Who is a Jeremiah?

In The dangerous Jeremiah syndrome Gerald Steinberg writes:

 

Long after the age of prophecy has ended, it is difficult to distinguish between those who have something serious to say and the many false prophets in our midst.

In the final days of the First Temple, with the Babylonian army nearing the city walls, the prophet Jeremiah warned Jerusalemites of destruction and exile if they did not change their ways. The prophet was ridiculed and pursued, with catastrophic results.

Since then, the Jewish people have been plagued by a continuous stream of imitations – self-proclaimed Jeremiahs warning of gloom and doom, but without the prophetic insight or divine license.

With the creation of Israel and the challenges faced by the restored Jewish state, the number of modern day Jeremiahs has grown exponentially. Artists, professors, columnists, bloggers, NGO officials and politicians have assumed the role and adopted the rhetoric, if not the substance, of morality. Indeed, the prophecy of doom has become a major industry...

Now, long after the age of prophecy has ended, it is difficult to distinguish between those who have something serious to say and the many false prophets in our midst. Self-appointed and self-promoting messengers come from the fringes of the political, religious, and social spectrum – Left and Right, ultra-religious and fundamentalist-secular...They are usually unable to gain support through the electoral system, and thus hostile to democracy, but have access to large amounts of foreign money which is used to impose their agendas.

This is far from Jeremiah's model...

[T]he original Jeremiah clearly did not want the job (like his professional colleague Jonah).. In contrast, modern self-appointed prophets have huge egos. From within the country and the from the Diaspora, they desperately seek the attention accompanying warnings of the imminent demise of Israel or the disappearance of the Jewish people... Many claim, like Jeremiah, to "love Israel" and to possess "the truth"....

Amen. But then Steinberg focuses exclusively on critics of the left. What about those critics on the right, and we know who they are, who are constantly warning that Israel is being betrayed by a corrupt and incompetent government, that it is being subverted from within, or that the only solution is "Jewish leadership." What about the critics who inform us every day that the sky is falling? What about those who tell us that we must do everything their way, or there will certainly be a disaster? The problem is the same as it was 2,500 years ago: One person's Jeremiah is another person's false prophet. It is hard to tell them apart without a scorecard, and it depends on who is doing the scoring.

Ami Isseroff