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 SHAVUOT

(Ezekiel 1:1-28, 3:12) 

We are so irrevocably grounded in a reality of scientific method, of replicable experiments and experiences, that the visions of prophets have no place for us.  We are trained to find facts that can be methodically described, calibrated and analyzed -- visionaries who see angels and winged four headed animals are either believers in some other religion, under the influence or psychotic.  Yet in the heart of the Bible explode the words of the prophet Ezekiel, whose encounters with God and God's agents draw us into a world we could little imagine or fathom:  "...The heaven opened up and I saw visions of God" (Ezekiel 1:1). 

What does it mean to experience God in a physical way, to see the heavens filled with angels, to stand at the celestial throne saturated with the Divine spirit?  Ezekiel allows us to enter different gates, to know that the path of Judaism is not only law or ethics or history, but an encounter with the Divine presence, and celestial beings can enter and sear the soul. 

            As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like coals of fire, burning like the appearance of torches; it flashed up and down among the living creatures; and there was brightness to the fire, and out of the fire went   forth lightning.  (Ezekiel 1:13)

 

The vision does not end with divine beings, but focuses on God's physical presence.  The rabbis of the Talmud, deeply disturbed by such anthropomorphics, seek to suppress this description of God: 

            Above the firmament...was the likeness of a throne...and upon (it) was the appearance of a man.  And from the loins upward I saw the color of electrum, like fire....  And from the loins and downward I saw fires and brightness around him.   (Ezekiel 1:26-27)

 

God is physical.  Ezekiel's gaze seems to be on God as a fully carnal Being.  This is no sweet spiritual encounter; Ezekiel provides us with a powerful, physical, sexually imminent God.  In Ezekiel, that which is strangest to our notions must also find a home in our Jewish psyches.  

In an age where truths must be sought and found beyond the laboratory and the academic settings, the sheer eccentric craziness of Ezekiel's vision jars the complacencies of the intellect and refreshes the soul.   

            Then a spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great rushing: 'Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place.'  (Ezekiel 3:12)         

 

(David Elcott)


    



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