{"id":77722,"date":"2020-07-20T15:31:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T12:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=77722"},"modified":"2020-07-20T15:31:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T12:31:40","slug":"the-world-needs-more-obadiahs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-world-needs-more-obadiahs\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Needs More Obadiahs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"77722","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":46656,"related_cahpter":"528","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"And less people who slide from complacency to complicity\r\n\r\n","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The shortest book in all of Tanach, the one-chapter Book of Obadiah teaches us one very weighty lesson about nationhood. We were briefly introduced to Obadiah in the Book of Kings 1, when the evil King Ahab and his degenerate queen Jezebel sought to destroy prophecy. They thought they\u2019d been successful in their mission by murdering all the living prophets with the exception of Elijah, who they managed to lose track of. But in fact, their housemaster Obadiah had taken it upon himself to personally save 100 prophets, hiding them in caves and keeping them fed and protected from harm.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Elijah asked Obadiah to announce to Ahab that he was returning from hiding, Obadiah risked reprisal from Ahab to unequivocally demonstrate his allegiance with no hint at dual loyalty. Obadiah, in both rescuing the prophets and facing down Ahab, knew where and for what he stood, and decisively acted on his convictions. For this, Obadiah merited having his prophecy of Edom\u2019s destruction canonized in the Tanach.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Our sages relate three reasons that the biblical nation of Edom, the descendants of Abraham\u2019s son Esau and ancestors of the Roman empire, deserve to be destroyed. When the Babylonian\u2019s came to destroy the First Temple in Jerusalem in the 6<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> century BCE, the Edomites stood back and offered no assistance to their supposed brother-nation of Israel. Though perhaps they didn\u2019t side with the Babylonians, they also stood idly by and didn\u2019t stand up to support the victims. They descended from complacency to complicity when they later helped the Babylonians loot Jerusalem, rejoiced at its destruction and blocked the way of the refugees trying to escape. Ultimately, 500 years later, the next iteration of Edom, the Roman empire, wasn\u2019t just the complicit sidekick but the leading aggressor in the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile from which we have yet to recover.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The example of the Edomites who came from the most righteous of stock and devolved through the stages of complacent to complicit to antagonist is perhaps an object lesson for all nations. And Obadiah is the example of good citizenship. Standing by and doing nothing while evil is being perpetrated around you is standing at the top of a precipitous slippery slope. Obadiah exemplifies the ideal \u2013 know what you stand for, act decisively to defend and protect others, with no apology and no delusion about dual loyalties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Evil <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">will<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> fail. With more Obadiah\u2019s perhaps it will happen sooner than later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Image: Protest, Jan. 2017, photo by: Amanda Hirsch (Brooklyn, NY, USA) \/ wikipedia<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":77724,"id":77724,"title":"obad-complicity","filename":"obad-complicity.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/obad-complicity.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-world-needs-more-obadiahs\/obad-complicity\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"obad-complicity","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":77722,"date":"2020-07-20 12:31:16","modified":"2020-07-20 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