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 YOM HA'ATZMAUT
(Isaiah 10:32-12:6)
Judaism dreams of a world made perfect. Despite the millennia of oppression and war, after
eons of human hunger and suffering, the final word will go to the forces of justice,
equity and peace. In the prophet's vision,
the world will be restored to its wholeness in the Messianic age. In the Kingdom of God, the just ruler will treat
the weak with equity and give justice to the poor as well as the rich. They will neither harm nor destroy anywhere on
God's holy mountain (the earth). The war of
humans against other creatures and of animals with each other will finally be transformed
into peace. The wolf will lie down with the
lamb, the lion will eat straw, and a little child will shepherd a mixed flock of calf,
lion and fattened sheep safely and peacefully (Isaiah 11:3-9).
But what assurance do we have that this
will all happen? Whence comes the validation
of the Jewish dream of perfection?
The primary source of Jewish hope is the
actual redemption which the Jewish people experienced.
In the Exodus, the Israelites were taken from slavery to freedom Jews
experienced the ennobling shift from being used to being treasured, from being outsiders
without rights or dignity to becoming citizens in their own country by right. This taste of liberation validates the hope of
future redemption for Israel and for the whole world.
But thousands of years have passed since
that first Exodus. What assurance is there
that the Exodus was not a onetime fluke in history and that the status quo will not reign
forever? Isaiah's answer is that the
liberation will happen again. In his
lifetime, he envisions yet another Exodus. Again
the seas will be parted and the returnees will walk on
dry land. This time they will
come from Assyria and beyond as once they came out of Egypt. This restoration proves that the Exodus is not a
onetime event, but an ever recurring deliverance that will happen again and again until
the whole world is made whole.
The restoration in Isaiah's time happened
more than 2500 years ago. Maybe that impulse
is also spent? Does the final victory go to
oppression and war after all? The answer is
that in our century, comes yet another Exodus--from Europe, from Egypt and Iraq, from
Ethiopia and Russia and Syria. The
irresistible upsurge and triumph of deliverance proves again that the hope of healing and
perfection is not false. Of course, this is a
natural, step-by-step, unfolding redemption, but it points beyond itself to universal
freedom. Therefore, the Jewish people rereads
Isaiah's messianic promise on Israel Independence Day; then they chant aloud: I believe in the coming of the Messiah; no delays
can break our expectation that the final redemption of dignity and peace for all will
come.
(Yitz Greenberg)
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