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 KI TISSA
(I Kings 18:1-39)
The Parsha and Haftarah combine to emphasize the unremitting war waged by Israel's great leaders against the evils of idolatry. In the Parsha, the people of Israel, just a few weeks after the Exodus and Sinai experiences, worship the golden calf. Moses grinds the golden calf to dust and leaves a bitter taste in Israel's mouth.
The Haftarah shows us the same people 500 years later still wavering between God and Baal. Elijah, in a miracle at Carmel, strikes a vehement blow against the cult of Baal and the people turn to God and declare, "Adonai hu Haelohim,"--The Lord alone is God. Within days of this affirmation, the people are back worshipping Baal.
In the end, miracles--be they Exodus, Sinai or Carmel--in and of themselves cannot transform the children of Israel into a covenantally responsible people. Rather the people (we) can move from bondage to freedom only in gradual, incremental stages. Spiritual and political awareness and responsibility are part of a very slow process, a matter of two steps forward and one step back.
To teach us not to lose hope, the rabbis connect both the Parsha and the Haftarah to Yom Kippur. They claim that the people of Israel were forgiven for the golden calf on Yom Kippur and they placed the final words of the Haftarah, "The Lord alone is God," in the Yom Kippur liturgy. To this day, we recite aloud this affirmation seven times as the closing statement of the Neilah service. On Yom Kippur, we confront the golden calves and Baals we worshipped during the past year that alienated us from God, other people and our task of perfecting the world and then we re-experience a reaffirmation of covenant. Thus year after year, only through a slow incremental process of learning and experiencing, we move towards a world that is transformed.
(Irwin Kula)
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