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 YITRO
(Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5-6)
The three major events/messages of the Jewish people are: creation, revelation and redemption. Creation is celebrated by Shabbat, redemption is celebrated at Pesach. Of the three, revelation is the most difficult to understand and to translate. Shavuot, which commemorates revelation, is neither widely observed nor very well- known. Moreover, the idea of revelation is a much more obtuse and difficult concept for modern people than is creation or redemption. What does it mean for a God to self-reveal? In Exodus, and later in Deuteronomy, it means that God reveals his law amid thunder and lightning, fire and clouds of smoke. Moses wishes to see the glory of God and is denied that rapture. Isaiah, however, does see God in his vision. God is revealed to Isaiah standing upon a throne surrounded by winged angels. Although these revelations of Exodus and of Isaiah seem to be of very different subjects, they are intentionally associated by the tradition.
For the Vilna Gaon, the Torah is a blueprint of God's mind, and as such is the most intimate of self-revelations. The Vilna Gaon suggests to us that the Torah is as much a reflection of the godhead as is the Being which Isaiah beheld. Both visions are accompanied with great awesome terror and with the demand to be holy. If creation is the witness to God's authorship of the cosmos, and redemption is the witness to God's concern for human history, then revelation is the witness to God's desire for relationship. It is about God initiating intimacy with us, revealing in manifold ways which always ends up in the form of a call to action. To be intimate with God is to become a partner in God's hope for the world. Revelation is what makes us a nation of priests and a holy people.
(Steve Greenberg)
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