Oren Ben-Dor

Future of the Prophetic

“Marc Ellis stands at a crossroads of Jewish history, warning against the embrace of militaristic triumphalism while reclaiming the seemingly lost tradition to the prophetic. As the conflict within the Jewish community continues to deepen, with reverberations from Jerusalem to the Upper West Side, his voice is all the more important." —Adam Horowitz Co-editor of Mondoweiss.net "With this work Marc Ellis turns 'lead into gold.' A vigorous yet poignant study that compels as it challenges." —Sara Roy Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University "Future of the Prophetic is the narrative of a prophet intent in smashing old molds of contention and the patterns of human stagnation, unleashing instead the promise of a new utopia based on hope. The prophet is thus the one who denounces the schemes that undermine the divine promise. It is also the one that announces that for which humankind was created by God. Marc H. Ellis is certainly that prophet." —Ángel L. Rosa Vélez University of Puerto Rico "Ellis shows the exilic Prophetic call, the Jewish gift to humanity, to be always already present in all of us and that each epoch has its messengers. Beautifully and passionately written with rich pathos and scholarly insights that interacts with contemporary scholarship and the fermenting deep un-said of the conflict in historic Palestine. The book holds an uncomfortable mirror to Jews with a strange sense of unbounded warmth and gifting fate which keeps reminding humanity of being both host and guest on the earth. Ellis' prose masterfully caresses the reader with the perturbing force of prophetic bliss that comes with feeling of plenitude that stems from emptiness and insignificance, one that re-turns and repeats. It opens up many questions and possibilities for fields of inquiry. It must be read by everyone who feels that the Jewish Question is with us, alongside and other, always to stay and even more, to realise that this question, perhaps, has not as yet been asked, that it can never be just 'a question,' and how humanity owns the burden of traversing this impossibility, cannot do with and without encountering the prophetic and mirroring the elusive nature of the messengers back to them. An enchanting book with question-worthy hide and seek movement that touches the soul and is essential for a genuine inter-faith understanding.”