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 VAYAKHEL
(I Kings 7:40-50)
...And on the pedestal, these words appear; My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains....
- from Ozymandius, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817
According to a Greek historian of the 1st Century BCE, the largest statue in Egypt bore the inscription: "I am Ozymandius, king of kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits." Now Ozymandius was the Greek name of the Pharaoh Ramses II, who is thought to be the pharaoh for whom the Hebrew slaves built cities as recounted in our Book of Exodus and at our Passover Seder. I tell you all this history because when we are at an awards dinner, or touring a foreign city with a guidebook, or simply reading the dedication plaques at our congregations and JCCs, we are not so easily impressed. Quite simply, we've seen too many and heard too many speeches to know anymore whether this one is really the great one.
Ozymandius probably attended just as many community banquets as you and struggled with the question of what would set his grasp on the world apart from all others. Sadly enough, he chose to recount his deeds in stone so that only the legend remains. Similarly, to listen to the list of dedicated windows, columns, layers, scrapers and sprinkling bowls in the Haftarah of Vayakhel [Kings 7:4-50], is to learn of the greatness of the God of our people from reading the tribute book at the state dinner of Solomon.
But read it we must--for otherwise we cannot ever again see the skillful bronze rendering of the symbols of God's power in those cherubim. To stand in front of these metallic tributes to God or even to hear of their greatness was to behold the Holy One. Or so the ancient hoped.
Might we read those forty-six verses with the hope of awakening within us a sense of the wish of our ancestors to put on a permanent exhibition the power of God? Try it--let's read this Tribute Book with respect for their ambitions, and then wonder about ours: What will remain for future Jews of our efforts to speak about God?
(Jon Schechter)
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