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 VAYERA
(II Kings 4:1-37)
As Parshat Vayera unfolds, an old woman and an even older man are given a child by God in what appears to be an age-defying miracle. So, too, the story goes in the Haftarah selection attached to this Parsha. A Shunamite woman with an elderly husband is told by the prophet Elisha that she will bear a child despite the apparent impossibility of such an event.
In the first story, we are perhaps a bit more able to understand why God performs such a miracle for the old couple. They are, of course, Sarah and Abraham. If anyone can be said to deserve a miracle, it must surely be these two parents of the entire Jewish people. After all, how could our story as a people unfold without the birth of Isaac?
But what about the Shunamite woman? Who is she to merit such a miraculous event? As as a character, she seems to be so marginal to the biblical narrative that she remains unnamed throughout the entire episode in which she plays a leading role. How might we understand the juxtaposition of these two stories? What is it that these people shared that united them across the centuries through a common miracle, despite the obvious differences between them and the role they played in moving our people's story forward?
According to the first verse of our Torah reading, the Lord appeared to Abraham "by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day." A midrash explained that Abraham was sitting in the tent door, watching for travelers to whom he might offer his home and hospitality. According to the Haftarah, the Shunamite woman is told that she will conceive after she offers her home and hospitality to a stranger, who she later comes to know as the prophet Elisha. What unites Abraham and Sarah with the Shunamite woman is their openness to the possibility of each human encounter. It seems every moment for them is an opportunity to enrich the life of another, to bring comfort and protection to someone on a journey.
Perhaps it is that sort of awareness and sensitivity that allows miracles to happen in our lives rather than the public importance of the role we play in any unfolding story. We are not all Abrahams and Sarahs, at least not every day. But which of us is not the Shunamite woman living, as she says, "among our own people," making a life for ourselves and with those close to us? Either way, we can always be on the lookout for that visiting holiness which is often at our door. In letting it in, we open the door to our future.
(Brad Hirschfield)
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