Educating a People: An Haftarah Companion As a Way of Finding a Theology of Judaism
Table of Contents
Introduction: Reconnecting to the HaftarotPage 3
Part I: The Book of GenesisPage 9
Haftarah 1: Parshat BereshitPage 9
Haftarah 2: Parshat NoachPage 13
Haftarah 3: Parshat Lech LechaPage 17
Haftarah 4: Parshat VayeraPage 21
Haftarah 5: Parshat Chayye SaraPage 25
Haftarah 6: Parshat ToledotPage 28
Haftarah 7: Parshat VayetsePage 33
Haftarah 8: Parshat VayishlahPage 37
Haftarah 9: Parshat VayeshevPage 41
Haftarah 10: Parshat MiketzPage 45
Haftarah 11: Parshat VayigashPage 49
Haftarah 12: Parshat VayechiPage 53
Conclusion to Part I: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 57
Part II: The Book of Exodus
Haftarah 1: Parshat ShemotPage 61
Haftarah 2: Parshat VaeraPage 65
Haftarah 3: Parshat BoPage 69
Haftarah 4: Parshat BeshalachPage 73
Haftarah 5: Parshat YitroPage 77
Haftarah 6: Parshat MishpatimPage 81
Haftarah 7: Parshat TerumahPage 85
Haftarah 8: Parshat TetsavehPage 89
Haftarah 9: Parshat Ki TissaPage 93
Haftarah 10: Parshat VayakhelPage 97
Haftarah 11: Parshat PekudeiPage 101
Conclusion to Part II: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 105
Part III: The Book of Leviticus
Haftarah 1: Parshat VayikraPage 109
Haftarah 2: Parshat TsavPage 113
Haftarah 3: Parshat SheminiPage 117
Haftarah 4: Parshat TazriaPage 121
Haftarah 5: Parshat MetsoraPage 125
Haftarah 6: Parshat AchareiPage 129
Haftarah 7: Parshat KedoshimPage 133
Haftarah 8: Parshat EmorPage 137
Haftarah 9: Parshat BeharPage 141
Haftarah 10: Parshat BehukotaiPage 145
Conclusion to Part III: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 149
Part IV: The Book of Numbers
Haftarah 1: Parshat BemidbarPage 153
Haftarah 2: Parshat NasoPage 157
Haftarah 3: Parshat BehaalotechaPage 161
Haftarah 4: Parshat ShelachPage 165
Haftarah 5: Parshat KorachPage 169
Haftarah 6: Parshat ChukkatPage 173
Haftarah 7: Parshat BalakPage 177
Haftarah 8: Parshat PinchasPage 181
Haftarah 9: Parshat MatotPage 185
Haftarah 10: Parshat MaseiPage 189
Conclusion to Part IV: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 193
Part V: The Book of Deuteronomy
Haftarah 1: Parshat DevarimPage 197
Haftarah 2: Parshat VaetchananPage 201
Haftarah 3: Parshat EkevPage 205
Haftarah 4: Parshat Re’ehPage 209
Haftarah 5: Parshat ShoftimPage 213
Haftarah 6: Parshat Ki TetsePage 217
Haftarah 7: Parshat Ki TavoPage 221
Haftarah 8: Parshat Netsavim-- VayelechPage 225
Haftarah 9: Parshat HaazinuPage 229
Conclusion to Part V: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 233
Part VI: Haftarot for Special SabbathsPage 237
Haftarah No. 1: When the New Moon is SundayPage 239
Haftarah No. 2: When the New Moon is on the SabbathPage 243
Haftarah No. 3: Parshat ShekalimPage 247
Haftarah No. 4: Parshat ZachorPage 251
Haftarah No. 5: Parshat ParahPage 255
Haftarah No. 6: Parshat HaChodeshPage 259
Haftarah No. 7: Shabbat HaGadolPage 263
Haftarah No. 8: Shabbat ShuvahPage 267
Conclusion to Part VI: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 271
Part VII: HolidaysPage 275
Haftarah No. 1: Public Fast DaysPage 276
Haftarah No. 2: First Day of PassoverPage 280
Haftarah No. 3: Second Day of PassoverPage 284
Haftarah No. 4: Intermediate Sabbath of PassoverPage 288
Haftarah No. 5: Seventh Day of PassoverPage 291
Haftarah No. 6: Eighth Day of PassoverPage 295
Haftarah No. 7: First Day of Shavuot (Pentecost)Page 299
Haftarah No. 8: Second Day of ShavuotPage 303
Haftarah No. 9: Tisha B’Av MorningPage 307
Haftarah No. 10: First Day of Rosh haShanahPage 311
Haftarah No. 11: Second Day of Rosh haShanahPage 315
Haftarah No. 12: Yom Kippur MorningPage 319
Haftarah No. 13: Yom Kippur Afternoon/ Book of JonahPage 323
Haftarah No. 14: First Day of SukkotPage 327
Haftarah No. 15: Second Day of SukkotPage 331
Haftarah No. 16: Intermediate Sabbath of SukkotPage 335
Haftarah No. 17: Shemini AtseretPage 339
Haftarah No. 18: Simchat TorahPage 343
Haftarah No. 19: First Sabbath of HanukkahPage 347
Haftarah No. 20: Second Sabbath of HanukkahPage 351
Conclusion to Part VII: Recap and Recurring ThemesPage 355
ConclusionPage 365
Introduction: Reconnecting to the Haftarot
Two goals dovetailed in writing this book. First, and perhaps primarily since it takes up the majority of this work, was the neglect of the haftarotamong modern Jews. Starting with the time of the Mishnah, Jewish tradition assumed that selections of the Prophets should be read as an accompaniment to the public reading of the Torah.[1] Outside of the Pentateuch and the Book of Esther (or the other Megillot, according to Ashkenazic custom), these are the sole selections of Scripture which Jewish tradition mandated to read in public.
Haftarot have fallen on hard times today. In almost every synagogue I have attended, people daydream, talk to a neighbor, or leave the Sanctuary for a break (such as at a Kiddush club) during the reading of the haftarot. Perhaps because the text is less familiar than the Torah itself, or just because the obligation to participate seems less technically grounded, Jews allow themselves to ignore the haftarot or, worse, to mistreat their public reading.
Several years ago, I began emailing some interested congregants a discussion of the haftarah in an attempt to revive interest in these examples of God’s Word. The first emails were long, taking up every interesting idea I could find in rabbinic discussions of the text. I found, however, that the length and convoluted presentation were distracting to readers. Eventually, I came to the form used here, a thousand-odd word essay on each haftarah, with section headings to help the reader.
My goal in those essays was and is fairly minimal. I seek to summarize the content of the selection, paying attention to where it started and ended, and then to see if that summary led to an understanding of why this selection fit either the Torah reading to which it was attached or the special day on which it is read. Often, people accept banal answers to why a particular text was chosen, such as that it bears a linguistic similarity tothat week’s Torah reading or it happens to mention an event in the Torah reading.
While I do not reject such suggestions out of hand, they may leave obvious questions unanswered. In many cases, for example, the haftarah starts or ends in the middle of a section,[2] for reasons that are both unclear and unexplained by the simple rendering of the haftarah’s connection to the text. I find here that looking more carefully at the haftarah as a whole many times reveals an internal theme to the reading, one that then (I’d like to think not just fortuitously) connects to that week’s Torah reading.
An important aspect of these essays is my conscious attempt to derive only those ideas a fairly casual reader would, albeit a reader versed in rabbinic tradition. I consult classical Talmudic and Midrashic writings, as well as the medieval commentaries of Rashi and Radak,but in citing sources I always seek a reading of the text that a moderately educated Jew could be expected to derive from hearing thehaftarahin synagogue. I am not trying to be scholarly or academic, but to read these texts in a way actual listeners might have been expected to.
This is one way in which this book can be profitably read, as an haftarah compendium and companion. I hope readers can find in these pages a reasonable first-stage understanding of each week’s haftarah, enriching their synagogue experience. If that were all this book would contribute to world Jewry, dayenu, it would be enough for my purposes.
At the same time, this project offered an avenue to insight on another question with which modern Jews struggle, whether there are any beliefs that are inherent to, or essential for, being Jewish. Orthodox Jews point to Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith as defining acceptable Jewish belief, granting room for some debate and adjustments made by thinkers who followed him.
Reform and Conservative Jews, of course, long disputed those claims, but recent years have seen even some Orthodox thinkers step back from the Principles as absolutely vital to Jewish faith.[3] My question, independent of what I believe myself, was whether I could identify a set of beliefs are so inherent to the worldview of Scripture that to reject them is to declare one’s abandoning of what Judaism always has been, what Judaism inescapably is.
My quest, then, is for ideas so inherent to Jewish belief that it would seem impossible to claim to be adhering to Judaism without them. To claim to believe in the United States of America, for example, but to reject the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, seems oxymoronic, since it was precisely that set of values—applied judiciously to each era and region, perhaps—that animated the country’s creation.
So too in Jewish contexts. Various groups of Jews have made decisions about what it means to be Jewish, what laws are binding, what values are important; Reform believe this, Orthodox this, secular Jews this, and so on. Were we able to identify a set of beliefs fundamental to Judaism from its earliest times, we could at least say that those who adopt other faith commitments are breaking with the religion rather than applying it to a different set of conditions.
Such breaks have already occurred with regard to rabbinic tradition; I wondered whether Scripture itself could be shown to insist on some principles as central to its worldview, again challenging those who choose to define their faith-commitments in other ways.
It would be insufficient, for those purposes, for me to simply adduce sources I believed made the points I sought. Complex literatures such as Scripture or the Talmud are notoriously plastic, amenable to many interpretations, and often reflect multiple strands of thought, no one of which is necessarily binding.
The haftarot provide a limited corpus, easing one problem. In addition, these texts were chosen for public reading, so we would expect themto be representative of at least those ideas the invisible hand of tradition thought of as important for people to hear.
Extracting a minimal theology from the haftarotis a more complex task than just reading them, since the act of reading is almost inescapably impressionistic, reflecting the values and assumptions of the reader. The theology I would produce might then simply be the theology I already assumed.
To mitigate that problem, I have worked hard to build the theology presented here inductively. I worked on the essays on each haftarah separately and repeatedly. My goal in each was to read the text for itself, to the extent of my capabilities. Only once having done so did I step back to consider the larger themes of groups of haftarot. Even there, I first developed a one-paragraph summary of each haftarah’s themes, and then examined a set of haftarot for continuities or recurrences within a group of such readings.
It is still possible that my own proclivities have affected the outcome, since my internal hammer might lead me always to see nails; only the reader can judge. I hope I have succeeded at extracting from these texts core ideas, ones so inherent and dominant to the text that readers can only concede that this is at least what the text meant.
I stress “at least” because I have not sought to exhaust the texts’ rich possibilities, only to produce a set of ideas unequivocally central to the haftarot. Success would mean that readers walk away realizing that to be an adherent of Scripture means accepting certain faith principles.
People are free to do so or not, but I hope that after reading this work, they would at least recognize that rejecting these ideas necessarily means rejecting Scripture, independent of the question of the force of Jewish law in one’s life.
Such claims can only be as good as the evidence adduced for them; impatient readers can flip to the end of each section of this book, or to the concluding chapter. I invite more patient readers to join me in a journey of discovery, of slowly building a realization of what our readings of Scripture tell us weekly. For those readers, I hope the ends of each part—the book has seven sections, one for each of the five books of the Pentateuch, one for haftarot read on specific special Sabbaths, and one for those read on holidays-- and the concluding chapter will be the icing on a cake we have baked together, bringing together what we have seen in a complete whole.
PART I: THE HAFTAROT OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS
Haftarah No. 1, Parshat Bereshit,[4] Isaiah 42:5—43:10
Creation as Power
The haftarah opens with God mentioning that He created the Heavens and spread them out, formed the Earth, etc. This similarity to the Torah reading explains choosing a text like this one, but many other prophetic statements also speak of God as Creator. Moreover, that is not what the haftarah is actually about. God’s having created the world quickly takes a backseat to other concerns, such as mentioning how much God has until now refrained from fully revealing Himself.
Isaiah tells us that that will change in the future, as God promises to make His Presence so manifest as to spur the Jewish peopleto sing aשיר חדש,[5] a new song. Whereas now he describes the people as blind and deaf, he promises they will find spiritual places they never knew or imagined. That context lets us understand that Creation here is a point of reference for emphasizing God’s power, for noting how often humans neglect to notice His presence, an error that often shapes how we view the world. In the future, the obvious Creator will once again emerge.
At Creation, God was fully revealed. After Creation, He hid Himself, in order to leave room for human freewill, since it can only be truly free in an environment where God is not so obvious that any intelligent person would assume His existence and active involvement.
The haftarah reminds us that God will eventually return to the Creation mode, this time to fully redeem the Jews. Many today bemoan or complain about God’s hiddenness, pointing to it as a barrier to faith and fidelity. Our haftarahasks us to considerthe balance between God’s hiddenness and openness, the values and costs of each.
Famous/Important Phrases from this Week’s Haftarah:
Our general method of studying an haftarah will be to take it as a whole, summarizing and analyzing it in order. In these first weeks, though, some phrases have achieved a life of their own outside the haftarah itself; it seems equally useful to focus on those phrases to see where the haftarah as a whole was taking us.
The phrase in 42;10, “לה' שיר חדש שירו, sing to God a ‘new song’,” is generally understood to refer to the song of praise the Jews will sing when God has publicly redeemed them, when all recognize the Jews as His nation. Some of the Sages’ statements emphasize that this kind of song only comes in response to supernatural events, such as the Splitting of the Sea or when the Philistines yoked two cows to a wagon on which they placed the Ark. The text only says the Philistines wanted to test whether the cows would head straight back to Israel, but the Talmud (Avodah Zara 24b) assumes the cows also sang as they walked along.
42;21, “' חפץ למען צדקו יגדיל תורה ויאדיר, God wants to help others become more righteous, therefore makes the Torah great and strong (and therefore attractive to people).” This phrase closes a collection of verses recited at the end the daily liturgy. In addition, many communities cite this verse before saying a קדיש דרבנן, a Rabbis’ Kaddish. Tradition has it that such a Kaddish is said only after mentioning Rabbinically derived insights into Torah. After a Torah study class, the custom has become to recite the final Mishnah in Makkot, where R. Hananiah b. Akashya interprets this verse as saying that God gave much Torah and mitsvot to benefit us.
In Laws of Torah Study, 2;7, Maimonides cites the phrase to justify opening another yeshiva or schooleven when there already is one, since the verse tells us that God wants more and more Torah. While halachah often frowns on competition, in terms of spreading Torah—andknowledge of God-the rules differ.
More famously, Maimonides understands the Mishnah in Makkot as fitting his theory that any Jew who keeps one mitzvah fully, without any motives other than worship of God, is guaranteed a place in the World to Come. The stress on many mitsvot in the Mishnah was to celebrate the range of options God gave us for finding one to fulfill in this way. Again, staying with our theme, Maimonides is assuming that the way into at least the first level of the World to Come is by having a moment of complete God-focus, God-awareness that His hiddenness makes a challenge.
42:24, “מי נתן למשיסה יעקב...הלא ה' זו חטאנו לו, Who gave the Jews over to spoil…Is it not this God to Whom we have sinned?” Gittin 58a tells us that R. Joshua heard of a boy who had been imprisoned. He went outside his window and said the first half of the verse, and the boy completed it. Certain this indicated a bright future, R. Joshua ransomed him and he became R. Yishmael b. Elisha.
The story is a good one on its own, but the verse used suggests that R. Yishmael already at a tender age recognized God’s impact on history, despite its hiddenness. Other Talmudic stories show R. Yishmael having remarkably direct interactions with God. Seeing God’s “tracks” in the world is, apparently, the first step towards having even more intense such contacts.
43;4, “כל הנקרא בשמי ולכבודי בראתיו, יצרתיו ואף עשיתיו, All that is called by Name I created, formed and made.” God as Creator does not mean just once, it means a continuing connection to and ownership of the world.
In his commentary to the last Mishnah in Eduyot, Maimonides cites this verse to explain the position of the Sages in a debate about which lineage issues the Messiah will settle (the Torah establishes rules about lineage that had been violated already by the time of the Mishnah; in theory, all of the descendants of such families were no longer able to serve whichever functions required that lineage).