Something disturbing happened in a Bloomfield, New Jersey synagogue on the evening of Friday, September 18, 2020. It occurred in the midst of the most important religious cycle in the Jewish calendar, ten days often referred to as the High Holy Days. The first holy day is Rosh Hashanah, which welcomes the Jewish New Year. During the first night of the service, the Bible reading is always from 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10.
The text describes how Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, prayed to God to bless her with a son, whom she later entrusted to Eli, the high priest. The traditional reading ends with Hannah's prayer thanking God and prophesying the coming of the Messiah. The final sentence of Hannah’s prayer is amazing: “The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed”
When Hannah prayed this, Israel had no king, no monarchy; she lived in the time of the judges, so her prayer is prophetic, looking forward to the time when a king would rule the nation. Also, Hannah’s reference to God’s “anointed” is a clear messianic prophecy.
That prayer is always read in its entirety at the New Year's synagogue service. But not on that night, in that synagogue in New Jersey and that is what was so troubling.
The Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, are a divine document, a divinely inspired document. Jesus said it was and is, as did the apostles who wrote what God wanted them to write, just as he Old Testament authors did in their day.
However, on September 18, the rabbi set aside the reading of the Word of God and told the assembled that those who want God's words to usher in the New Year could go and find them elsewhere. Yes, that's what he said. So, what did the rabbi read instead of the Bible?
On that evening, he felt it was more important to read the words of another "prophet," (his word, not mine)--Ruth Bader Ginsburg, not the Bible. This is the way rabbi put it to the congregation: "I'll invite you to listen as . . . we read a few key teachings in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's own words as a way to bring out her memory and to pay homage to her. I hope you'll take these into your heart and use them for inspiration as each of you seek to make this world a better place."
As Andrea Widberg writes, "And so we [had] this spectacle: to honor Ginsburg's staunch defense of killing babies — the Baal practice that the Bible strongly condemns, a rabbi, in a grotesque mockery . . . recited, not the Word of God, but the word of Ginsburg."
What was happening on September 18 was an echo of what had happened earlier in the history of Israel when a king heard the Word of God read to him: "Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month, with a fire burning in the brazier before him. When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut it with a scribe’s knife and threw it into the fire that was in the brazier, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier. Yet the king and all his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, nor did they rend their garments."
Did the congregation just sit there as the the rabbi tossed the Bible into the fire for a man-made substitute? Did anyone object, was anyone afraid, did anyone metaphorically rend their garments? Was anyone's soul tortured by what they heard and saw? Andrea Widberg raised her voice to object and even dared to criticize the uncritisizable in print. Is there one more?
There is a historical parallel we find in Acts 12:21-22: "On an appointed day Herod, having put on his royal apparel, took his seat on the rostrum and began delivering an address to them. The people kept crying out, “The voice of a god and not of a man!”
There is a price to pay when the voice of the government becomes the Word of God.
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