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 BEREISHIT
(Isaiah 42:5-43:10)
The first chapter of Genesis clearly is neither a chronology of events nor a scientific explanation of how the world came into being. Rather its description of creation comes to answer the question of meaning. To one who argues that life is a series of random flukes and coincidences, the Torah proclaims that the world was created with intent and design, that stars come into being, seasons change, planets rotate according to plan. To one who fears that the universe is spinning chaotically toward a black hole, the Torah repeats that, at each step of the way, God saw (and sees) creation and life as good. This narrative that has contributed to the formation of the Jewish people describes a universe progressing from chaos to order and from lifelessness to life.
Yet the Torah seeks to move beyond a Creator preoccupied with the cosmic order of the universe to a God passionately concerned with the search for meaning through moral order. To one who suspects that life has no intrinsic value, the opening verses of Genesis describe how each person was created in God's image. A tradition that asserts that each human being is born with a touch of Godliness cannot help but affect how a person feels about himself or herself--even the person who questions God's existence. To highlight this point, the Mishnah offers the following commentary:
Rabbi Akiva said: How greatly God must have loved us to create us in the Divine image; yet even greater love did God show us in raising our consciousness to know that we are created in the Divine image. (Pirkei Avot 3:18)
It is exactly the divinity within humans that the prophet Isaiah proclaims as he focuses on the ways in which the Jewish people can model a partnership with God. The God who created the universe cannot perfect the world alone. The act of creation stimulates in Israel not only awe, but the desire and capacity to heal:
I the Eternal call you in righteousness and grasp you by the hand, sustain you as a covenanted people, a light unto the nations:
To open the eyes of the blind,
To liberate those imprisoned,
To (free) those who sit in darkness.
I am the Eternal, that is My name,
My glory I will not give to another....
(Isaiah 42:6-8)
It is not God alone who opens blind eyes and liberates the unjustly suppressed and assaulted. The prophet understands well that God's reputation and glory depend on those who are willing to emulate God, sustaining the partnership by healing an aching world while struggling to liberate all human beings.
(David Elcott)
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