The Haftara

• If there’s one time during the Shabbat morning services that we feel permitted to chat to our neighbour
• Instituted already by the times of the Chazal – (Chachmainu Zichronam Levracha – Mishna and Talmud times, or Second Temple era, 250BCE to about 600CE) SOURCE 1 So, we’re talking over 2 millenia ago. When the Greek Assyrians (those same ones we see at Chanuka!) forbade the study and reading of the Torah, we enacted reading from the Prophets, with some hint or link to the actual Parasha SOURCE 2 Bava Kamma 82a – OR, Was this one of Ezra the Scribe’s enactments? Both date to more or less the same era… But before we go into the why’s and wherefores – let’s explore the WHAT

And really, it seems there’s a beautiful duality here: (SOURCE 3: Gemara Megilla 29b, about 400CE)

• A) The Haftara as an expansion or extension of what is occurring in the Parasha , an event or a theme – giving a more complete picture than the Torah text itself. Let’s take as an example:
• SOURCEs 4&5 Shirat Hayam/ Shirat Devora
• B) Or, the Haftara as influenced by the yearly calendar. We see this around major festivals (eg Purim/Pesach) but perhaps most starkly in the Summer months around Tisha B’Av when the Haftarot seem to depart drastically from following the weekly Torah portions, but rather focus on a journey through calamity, consolation and repentance.

I think of it rather as a DNA strand – the double helix

• But let’s pause a moment to query WHY Ezra may have instituted the Haftorah reading, and what this says about the practice. And to do so we need to make a quick delve into context…
• Ezra led a massive Aliyah wave from Babylon to rebuild a Jewish state and conduct Temple services in the rebuilt Beit Hamikdash. However, what confronted him was devastating – he became the first major and successful kiruv worker/ democratisation of Torah at a time when Jewish practice was dissipating and being bastardised. We saw the advent of the Sadducees – the movement which sought to reject any oral Torah and abide only by the Torah Shebichtav, the five books themselves. So we view Ezra in the context of this movement and a general backdrop of the rejection of the Oral Torah. SOURCE 6 Gustav DORE illustration for The Wandering Jew series.
• And this may explain the glut of blessings recited before and after the reading of the Haftara…
• every haftarah is introduced with a berakhah (blessing) praising God for having “chosen good prophets and accepted their words, spoken in truth.” SOURCE 7 HAFTARA BLESSINGS
• Is there a fundamental message here about trusting in the non-written Torah? Having faith in God’s prophets?

The formula of these blessings seems to focus on the reliability of the prophets, as if to address the bitter polemics among competing religious groups in Ancient Israel.

So the Haftora may well have been instituted as a declaration of belief in the prophetic works; an extension of the written Torah, as it were, and a total rejection and stand against the Saducee theology. Reading the Haftara demonstrates the prophetic words as an integral part of our canon…

And thus we conclude with the context of the haftorah in the bigger picture of the Shabbat morning shul service; we see an gospel Triad of The Torah reading, Haftorah reading, and Rabbinic sermon - THREE sources of Torah authority – Torah, prophets, Rabbis – equates to written torah, oral torah and interpretive ability; and this is the backbone of our belief system as Orthodox Jewry.

Challenge - can you find the link? Whether esoteric or evident, seek it!