Guest Post: Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag

What Happened To Prophecy? Part 2/2

Links to part 1, by Isha Yiras Hashem: English Español

Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag, a respected author, scholar and lecturer in the Jewish community, authored this guest post. Previous guest posts by Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag:

Was Esau As Nice as he seemed? 1/2

Español: ¿Era Esaú tan bueno como parece? 1/2

Was Esau As Nice as he seemed? 2/2

Español: ¿Era Esaú tan bueno como parece? 2/2

As mentioned above, since the creation of the world prophecy existed, but this only affected individuals. Then something truly amazing happened. When the Torah was given, the entire Jewish People became prophets! They all heard G-d saying the commandments, and they all heard G-d speaking to Moses. After that no one could tell them that G-d had not really given them the Torah, because they had all seen and heard G-d’s speech themselves! This was passed down from generation to generation orally, in writing, and in commemorations, so no one denied that G-d gave the Jews the Torah. In fact, other religions accepted this as well, for the whole world knew about it.

When G-d gave the Torah it was such an overwhelming experience that the people became frightened and asked that Moshe speak to them instead (Exodus 20:1). G-d accepted their request and after that, prophecy again became something only for individuals. Sometimes a person would receive prophecy only for his own knowledge, but we are familiar with the prophets who were G-d’s messengers to others. G-d used prophets to tell mankind what He wanted to say to them. The prophet had to be an extremely good person, learned in Torah, and excellent in personal self-control. Then they might become G-d’s messenger to the world (Rambam Yesodei HaTorah 7:1).

Since, as we stated, true prophets had to be extremely righteous, how do we find that Bilaam, an evil Midianite, received prophecy?

Bilaam was a sorcerer who lived at the time of the exodus from Egypt. Balak, the king of Moav, hired Bilaam to curse the Jewish People because he feared them. Bilaam tried to curse the Jews but instead blessings and prophecies came out of his mouth. The oral Torah says that Bilaam actually experienced a very high level of prophecy. But why did G-d give this to him?

Bilaam lived in the time of Moses. The Oral Torah explains that G-d did not want to give evil people the opportunity to justify themselves by saying that if they had been given a true prophet of Moses’ stature, they would have also been good. So G-d gave them someone who was in some ways, parallel to Moses in prophecy.

Did this cause them to repent? No. Prophecy, like miracles, doesn’t make a person good unless the person wants to be good. And so Bilaam did not become good and neither did those who witnessed his prophecy. In fact, after failing to curse the Jewish People, Bilaam and Balak who had hired him, conspired together to get the Jews to sin. So prophecy can help people believe in G-d, but if after all that, they still refuse to do His will, that’s even worse than not knowing Him at all.

There were false prophets as well. There is a rule that whatever exists on the side of good has a parallel on the side of unholiness. Sometimes a person would receive a vision or have a dream and would claim that this was coming from G-d, when it was really coming from his own subconscious, or even from an angel, who was testing him. There were ways to determine true prophecy from false prophecy but those who wanted to believe that their visions were true did not test them. And people who wanted to believe these false prophecies also did not follow G-d’s instructions about determining who is a true prophet and who is a false one. (See Ramchal Derech Hashem part 3, chapters four and 11, and Michtav MeEliyahu, part 1 p. 238 in the name of Rabeinu Yerucham)

Idol worship was also negatively connected to prophecy.

In the ancient world, where spirituality was reality, there was a great desire for idol worship. They were two sides of a coin; the good side was being spiritually connected to G-d, which meant perceiving G-d in a very real way, and the bad side was wanting to believe in idols who were physical.

G-d is totally non-physical. The verse says, “Guard you souls exceedingly (not to make any form representing G-d) for you did not see any picture on the day that the L-d your G-d spoke to you at Horev from amidst the fire” (Deuteronomy 4:15).

Horev is Mt. Sinai, and the verse is recalling what the people saw at the giving of the Torah. They heard G-d speaking to them and saw a great fire, but they did not see any picture of G-d, because G-d is not physical.

When prophets had visions of G-d in a physical form this was meant as a metaphor to express a concept and not meant literally. Idol worship, however, was based on using physical forms, and was meant literally. The form itself was believed to contain the Divine. Therefore the golden calf, which was made to supposedly house G-d’s presence, was an idol.¹

Eventually prophecy was taken away. When the Jews began to act like the nations around them and worshipped idols, they were conquered and sent into exile in Babylon. Seventy years later they returned. Shortly afterwards the sages of that time, called the men of the Great Assembly, beseeched G-d to remove the desire for idol worship which had caused such a catastrophe. G-d accepted the prayer and Jews no longer desired to worship idols, but at the same time, they also lost prophecy. This is because, as we said above, prophecy and the desire for idol worship, were two sides of one coin, stemming from the same source, one on the side of evil and one on the side of good. It is necessary to maintain a balance of good and evil in this world in order to have free will, so when the inclination to idol worship was removed, so was prophecy (based on Michtav MeEliyahu part 3, p. 277 in the name of Rabbi Tsadok HaCohen. There are, however, other reasons given as to why prophecy was removed).

As prophecy left the world, spirituality became less perceptible. The Talmud says, that if the first ones (i.e. earlier generations) were like angels than we are like people. And if they were like people we are like donkeys (Shabbos 112:b). The Hebrew word for donkey, chamor, is from the root chomer which means material. A donkey represents being connected only to the material world. Angels, of course, are the exact opposite; totally spiritual. So we see here the principle that as the world became more and more distant from creation, and from the giving of the Torah, and from prophecy, people’s perception of spirituality became less and less, becoming more and more material rather than spiritual.

And so shortly after the loss of prophecy, atheism entered the world.

It was the Greek philosophers who introduced atheism to this world. Greece became a world power right after prophecy was removed. Alexander the Great conquered huge areas of the world, and Alexander’s teacher was Aristotle, the outstanding Greek philosopher. Although the average person in Greece was an idol worshipper, the philosophers rejected the idols and chose atheism instead.

The Greek philosophers respected science, which is a positive thing, so long as you connect science to the One who created it. The problem was that these philosophers were “humanists”, meaning that they wanted to believe that there was nothing superior to human intelligence. And to do that, they had to reject not only idols, but G-d as well, for G-d is above humans. Furthermore, without G-d they also had the “freedom” to act immorally.

Most of the world at that time, however, did not accept Greek philosophy’s atheism. Although prophecy had been silenced, and spirituality was somewhat less than it had been, there was still much spirituality manifest. For example, the Talmud speaks about demons as something a person might meet up with, as indeed they sometimes did! And so idol worship continued to exist among non-Jews.

Gradually, however, much of the world became ready for a change from their idolatry, and so they chose instead two religions whose basis was in Judaism.

But as the Renaissance progressed, and with it the ideas of Greek philosophy, atheism began to slowly filter into even religious societies. Eventually, the modern world substituted science for religion, while ignoring the One who created science, following in the footsteps of Aristotle and his friends.

And the more people rejected G-d, the more He hid Himself. Every period of history has its own nature and trials to overcome. The Talmud says about the period preceding the end of days that the truth will be absent and those who fear G-d will be considered repulsive (Sotah 40b). And so the world became more and more bereft of spirituality. Belief in G-d and His personal supervision of the world became more and more distant and therefore, more difficult to believe in.

Today, although we do not have outright prophecy on the level which once existed, we do have a lower level of Divine Inspiration which a person can receive, if their deeds make them deserving. This is true for any person, whether Jewish or not (Eliyahu Rabba 9). Divine Inspiration is within the reach of even people like you and me, for as the Chafetz Chaim writes, if a person guards their speech carefully, they will receive Divine Inspiration.

Prophecy, too, was not forever lost. At the end of days G-d will reveal Himself to the world, not only through individual prophets, but to all of us, as it says, “for eye to eye will they see as G-d returns to Zion” (Yeshayahu 52:8). As in the giving of the Torah, we will all once again become prophets.

1. The tabernacle and the Temple housed G-d’s presence, but not within any physical form contained there. Furthermore, G-d’s presence was not confined there, since it fills the entire earth, and the heavens as well, but here on earth the temple was the place where one could perceive G-d’s presence much more.