Bereshit (Haftarah)

“Who has chosen goodly prophets”

The origin of the institution of haftarot is not entirely clear. The Talmud, in its discussion in Megillah 24a ff. and elsewhere, seems to assume it as a given. There are those scholars who suggest it was first instituted at a time—perhaps the Seleucid persecutions that preceded the Hasmonean revolt—when the public reading of the Torah, indeed, any public study of the Torah or affirmation of cardinal Jewish beliefs, was viciously suppressed by the ruling authorities. The reading of a chapter from the prophets, bearing some connection to the censored Torah portion, served as a reminder to the people of the Torah reading, and perhaps as an expression of hope that they would soon be able to once again engage in its study. Alternatively, others, such as Adolph Buechler, suggest that it was introduced much earlier, to reaffirm the importance and canonical standing of the latter sections of the Bible against the attacks of such groups as the Sadducees or the Samaritans, who held that only the Five Books of the Torah themselves (Sadducees) or the “Hextateuch” (Torah + Joshua; Samaritans) enjoyed sacred status. The name itself comes from the root “to part” or “to take leave”: that is, it is thought of as a kind of “taking leave” of the Scriptures before placing the Torah back in the Ark.

The reading of the haftara raises some interesting questions about the attitude of the Rabbis towards the standing of the various sections of the Bible. The blessing recited before the haftarah speaks of God as He “who has chosen Torah, and Moses his servant, and the true and righteous prophets”—as if to emphasize the connection of the Prophets to the Torah of Moses, and the primacy of the former. There also seems to have been more than a little ambivalence about granting official status to the public study or reading of portions of the Bible other than the Written Torah: i.e., Nakh, the latter two sections of the Bible. The Talmud, at Shabbat 116b, mentions that there was a rule against reading Kitvei kodesh at the time of the Beit Midrash. During the course of Shabbat (usually late Shabbat morning, after the regular order of prayer and Torah reading and a light morning meal), a public lecture on Torah was delivered by the local rabbi or teacher, whose focus was the Oral Law—the halakhah. The Rabbis seem to have been concerned that people would devote too much time to the “lighter,” more emotionally appealing and aesthetically elegant books of Proverbs, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and the like, which were filled with colorful imagery, to the detriment of the serious study of the halakhah. The latter was detailed and complicated, somewhat dry, more demanding intellectually, but of great immediate importance for practical everyday Jewish life. On the other hand, according to one Talmudic source, there was also a “haftarah” at Minha of Shabbat, taken from the Holy Writings (Ketuvim).

I wonder whether all this may relate to the midrashic method. The classical midrash form, the petihta, as found, e.g., in many sections of the Midrash Rabbah on the Torah, opens with a verse from Ketuvim (“the Holy Writings”), presents a comment on it, sometimes turns from there to a verse from Prophets or to other homilies based upon the same verse from the Writings, and ends up by linking the verse and its interpretation to a key verse from the weekly portion being expounded. This linking together of different strata of Scripture has an almost mystical import. It is told that Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel used to sit and expound Torah, “connecting the Writings to the Prophets, the Prophets to the Torah,” until “the letters rejoiced and danced as on the day of their giving at Sinai.” During this intense study, the wings of the birds flying overhead were singed from the intensity of the holy fire thereby created.

The connection between the haftarah and the weekly Torah portion may also relate to the petihta form of the Midrash. Jacob Mann, in his book, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Ancient Synagogue, develops this idea, particularly with respect to the triennial cycle observed in the Land of Israel, noting parallels between the haftarot and verses found in various midrashim.

Taking this subject one step further: might this be related to the tension between the approaches to Torah of Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael? And this, in turn, relates to the friction between aggadah and halakhah (aggadah being related to the more biblically-oriented study method of Midrash)? I am here conjecturing, and there is no doubt abundant scholarly literature on this subject, but the idea is intriguing. That is, that in ancient times there may have been a more imaginative, bible-centered, popular school of study, alongside a more elitist, scholastic, legal-oriented study of Mishnah and halakhically-focused midrashim.

During the early years of the State of Israel, there was an attempt to revive a Bible-centered Judaism as a model that would provide cultural roots for a secular renascence of Jewish national life. This movement emphasized the historical, geographical, linguistic, and belletristic aspects of the Bible over and above its more specifically religious or philosophical aspects; its foremost advocate, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, saw it as an alternative model to the Talmud-oriented culture of traditional Rabbinism and religious Orthodoxy. There was also something rather self-conscious and more than a little artificial in the approach, and in this respect was of course quite different from the ancient Bible-Midrash nexus about which I conjecture.

Another interesting question, thinking about the haftarot, is: why are the Prophets grouped together as a unit as they are? After all, the “Former Prophets” and the “Later Prophets” (nevi’im rishonim and nevi’im aharonim), in fact consist of two completely different genres: the one is a narrative history of Israel, from the death of Moses through the Destruction of the First Temple and the exile to Babylonia that followed in its wake, while the latter is a collection of prophecies, each containing the utterances of a different prophetic author. I was struck by this in recent years, during which I have had occasion to make use of the RSV (Revised Standard Version) Protestant Bible translation. I must admit to a certain logic in the Christian arrangement of the Bible: all the historical books together, followed by the “Wisdom literature” and the books of actual prophecy. Thus, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah follow straight upon Kings; Ruth is inserted between Judges and Samuel; and Lamentations follows the Book of Jeremiah. What then is the rationale behind the traditional Jewish arrangement? (Incidentally, some details of the Jewish order differ between the original Talmudic discussion in Baba Batra 14b, codified in Rambam’s Hilkhot Sefer Torah 7.15, and the present arrangement, based upon the Masoretes.) The primary basis for the Jewish division into “Nevi’im” and “Ketuvim” is not one of subject matter, but of different levels of sanctity, of authority: those books collected in the Prophets were written under prophetic inspiration, while those gathered in the Writings were written with the lesser level of Ruah Hakodesh (the Divine spirit).

The Prophet of Consolation

I will discuss here the first three haftarot of Bereshit (Genesis) together. All three are taken from the second half of the Book of Isaiah. This bloc of chapters (40-66) has a strikingly different tone and mood than do Chapters 1-39; indeed, modern historical biblical criticism sees this as evidence that they came from the pen of a different author or authors (“Second Isaiah”), whereas the traditional view maintains that they were spoken with far-reaching prophetic vision. Whereas the former chapters contain a melange of harsh rebukes to Israel, prophecies again the nations, and accounts of the prophet’s conversations with King Hezekiah and with Rabshekah at the time of the Assyrian invasion of 721 BCE, the second half is filled with visions of comfort and of the ultimate glorious restoration of Zion, and are rich in theological reflection. For this reason, all the haftarot for the seven weeks of consolation that follow Tisha b’Av are taken from this section.

Another interesting aspect of these haftarot concerns their connection to the Torah portion they accompany. At first glance, each seems to be have been chosen on the basis of one isolated verse that connects it to the respective Torah reading. However, closer perusal reveals a deeper thematic connection running through each of these haftarah as a whole. I will elaborate.

Bereshit: The statutory haftarah for Bereshit (not read this year), is Isaiah 42:5 - 43:10. The opening verse is an invocation of God who “created the heavens and stretched them out, who spreads the land and its offspring, giving a soul to those the people who are upon it, and spirit to those who dwell there.” Interesting: in two balanced halves of the same verse, God as Creator of heaven and earth, and of humankind.

At first blush, only the opening verse relates to the Creation as such. But upon close reading, it becomes clear that the entire passage is pervaded with a theology of the Creation as proof of God ‘s efficacy and His ability to keep promises. The chapter is, in a sense, an “introduction” of God: as He who called the prophet, who opens blinded eyes, the One who does not share His glory with others, but whose very being negates the very possibility of validity to idols. God’s creative great power is the surest guarantee of his ability to restore life, and a source of hope to a “robbed and plundered people” (v. 22).” All this is essentially a theological spelling out of what is implicit in the opening chapters of Genesis.