Haftorah Parashat Vayigash
Parshat Vayigash, Jan. 7, 7 Shevat, Yehezkel 37, 15-28
Unity Is the First Step
Like the weather, it is easy to speak about unity but harder to do anything about it. Here this week, we will only have enough time to understand what the haftarah assumes by that word, and the importance of that kind of unity, what it brings about.
Yehezkel is told to unite two sticks, symbolically according to Radak, or miraculously according to Rashi and Radak’s father. On one of those he wrote “Yehuda and the Benei Yisrael who are his friends,” and on the other “Yosef, the House of Efraim, and the Benei Yisrael who are his friends.” This is meant to predict the future reunification of the Northern Kingdom with the Southern, which will apparently precede God’s taking the exiles back to their land, where they can be made into one nation, with one king.
Noting that the verse speaks of Yehuda and his crew, and Efraim and his crew, when we today often speak of the split between the two kingdoms as separating 9½ tribes on one side, and 2½ on the other. When we attach names to the two sides, we seem to be saying that the two kingdoms differ in basic outlook, not just in detail.
While the story of the split (in Melachim) might give the impression that the tribes broke off over the specific question of submitting to Rehavam (Shlomo’s son), Yehezkel is seeing them as coming from two camps, two worldviews, two weltanshauungs, if you will (I just like throwing that word into conversation). Recognizing that Efraim and Yehuda were at conceptual odds with each other (which also explains why prophets refer to the Northern Kingdom as Efraim, suggesting that their perspective typified that Kingdom), we see that the challenge of reunification will involve bringing together those who disagree, even violently, into a productive working relationship.
Unifying Despite Our Differences
Some of us might think that can only happen when all Jews happen to already agree (as I’ve found out when trying to portray a Messianic world in which that is not true—many people out there both assume and want Messiah to come only once all disagreements can be changed or papered over), but I do not believe that was Yehezkel’s intent. If he meant that, it seems to me, he’d have written the two names on one stick; his writing them on two and then bringing them together suggests they will maintain their separate identities.
This is in line with some ideas we studied last year, such as “kedushah” seeing the angels as uniting around praising God, although each angel clearly has a mission of his own—Yehezkel is telling us that our task, as it was the brothers’ task in the parsha, is to find a way to unite while also maintaining our independent status and views.
That does not mean, I hasten to add, that we are supposed to become indifferent to others’ views or lifestyles; that would confuse unity with apathy to right and wrong. As I just discussed with a cousin of mine, we cannot just say “Whatever you want is fine,” if some of what that person wants runs counter to my deepest held beliefs. Allowing others to act immorally fosters anarchy, not unity.
Unity comes in once we have established the parameters of accepted behavior; having done so, whatever is still legitimate becomes a chance for various people to focus on and emphasize their particular interests and concerns. Efraim and Yehudah see the world in different ways, with different emphases, and that will never change. What can change is these two camps’ inability to work together, to build a polity that knows when and how to compromise, to accept the view of one or the other where that is either necessary or more productive.
Seeing what unification means explains how it can lead to the rest of the process described here. Once we are able to work together despite our disagreements, we can earn the right to a full redemption—the whole shebang, return to Israel, active and open presence of God in our midst, rebuilding of the Temple, and the return of a Davidic king.
These institutions cannot be imposed from without, they need an environment in which to flourish. This week’s haftarah tells us that that environment is the ability to know what needs to be rejected as absolutely wrong, what accepted as absolutely right, and where reasonable people can and should differ, each taking the path that seems most productive without that prejudicing his or her view of others and the roads they walk.
One Famous Verse, Two Important Ramifications
In verse 22, Hashem promises to make the Jews into one nation, as we’ve discussed, but at least two later uses of the verse are striking and worth noting here. First, R. Joseph Albo’s Sefer haIkkarim, a famous work of medieval Jewish thought, insists that the verse was originally meant to apply during the Second Beit haMikdash, and it’s only its failure to do so that has left it for Yemot haMashiach.
In context, it helps Rabbi Albo raise the possibility that some of the prophecies we think apply to the future may have been intended for the past, which may affect the kind of Mashiah we need to believe in. For us, it means that—as far as he saw it—the ideal of unity of the nation was not seen as utopian or far-off, but a possibility at any time.
The second example highlights some of the issues we’ve been discussing. R. Shlomo Kluger, in his Ha-Elef Lecha Shelomo, is answering a person who did not wish to say “she-lo asani goy, who has not made me a non-Jew.” The questioner claimed that Jews are also called “goy,” like our verse, which refers to us as a “goy ehad ba-aretz, a unified nation in the Land.” R. Kluger answered that Jews are not called “goy, nation” as individuals, but only as an aggregate.
Assuming his logic is relevant to the question, he seems to understand the beracha as thanking Hashem for not making us like non-Jews, who are, each of them on their own, a complete whole. We, on the other hand, are only a complete whole in unification with others. That he could see us as thanking God each morning for being incomplete, for needing other Jews to be a complete whole, strikes me as a nice supplement to the ideas in the haftarah itself, stressing the value of finding a real unity as a necessary and unavoidable phase of bringing the Jewish people back to the glory of a Temple, King, and close relationship with God.
[15] The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
[16] Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:
[17] And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
[18] And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
[19] Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
[20] And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.
[21] And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:
[22] And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
[23] Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God.
[24] And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.
[25] And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.
[26] Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
[27] My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
[28] And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore