the royal court and Judean upper-class. See 2 Kings 24:8-12. Crisis can linger for long stretches of time. History does not occur in an instant.
[3] For a reconstruction of where and how this population lived see Avraham Faust, Judah in the Babylonian Period: The Archeology of Desolation (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2012), 233-42.
[4] Biblical quotes from NJPS, modified where necessary.
[5] The “Queen of Heaven” is an enigmatic figure that appears only in Jeremiah. She might be identified with Ashera or Ishtar, two famous West Semitic goddesses. For further information, see Cornelis Houtman “Queen of Heaven” in Karel van der Troon et. al. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible 2nd Ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 678-80.
[6] Compare this to the exilic population in Babylonia. Jeremiah advises them to build houses, plant vineyards and pray for Babylon’s welfare (Jer 29:1-23). The recent archeological discovery of the Al-Yahudu tablets have shed light on the growth and prosperity of several of these communities. For this collection, see Laurie Pearce and Cornellia Wunsch, Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer (Bethesda: CDL Press, 2014).
[7] In fact, within collective memory, sorrow can often become intergenerational. See Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).
[8] For an overview see Thomas Römer, The Invention of God (trans. Raymond Geuss; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 191-209.
[9] These chapters of Ezekiel describe the construction of a new temple, the rules of its personnel and a renewed Jerusalem. For an accessible analysis, see Jacob Milgrom and Daniel Isaac Block, Ezekiel’s Hope: A Commentary on Ezekiel 38-48 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 41-266.
[10] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/managing-stress-anxiety.html
[11] Something similar might be said regarding the protests that followed the tragic death of George Floyd.
[12] Even in exile, Ezekiel was concerned about his own state of purity (Ezek 4:14).
[13] On the trope of theophany and call narratives in biblical texts see George Savran, “Theophany as Type Scene,” Prooftexts 23 (2003): 119-49.
[14] Another theological innovation that provided hope and stability for the exiles was the rejection of collective punishment in favor of individual responsibility (Ezek 18). This theological shift removed the determinism that accompanied sin and its punishment (see 2 Kings 23:26-7.) It allowed the exiles to begin life with a clean slate. The radical nature of this change is acknowledged by the rabbis in Bavli Makkot 24a.
[15] I am using this term somewhat ironically. Rabbinic thought constructs the synagogue as the miqdash me’at of the biblical temple. Here I imagine the home as the new miqdash me’at of the contemporary synagogue. On the development of this term, see Zeev Safrai, “From the Synagogue to ‘little temple’,” Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies 10,b vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1989), 23-8.
