929 day Bible study project

The twenty four books of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament are divided into 929 sections. The “929 Bible study project” the brainchild of Bayit Yehudi MK and Deputy Education Minister Avi Wortzman, and Rabbi Benny Lau, is the daily study – five days a week – of a Biblical verse.

Primarily aimed at being an all-inclusive Jewish experience to make the Bible accessible to Jews from every possible background so that they come together to study and interpret it, the project has gained a huge following, attracting people who under other circumstances might never meet, let alone study, together.

The project cycle is of three-and-three-quarter years’ duration, it started on Sunday, December 21, 2014, with the last verse scheduled to be read in 2018, on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

Every now and again, a study evening of this kind is conducted at the President’s Residence, with President Reuven Rivlin and Rabbi Benny Lau, one of the key proponents of the project, delivering brief addresses, followed by addresses by guest speakers.

The focus this week is on the Prophet Jeremiah, who witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple, after he had repeatedly warned his people that they would suffer a catastrophe if they did not mend their ways. With the realization of his prophecy, Jeremiah poured out his emotions over the terrible fate that had befallen Israel in the book of Lamentations, which is read on Tisha Be’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple.

It was fitting, therefore, that at the last 929 meeting, on July 25, 2016, at the President’s Residence, which included people from different parts of the country and from different social strata -Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Ethiopian – with the Bible as a common denominator, Jeremiah was the main source of discussion.

Guest speakers were Prof. Meir Buzaglo, director of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Innovative Education, who asked whether there is any room for prophets in a Facebook era; Bilha Ben Eliyahu a lecturer in literature at the David Yellin Academic College of Education’s Kerem Institute and at the Efrata College of Education; and internationally renowned prizewinning author Amos Oz, who has written extensively about

Jeremiah, who he said was regarded as a traitor in his time.

Oz clarified that he was not using the term “traitor” in its conventional sense of betraying secrets, cheating in business or being unfaithful to a spouse. He had been fascinated since childhood with the concept of “traitor” and had even been labeled as such at different times in his life. He had reached the conclusion that the definition of traitor that characterized Jeremiah is one who changes in the eyes of those who do not change, and they are unable to tolerate or understand the change in that person. They are mortally afraid of change and hate all those who do change.

Moving centuries forward from Jeremiah, Oz named as fellow “traitors” numerous people who had been called such by former friends and colleagues and sometimes by the nation at large. They included Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and was assassinated; the German army officers who tried to kill Hitler, and were executed; Winston

Churchill, who dismantled the British Empire; Charles de Gaulle, who granted independence to Algeria; Anwar Sadat, who paid with his life for making peace with Israel;

Mikhail Gorbachev, who brought an end to Communist rule; Emil Zola, who stood up for a persecuted Jew; and, closer to home, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, which also led to Rabin’s assassination.

Oz named other Israeli traitors, but the underlying question, said Oz, was whether they belonged to the club of Jeremiah the Prophet or to the club of false prophets with iron horns. “Which club is the more honorable?” he asked.