Herb Bronstein
The Profit in the Prophets: Pay Attention to the Haftarah

The Hebrew Bible is comprised of three parts:
1) The Torah -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy -- the five books of Moses we read in order throughout the year.
It includes the creation story, our family of origin story, the story of the exodus, the wandering in the desert and Moses recapitulation of the story and his exhortations to the people. Throughout the books are laws which form the basis of the mitzvot. In addition, in the center it includes the guidebook for the priests which outlines the rituals of the cult which became the model of operating in society. In the center of this plan was the holiness code for human behavior.

2) The Prophets -- Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
And twelve shorter books: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Selections of these works are read after the Torah on most occasions.

3) The Writings: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs (Pesach), Ruth (Shavuot), Lamentations (Tisha B'Av), Ecclesiastes (Sukkot), Esther (Purim), Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles.
Selections from these books are used throughout the service and some are read at different seasons.

Bronstein will focus on the prophets as they are used weekly in the service as haftarot, as well as their playing a role in the evolution of Jewish civilization and how that influences us today.
     Reading the haftarah, or selection of the prophets, has been a custom dating back about twenty three hundred years. The word itself is drawn from the Latin word to take leave of, which could either represent the leaving the Torah reading or leaving at the end of the service.
In the 14th century, it came to be believed that the reading of the prophets came about when the Greek ruler, Antiochus, forbid the reading of Torah. Selections of the prophets which represented the same ideas of that weekly Torah reading were substituted to get around the prohibition. Other people suggested that it was a religio-political move against those who said that the holiness of the word of God ended with the Torah, so to prove the point, they read from the prophets every week.
Originally there was flexibility in which text was read. Now about two-thirds of the standard haftarot (which are in some cases different in different communities) have connection to the Torah reading in theme.
     In the other cases there may be different types of connections. The new reform book of haftarah commentaries has brought back the classic texts that were not included in the Plaut Chumash published earlier -- which we use.
     The prophets are people who lived out the basic premise that there would be people through whom God's will would be transmitted. Traditionalists see the prophets as having been chosen beyond their will to transmit a message. Yet we may also see them as actors who refocus the direction of the Jewish people.
     What they have said has gone beyond the Jewish people to influence the entire world. Despite the prophet's own spiritual experience, what the tradition considers transmitted is the word. Individual people with individual creative styles confront the population and its leaders with the divine message in their own human terms.
     The words of the different prophets played roles and had influence in the areas of politics and in predicting the future. At times they performed symbolic acts which dramatized their messages and at other times they performed miraculous actions.
The later prophets played a significant role in the evolution of Judaism when they iconoclastically rejected the cult and ritual, and called for ethical monotheism. They shifted the focus from nationalism to universality. In their style they evolved from people who predicted the future to those who gave social critique. Some had dramatic styles which led people to call them mad and others were more organizationally minded.
     However, consistently they spoke with moral authority in contemporary terms to the problems of a society regarding concerns they were aware of, or smoldering problems the public was choosing to ignore.
     In the centuries following these prophets, their words and their commentary on the Torah has influenced significantly the evolution of Jewish civilization.