T. Belman. This article reminded me of a woodcut (shown below) by Jacob Steinhardt, I bought it almost 50 years ago in Jerusalem. It is titled “Habakkuk”. It is my most prized acquisition.
No matter the joy of the modern Habakkuk, we see today’s Babylonians, the evil so-called Palestinians, again murder our best people.
The prophet Habakkuk lived during the time of Menashe (Manasseh), king of Judea. During this period, G?d decided that the Temple would be destroyed and the Jewish people would be exiled. The prophet Habakkuk lived at the time of the exile of King Jechoniah, eleven years before the destruction of the First Beth Hamikdosh in the year 3328 .
In the Book of Habakkuk, we read of Habakkuk’s reaction to the Jewish suffering that he foresaw.
Different prophets reacted in different ways to visions of an ominous future for their people. Habakkuk (sometimes spelled Chavakuk) was one of those who initially could not bear to see it. The first chapter of his book is a deep protest, a painful demand as to how it is possible that the good suffer and the wicked prosper.
Our sages tell us that Habakkuk was one of those who challenged the Almighty in an open and unrestricted way.
That the Lord is a G-d of Justice was already a firm belief of Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. Thus, in the forthcoming destruction of Sodom, Abraham protests: is it in keeping with justice to destroy, indiscriminately, the righteous and the wicked? (Gen. 18:23) When G-d, in the rebellion of Korah, threatens to exterminate the entire congregation, Moses intercedes: Shall one man sin and You are wroth with all the congregation? (Num. 16:22). Jeremiah is seriously troubled by a fundamental dogma of God’s justice. He queries: why do the wicked succeed? Job questions the entire structure of theodicy. In real life, there seems no causal relation between man’s deeds and reward or punishment.
Habakkuk raises two or possibly three complaints, questioning other facets of God’s moral rule. How long O Lord shall I cry out and You not listen? Shall I shout to You ‘violence’ and You not save? (1:1). He is troubled by G-d’s silence in the face of rampant violence and evil. With this outcry against G-d’s moral reign of the world, Habakkuk engages in a dialogue with the Lord. This seeming indifference of the Lord puts the fundamental theodicy into question since judgment emerges deformed (1:4). G-d’s reply comes as a shock to Habakkuk. He has prepared an agent, the Chaldeans (also known as the Babylonians), to punish the wicked. The Chaldeans will march through the earth as vultures that hasten to devour the wicked in Judah, but Habakkuk wonders if it is just to send a more evil people to vanquish a less evil people.
In the Book of Habakkuk, G-d stresses that in the natural world, the Babylonians will fall in due time. Habakkuk understands the important principle: the righteous shall live by their faith [emunah] (Makkot 24a,b) It is the interpretation of the term emunah that caused the division of Judaism and Christianity. In the Jewish interpretation, emunah stands for steadfastness and loyalty to God and the mitzvot. It was Paul who asserted that salvation could come to those whose faith was not based on observance of mitzvot.
In my own work, especially in my novel The Second Catastrophe, the main character, son of a survivor of the Shoah struggles with belief in G-d after six million innocent Jews are murdered, among them some one million children. The novel takes place during the Second Intifada when innocent Jews are again being murdered, this time by Arab terrorists.
As Shimon Bakon has written (Habakkuk: From Perplexity to Faith), “The prophecies of Habakkuk, contained in merely three chapters, are significant out of proportion to their size. Habakkuk is in the line of Abraham, Moses, Job and Jeremiah who raised questions regarding God’s just and moral reign of the Universe. He is troubled by the fact that God does not interfere and bring an end to the blatant sins of Israel. He is also disturbed that God has appointed a vicious country to be His rod of wrath to rectify the sins of Israel.
“Habakkuk is profoundly shaken by the message of a world tribunal, the “Day of Trouble”, for it will inevitably bring great hardship to Israel: And I tremble where I stand that I should wait for the day of trouble (3:16). In the end however, the deep concerns of Habakkuk are abated: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will exalt in the God of my salvation (3:18). Habakkuk is certain in wrath He will remember compassion (3:2).”
Note especially the conclusion of Habakkuk that he will “rejoice in the Lord” and “exalt in the G-d of my salvation.”
And so, our emunah together with observance of the mitzvot bring us exaltation.
And yet once again we Jews are suffering. On Israel Independence Day, May 5, 2022, a terrorist armed with an ax and a gun, brutally murdered three men in Elad. The three men were fathers to a total of 16 children. Once again there is a Palestinian Arab intifada against the Jews.
And this heinous crime occurred about one month before Shavuot, the time of remembering the giving of the Torah by G-d to the Jewish people.
And on Shavuot’s second day we in the Diaspora read as the Haftorah, part of the Book of Habakkuk. (Shavuot is one day in the Land of Israel and two days in the Diaspora).
And one of the murdered, all religious Jews, was named Jonathan Habakkuk (often translated as Yonatan Chabakuk). Father to four daughters and one son, he was the first person murdered by the terrorists. Chabakuk, 44 years’ old was out walking with his six year old son. He worked as a car mechanic at a garage in Elad.
As reported by Vinnews, “Yonatan was known to everyone as ‘Yonatan Achinu’ due to his friendly demeanor- he used to greet everyone with ‘Brother, how can I help you?’. Yonatan left a wife and five children, one of whom was with him at the time of the attack and saw him fighting with the terrorists until he fell.
“Everyone in Elad knew Yonatan,” residents said. “He was one of the truly happy Breslav chasidim, greeting everyone with joy.” Yonatan would come to fix people’s cars wherever they had broken down.
Yonatan’s wife published a tearful post on her Facebook page: “My heart refuses to believe that I have been left alone with 5 orphans. My heart is burning with rage after my young child saw his father in his last minutes. My husband fought with great courage and saved many lives when he fought with them for many minutes. May G-d avenge your blood, my dear, beloved husband. We will miss you very much!”
What a sad coincidence that on Israel Independence Day, a month before reading part of the Book of Habakkuk on Shavuot, another Habakkuk, one who was known for his joy and exaltation, was taken from this world.
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