January 27, 2012 / 3 Shevat, 5772
Bo
Jeremiah 46:13-28
On our new website for our Bnai Mitzvah candidates here at the Synagogue, the page for Haftarah begins with the question, "Is it half my Torah portion?"
It's a reasonable question if you're twelve or thirteen: though I wonder how many of us adults, also, never ask ourselves what a Haftarah actually is.
The Hebrew comes from the root p-t-r. It's a rare root in Tanakh, where it means, variously, to separate, to remove or to set free. Given this, I wonder whether we would do well to think of the haftarot we read as being similar to the envoi of a ballad, or the punchline of a joke. In much the same way as the best anthem is always played last at a rock concert, the haftarah is intended to resound in our minds after we depart. It follows that the final lines of the haftarah - the end of the ending, as it were - are particularly important. Perhaps this is why the tradition arose that we are forbidden to end a haftarah on a sour note. Instead, verses are repeated, or brought from other parts of the prophetic book, or even from other prophets altogether, so that we are left with a sweet taste in our mouths.
Which makes the ending of this week's haftarah decidedly ambiguous.
Suitably enough for the Torah portion in which the Exodus finally takes place, the first 25 verses or so comprise some rather pointed Egypt-bashing, not dissimilar to what we heard in the haftarah last week. Pharaoh is described as a braggart (personally, I prefer the translation, "windbag"); Egypt herself is portrayed as a fat cow being tormented by a mosquito, prior to being overrun by the Babylonians.
But there's - forgive the pun - a sting in the tail. Two stings, in fact. First, in verse 26, there is the assurance that God will, in the end, restore Egypt. This is followed by an address to Israel. A reassurance that their exile will end, is succeeded by the lines, viysartikha lamishpat/v'nakeh lo enakeka. This is hard to translate, but the underlying sense is reasonably clear: the people have been, or are to be corrected judiciously (i.e. in measure) but will not escape entirely unpunished. The words have an additional resonance, given that the final clause is a cut-and-paste from the end of the 13 attributes of God - the same phrase that the Rabbis conveniently edit for liturgical purposes.
God, it would seem, doesn't buy into the good guys/bad guys dynamic.
Quite a take-home from the Exodus, isn't it?
This week's Haftarah commentary was written by
Rabbi Deborah Silver. Rabbi Silver is at Adat Ari El in the Valley Village area of Los Angeles. Rabbi Silver, a British-born former lawyer, was ordained in 2010 by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. While there, she was the co-editor with Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, of the Ziegler Adult Learning Walking With... series.
The opinions expressed in this Unraveller are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the FJMC.
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