Sermon: Shabbat Ha Gadol: Let Elijah In

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 13 April 2014

Just when everyone at the Seder is  getting a bit fed up and it feels like it is all going on too long our ancestors made sure there was something there to get the children involved again – the ritual of getting up and opening the door to the prophet Elijah.  This is the lead up to the question of the fifth promise of the Seder – I will bring you to the land of your ancestors – that is, the Messianic age will dawn.  For this promise we do not drink a cup of wine ourselves but rather we leave one for Elijah, get up and open the door and see if he is there.

 

Whilst away of course a little bit of wine can be surreptitiously removed from Elijah’s cup for gullible children and many families have tales of when there really was someone at the door – my wife Nicola’s family has a tale of a policemen being there at just the right moment.  Why – I am not sure!  A family in our community opened the door to their cat a few years ago – who was promptly renamed Elijah in commemoration of the event.

 

Elijah is bound up with Pesach in this ritual – as the possible bringer of the news that it won’t be next year in Jerusalem but this year.  He also turns up in the Shabbat haGadol Haftarah portion which Nikki read for us – the last words of the last prophet Malachi (3:23-24). “ Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Eternal.”  The word “great”  Ha Gadol in this verse is how this Shabbat, Shabbat HaGadol got its name.

 

Elijah only turns up twice in our traditional cycle of readings in the Shabbat services – here today and once more in the year when we read 1 Kings 18 – the story of the fearsome and fearless Elijah teasing the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, proving that the Eternal God is the only God.  We read it when we have read the Golden Calf episode from the Torah.

 

Stories of Elijah though, from way after the period of the Bible made him the figure for whom we hope when we open that door on Seder night.  Elijah, it seems from the account in the Book of Kings did not die, just went up in a fiery chariot to await when he was next needed – appearing briefly posthumously in the Second Book of Chronicles to send a letter complaining to King Jehoram about the behaviour of the Israelites.

 

Here is one of my favourites Elijah stories, told in Chasidic story telling.  It concerns Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, a third century teacher heading the Rabbinical academy of Lod.  It was he who in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 98b) met Elijah at the gates of Rome binding the sores of the lepers one by one so that he would be ready at any moment to herald the coming of the Messiah.

 

In this Chasidic story Joshua ben Levi accompanied Elijah on a journey – but Elijah made him promise not to ask any questions about what he was doing.  First Elijah and Joshua went to the home of a destitute couple who showed them great hospitality sharing the little they had with their unknown visitors.  In the morning Joshua ben Levi heard Elijah davening – adding a plea that God kills the one cow belonging to the couple.  Joshua ben Levi was mystified but, as he was asked, did not question Elijah.

 

Next day they found themselves outside the gates of a wealthy man at nightfall who shooed them away with no hospitality at all.  Elijah, davening in the morning, having slept out in the open, prayed fervently that the tumbledown wall outside the wealthy man’s grand house be restored and repaired like new.  Joshua ben Levi was dumbfounded – but good to his word asked Elijah no questions.

 

On the third night of their travels Elijah and Joshua ben Levi stopped at a Synagogue, full of people enjoying each other’s company and very nice food.  For Elijah and Joshua they said you can sleep on the Shul benches and here is some bread and salt for your dinner, while they carried on feasting.  In the morning Elijah davened of course and this time he beseeched the Eternal one that he make everyone in that Shul a leader among the Jewish people.

 

This time Rabbi Joshua ben Levi could not hold himself back and said to Elijah, I know my journey with you will be over if I ask but what on earth were you praying for – that lovely couple that their cow would die?  That miser that his wall would be repaired and the people of this clearly unholy Kehillah that they would all become leaders?

 

“I warned you Joshua ben Levi that humans judge by the sight of their eyes, but there is more in life than meets the eye. According to our agreement, you will have to leave me now. But let me explain to you at least what you have witnessed, and your heart will be able to live in peace.

 

“You see, the poor old couple who received us so nicely on the first night of our journey, certainly deserved our gratitude. I saw to my great sorrow that that very day the woman was destined to die. I prayed to G-d that she should live, and that their cow take her place. Although they lost their most precious possession, they will be able to stay together for a few years more. ”

 

“I see now,” exclaimed Rabbi Joshua. “But what about that rich miser, and his cracked wall?”

 

“There was a huge treasure buried beneath the wall. Had it collapsed, the miser would have found it. That’s why. “I could not have known that, of course,” said Rabbi Joshua. “Now, why did you bless the men of the beautiful synagogue who did not open their homes to us?”

 

“That was no blessing, my friend,” replied Elijah. “A community where everybody is a leader is not a happy place to live in.”

 

“You have opened my eyes, dear Master,” exclaimed Rabbi Joshua.

 

The next moment Elijah was gone.

 

There is story after story of Elijah defending the Jewish people after the time of the Bible. And at every Brit Milah, every circumcision, Elijah is spiritually present with the Chair of Elijah upon which the little boy is temporarily placed.  This is there because Elijah complained bitterly that the Israelites were failing to follow the covenant (midrash on 1 Kings 19:14) so he gets to witness the imitation into the covenant of every Jewish boy.

 

This though is a very different Elijah to the man presented in the Tanach.  Elijah first appears in the Bible in 1 Kings 17 – a fierce, uncompromising miracle working prophet who with no introduction ends a drought, revives a child from the dead, slaughters the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in front of their sponsor King Ahab and his Queen Jezebel, criticises the Israelites and their rulers deeply and angrily.  He is the great example of the fierce Jewish critic for whom everything he sees is wrong.

 

Even his walk on posthumous appearance in the Book of Chronicles is to tell King Jehoram that his household and all of his people will be struck by a plague due to their unfaithfulness to God!

How then does he become the compassionate defender of the Jewish people as presented in our Aggadah, the legends of the still available Elijah?  Israeli scholar Neima Novetsky of the Pardes Institute suggests that it the transformation be in one of the best known incidents of Elijah’s  biblical life.  This is where he is running for his life from Queen Jezebel having killed her retinue of idolatrous prophets.  He is in the wilderness some day’s journey at the mouth of a cave.  (1 Kings 19) God passes by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the God; but the God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake;  And after the earthquake a fire; but the God was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. In Hebrew Kol Dm’ma Dakah.

 

Neima Novestsky suggests that this experience transforms Elijah who learns that doing God’s work is not about being the fierce critic only but must be balanced by being the kind an compassionate person who goes about their work without great fanfare – and it is this Elijah – the one with the still small voice who is still with us helping us today.

 

So when you open that door to Elijah on Monday and maybe Tuesday night – be very hopeful that the world will be transformed for the better in the year ahead, that freedom will increase, that we will be at peace in our land.. But know that it will probably not be done by grand gesture, by earth shattering events, by the obvious heroes.  Rather it may well be by thousands upon thousands of kind compassionate acts – the person who reaches out a hand of friendship to one former enemy, the purchase of fair trade produce that fairly pays a poor farmer, the small act of Tzedakah born out a of a sense of duty to help the poor, the hospitable welcome extended to a stranger.  This is how the fifth promise of the Seder and vision of Malachi will be fulfilled and the hearts of all of us will be turned to each other.