April 19, 2024 / 11 Nisan 5784
On Shabbat haGadol – the ‘great Sabbath’ which immediately precedes Passover, we encounter Elijah the Prophet – Eliyahu haNavi. In the words of the haftarah for this Shabbat –
Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of GOD.
He shall reconcile (literally ‘return the hearts of’) parents with children
and (literally ‘the hearts of’) children with their parents…
Israeli poet and scholar Haviva Pedaya’s just published reflection on the image of Elijah speaks powerfully and poignantly to the current moment. I’m honored to share it with you.
Elijah’s supreme talent was that of restoration. In a community concerned about its cohesion and resilience, it is an obligation of shared destiny and mission to restore to it its lost pieces. This too is the obligation of redeeming captives. A captive (shavui) is a person who seeks to be restored (mushav). Returned. Not only does the voice of the captive demand this; also the categorical Divine voice which articulates the redeeming of captives as a commandment. The thirst and the hunger, the lack and the longing, need to be part of our everyday portion, the cup of poison, until we cut a path through hell to restoration.
Aside from the relatives of the captives and their supporters, who carry the burden of their missing relatives and the burden of their screams without rest, there is no leader on the horizon who will take upon her/himself the task of restoration, the difficult burden of descending into hell, the obligation to speak with the enemy and the murderers in order to return our sparks, the illuminated fragments of our collective body, home. We have no truer teacher than Elijah who reconciles children to their parents and parents to their children, mothers to their children and mothers with their children.
Elijah, in some of the mythic narratives, became a wandering Jew no less so than the Messiah. He too lives throughout all of history as one who eternally rambles on the margins, who is revealed in a folkloric way in order to restore missing pieces to one another: quarreling spouses, a Jew without flour for matzah; Elijah personifies the simple lives of those without faith and the sudden reconciliations for which they’re not prepared. [Haviva Pedaya: The Cup of Sorrow, the Seat of Honor, and the Wanderings of Elijah]
My prayer and hope is that this Shabbat and Pesah be a time of the return of the many missing pieces of our hearts and our lives. Elijah, indeed, can’t come soon enough.
Shabbat Shalom & Hag Sameah
Rabbi David
