Healthy Jew Politics (Part 1)
Meet Achiya of Shilo, the man who declared Torah's independence from politics.
Dear Healthy Jew,
Over the next 3 weeks, we’ll learn the story and message of one of Jewish history’s pivotal figures, Achiya of Shilo (Ahijah the Shilonite) - a biblical prophet who, unfortunately, is far less well known than his primary teacher (King David) and disciple (Elijah the Prophet) .
In two chapters of I Kings (11 and 15), and numerous Talmudic traditions (mostly brought in Sanhedrin 102a), Achiya initiated a revolutionary shift in Jewish society that has guided and encouraged our nation throughout the many upheavals and struggles of our history.
Today we’re again in a period of deep danger and tragedy. Now is the time to carefully listen to Achiya of Shilo.
Israel Has Arrived
Finally, 480 years after leaving Egypt, King Solomon has dedicated the Temple in Jerusalem. It is 827 BCE, and Israel is now a formidable empire with resources and influence to rival any other of antiquity’s superpowers.
It had been a long journey, with many highs and lows, both internally with the growing pains of nation-building and from centuries of troubled foreign relations (this is the Middle East, after all).
But now Israel’s citizens are joined around the twin institutions of biblical government: the kehuna (priesthood) and monarchy.
God bequeathed the kehuna forever to the descendants of Aaron. The kohanim (priests) represent the nation in the Temple service, provide guidance in times of crisis, and other spiritual leadership roles.
The monarchy took longer to mature, only finding its permanent home with King David, the father of Solomon. Davidic kings aren’t standard sovereigns: their primary role is to extend God’s kingdom into this world, so humility before God is at the core of their job description.
Any outside viewer would have been certain that Israel would only rise further in prosperity, prestige, and spirituality.
Israel’s Downward Spiral
But already in the days of Solomon, Israel began to unravel. Solomon married “foreign women” who, to some degree, “led his heart astray” (I Kings 11).
On the night that Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter, the Talmud teaches, an angel planted a clod of dirt in the sea that centuries later grew into the Roman Empire that destroyed the Second Temple (Sanhedrin 21b). The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 10:4) adds that this was the very night that he inaugurated the Temple.
In response to Solomon’s mistakes, God sent the prophet Achiah of Shilo to annoint Jeroboam, son of Nevat, as king over most of Israel’s 12 tribes, leaving only Jerusalem and Judea for the Davidic dynasty. (I Kings 11:29-39)
When Jeroboam worshipped idols, taking most of Israel down with him, God again sent Achiya - this time to predict the destruction of the Jeroboam’s dynasty and the future exile of 10 of Israel’s tribes.
The Torah’s Declaration of Independence
Yet Achiya of Shilo wasn’t only a prophet of doom.
Achiya pioneered a dramatic change in the Jewish people’s relationship to Torah that enabled the Jewish people to survive and thrive through millennia of idol-worshiping kings (sometimes of both Judea and Israel), the corruption of the kehuna (in the Second Temple Period), and the complete loss of both of Israel’s governing institutions.
In his introduction to Mishnah Torah, the Rambam counts 40 generations from Moshe (14th century BCE) to the Talmudic era’s closing by Rav Ashi (5th century CE). Each generation’s greatest sages “copied over” (the Rambam’s term) the Oral Torah - the body of laws that teach how to apply the Written Torah’s opaque mitzvos in real life - to their greatest students.
Until Achiya rolled around, the chief sages tasked with copying the the Oral Torah hailed from the elite of Israel’s society; they were all either shofetim (quasi-kings), kings, or kohanim.
Joshua was the primary student of Moses, and had the authority of a king. (Rambam Hilchos Melachim 1:3)
Pinechas and Eli were both kohanim, and Eli was a shofet.
Samuel was the shofet, and commanded enough authority to be the kingmaker of both Saul and David.
David was promised by God a dynasty that will rule Israel forever. (The next king of Israel, the Messiah, will come from the house of David.)
But after David everything changed. Instead of tapping his son Solomon as the next chief sage - as we would expect considering that he wrote 3 of the biblical canon’s books, was called “the wisest of men,” and built the Temple in Jerusalem - the next Torah leader counted by the Rambam is the little known Achiya of Shilo.
Before Shlomo built the Temple in Jerusalem, Shilo was the home of the Mishkan and its Ark of the Covenant. There’s nothing farther from the establishment than living in the place that used to be its temporary center and was abandoned in favor of its permanent home.
Achiya’s receiving the Oral Torah from David began a new trend: he transmitted it to Elijah the Prophet, who in turn taught it to Elisha. Both lived in the north of the country, far from Jerusalem, and were associated (often in conflicts) with some of Israel’s most wayward kings. None of the later First Temple Period “copiers” of the Torah were kings; most weren’t even kohanim.
Achiya set a new precedent: the Torah’s living tradition stands independent of all political institutions - even the kohanim’s spiritual Temple service. No matter how far our society’s institutions fall, the Torah will survive on its own.
Where did Achiya learn to detach the living heart of the Jewish nation - our Torah - from its leaders on the ground? How did he lead his generation’s Torah scholars away from the establishment even as Solomon sat on his throne in Jerusalem at the pinnacle of Israel’s material and spiritual height?
To learn more about Achiya’s message, check out the next part of this series:
Before you go, our pudgy 3-month-old Achiya sends warm regards, straight from Shilo Ramat Bet Shemesh.
Fascinating and new to me! Thank you!
Achiya will b’ezrat exemplify his namesake’s ways.