Last week I didn’t think my Torah discussion went well. Every now and then it just doesn’t flow.

This week we are going to continue our discussion of haftarah and prophesy. During the discussion, one of you asked a really important question. How do we recognize a prophet—as opposed to maybe a quack. And while there is a history of false prophets, distinguishing that voice can be difficult.

Distinguishing that voice is important. Later in the week I saw a quote about if the voice is telling you to champion the widow, the orphan, the stranger, then it is real. Otherwise, it is false. I went back to the person and got the original source:

“Sometimes in history the name of God has been invoked on behalf of actions and movements that have ennobled the human soul and lifted the body politic to a higher plane. Take the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the American civil rights movement, or Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the struggle against South African apartheid, as examples. Other times religious fervor has been employed for the worst kinds of sectarian and violent purposes. The Ku Klux Klan, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and David Koresh’s Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, are frightening examples.

Is there a reliable guide to when we are really hearing the voice of God, or just a self-interested or even quite ungodly voice in the language of heaven? I think there is. Who speaks for God? When the voice of God is invoked on behalf of those who have no voice, it is time to listen. But when the name of God is used to benefit the interests of those who are speaking, it is time to be very careful.”
― Jim Wallis, Who Speaks for God?

That is one answer. A prophet is someone who speaks out for the marginalized. The widow, the orphan, the stranger.

A few months ago, in a class on “Finding Meaning” one member of the class objected to a reading by Lord Rabbi Sacks, the Chief Rabbi Emeritus of Great Britain who talked about teaching as a calling. This former teacher had never thought of teaching that way and didn’t think that Jews used that term. It led to an interesting conversation about whether the pastor across the street is called and whether I as a rabbi am called.

This week we read about Jeremiah beginning with Jeremiah’s call. Jeremiah was a historical figure. One of the reasons we know he was real, is that we have found the seal of Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe. Now some have argued that it is a fake…and you are welcome to read all that material online, but if you conclude that you are arguing with the chief archeologist of Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Museum where it is displayed. Me, I find the seal, called a bulla, thrilling.

We have a timeline. In 627 BCE Jeremiah received his call. In 622 Jeremiah explained the covenant and the Israelites obligations. In 609 Jeremiah proclaimed that the covenant was indeed broken and that dire things were about to happen if the Israelites didn’t “return”, perform teshuvah. And, he was there to witness the fall of Jerusalem, just as he predicted in 586 BCE.

The history fascinates me, but what do we mean when we say some one like Jeremiah is called?

During the discussion there were a number of answers, ranging from everyone has gifts to share and that is their calling. No one is really called. A sense of the difference between being compelled or being obligated to do something. It is that sense you can’t do anything else. (I joked about second career rabbis!) But maybe that word should be impelled and that it is the difference between an external driver and an internal driver. And one person who explained that scientists who warn about climate change might be the modern day prophets, scientifically based. It was a very rich discussion. It is actually the kind of moment that thrills me as a rabbi and brings joy. And it mirrored some of the other material I had studied for the purpose of this very discussion:

The sense of call is, in fact, very Jewish, Biblical, but we have often surrendered that language to Christians. When I was applying to rabbinical school people actually warned me NOT to use the language of call because I should sound too Christian or too crazy, even if I had that internal sense.

Yet the very beginning of the Book of Leviticus, Vayikra is Hebrew means, “And G-d called.” That’s what Vayikra means. It is important to note that in every Torah scroll the last letter of Vayikra, aleph is written smaller than the other letters. Every single scroll. Why a little aleph?

Now aleph is a silent letter. It is almost impossible to hear the silent sound of aleph. Rabbi Larry Kushner tells a wonderful midrash in his book, The Book of Miracles, where he explains that the Aleph is what enables us to have a conversation. The commentary on Vayikra however, the sages teach us that the word can either mean “He encountered or he chanced upon,” or “And he called.” Rabbi Sacks, continuing our discussion from last week, says, “What is the difference between the prophets of Israel and the prophets of the pagan nations of the world? . . . R. Hama ben Hanina said: The Holy One blessed be He reveals himself to the pagan nations by an incomplete form of address, as it is said, “And the Lord appeared to Bilaam”, whereas to the prophets of Israel He appears in a complete form of address, as it is said, “And He called to Moses.”

So the question becomes, if prophecy ceased with Ezra and Nehemiah as we talked about last week, can we hear G-d’s voice today?

Psalm 29 talks about G-d’s powerful voice 7 times. We know that song…Kol Adonai. We sing it on Friday night and as part of the Torah service. This is G-d’s booming voice thundering above all, shattering cedars and splitting rocks. We also have “bat kol” in the Talmud, the voice of G-d swooping down in some kind of “deus ex machina” manner.

On the other hand, we have Elijah’s notion of the still, small voice, something internal, eternal, something inside of us.

This seems to be echoed in the words of Jeremiah’s call:
“Before I created you in the womb, I selected you; Before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations.” Jeremiah 1

Which seems to be echoed in Psalm 139:
“You shaped me inside and out. You have made my veins; You have knit me together in my mother’s

Sometimes people have the sense that there is something G-d wants them to do. That they were fortunate to be born with certain intrinsic traits. I have used this following quote so often, it may be familiar to many of you. Frederick Buechner talks about call this way: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

However Lord Rabbi Sacks points out that there is a difference between vocation and gift. You can be a gifted pianist but that isn’t necessarily what you are called to do. He goes on to talk about Viktor Frankl, the therapist that survived Auschwitz by searching for meaning. As Sacks explains, “There in the camp he dedicated himself to giving people the will to live. He did so by getting them to see that their lives were not finished, that they still had a task to perform, and that therefore they had a reason to survive until the war was over. Frankl insisted that the call came from outside the self. He used to say that the right question was not “What do I want from life?” but “What does life want from me?

What does life want from me? Figuring out the answer to that is figuring out what your unique call might be.

Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman Conservative Rabbi talks about call in these terms:

“You have to look more closely to find the individual sense of mission or calling in the Jewish texts, but it is there. One example from the Hasidic mystical tradition is the concept of shlichut, which means agency or mission, from the word “to send.” The language of sending in the book of Isaiah says to God, “Here I am. Send me.” So this language speaks to each person having a particular shlichut of something that they’re sent toward.”

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld the author of the Jewish Catalog, and one of the founders of Jewish Renewal said this:
“Though work is our vocation, it has the potential to accomplish tikkun olam, “repair of the world.” Every job, every work interaction has value. There are those who believe that each of us is chosen for a particular task to perform in the world. Rav Zutra said: What is the meaning of this verse: ‘God made everything beautiful in its time’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11)? This teaches that the Holy One made everyone’s craft appear beautiful in their eyes” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 58a).

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, a Reform rabbi who wrote Putting G-d of the Guest List for Bar Mitzvah families wrote Being G-d’s Partner, the What Color is Your Parachute for Jews. It is the book that if I loan it out, it won’t come back. He tells an important, poignant story, especially today as Simon and I are in the middle of a move:

“The boss of the moving crew was a delightful, crusty gentleman, a dead ringer for Willie Nelson. I had never met anyone so enthusiastic about his or her work, and I asked him the source of that enthusiasm.

“‘Well, you see, I’m a religious man,’ he answered, ‘and my work is part of my religious mission.’

“‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

“‘Well, its like this. Moving is hard for most people. It’s a very vulnerable time for them. People are nervous about going to a new community, and about having strangers pack their most precious possessions. So, I think God wants me to treat my customers with love and to make them feel that I care about their things and their life. God wants me to help make their changes go smoothly. If I can be happy about it, maybe they can be, too’”

There you have it…a sense of call from Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Jewish Renewal rabbis. That’s good for our vision of “Embracing Diversity.”

Clearly some of calling or vocation is about your work identity. But what if you are no longer working? What if you have retired? What happens now?

The Talmud teaches us that it is necessary to balance work and Torah study (Pirke Avot). But perhaps, just perhaps, retirement is a kind of Shabbat, which is also a calling. We are called to rest. We are called to observe Shabbat. That is an entire sermon in itself.

In another important book, Wise Aging, by Rachel Cowen, z’l, she reminds us that each of us has a purpose. Perhaps then purpose = calling.

Frankl believed that “Every human person constitutes something unique; each situation in life occurs only once. The concrete task of any person is relative to this uniqueness and singularity.”[5] The essence of the task, he argued, is that it is self-transcending. It comes from outside the self and challenges us to live beyond mere self-interest. To discover such a task is to find that life – my life – has meaning and purpose.

Our challenge then:
What is that one task you are uniquely here to do?