Haftorah This Week
Welcome to Haftorah This Week, the place where you will find thoughts and
reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on this week's Haftorah.
HAFTARAT VAYESHEV
(Amos 2:6-3:8)
Jewish traditions have struggled to comprehend the promise God gives to Israel at Mount
Sinai:
If you listen to my Voice
And sustain our covenantal relationship
Then you will be My chosen treasure from among all the peoples.
(Exodus 19:5)
The Jewish Spanish poet Yehuda HaLevy ascribed roles to all peoples, but declared
Israel the heart of humanity. In our age, Mordecai Kaplan rejected Israel's chosenness as
anachronistic, proclaiming a doctrine that saw all human beings and their communities as
potentially chosen.
Now, at the end of this century, we ponder our remarkable success in becoming so fully
modern that we have lost the unique purpose of sustaining the Jewish story. The prophet
Amos anticipates this malaise.
Amos surveys the world of the ninth century B.C.E. and is dismayed. The Torah in which
he believes cannot tolerate the violence and decadence he sees. The just God of the
universe, whom Amos loves, holds all the nations surrounding Israel accountable for rape,
pillage, genocide and unbearable cruelty. All nations are chosen to display a divinely
judged basic civility and universal morality.
Yet Israel is held accountable to dramatically higher standards. They shall be judged
for failing to comfort the widow and protect the orphan, the weak and homeless. They are
condemned "because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of
shoes; they hunger after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor as they assault the
way of the humble" (Amos 2:6-7).
The children of Israel are forbidden smug self-righteousness and a relativist's moral
complacency. God challenges Israel through the voice of the prophet, reminding this people
that they were liberated from Egypt to rid Eretz Israel of its evil. God declares,
"It is with you that I seek intimacy from among all the families of the Earth"
(Amos 3:2). I am in love, the prophet says of God, with the children of Israel. And as
lovers we must share a passion for justice, righteousness and compassion.
If the nations that surround Israel practice terrorism and murder, there should be no
comparative joy in Jerusalem as long as there are hungry children in the streets or
corruption in the government. If its neighbors abuse the civil and human rights of their
minorities, the Jewish people still are required to protect and care for the stranger in
its midst.
Frankly, such chosenness is the serious and powerful burden that results from the
relationship of love and responsibility we sustain with the God of justice and
righteousness. Over the millennia, our people even increased the burdens of this
passionate love affair by taking greater responsibility to do God's work in the world.
We have spent decades chasing other voices and experimenting with other loves. Amos
brings us back home, asking us to maturely return to the God that cherishes us. His
prophetic voice provides a vision of Jewish chosenness that seems ever more inextricably
linked to our people's personal and communal sense of mission.
(David Elcott)
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