Torah Study Blog

During the Passover Seder, many of us fill a glass of wine for Elijah and we open the door as an invitation to Elijah. The arrival of Elijah, according to a tradition passed down through the rabbis, but not mentioned anywhere in the Bible, heralds the arrival of the Messiah and a time when peace and freedom will reign for all.

Rabbi Janet Roberts led our group this week in a discussion about Elijah. We first meet Elijah in the book of 1st Kings. The setting is that, at a time when the people were divided into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, Ahab has become the king of the northern kingdom. He married Jezebel, a Phoenician woman whose people worshipped the god Baal, and Ahab built a temple to Baal.

Although we are not given more specifics, we are led to understand that God is not happy with Ahab because he allowed the temple to Baal to be built. The prophet Elijah makes his first appearance when he announces to Ahab that there will be a drought. Rain is of critical importance in the dry land of Israel and this is a real threat. Ahab does not take this lightly and plans to do some unnamed harm to Elijah.

Prophets are believed to speak directly with God, and to have the ability to bring about “miracles.” Miracles are those things that break the natural, or scientific, order, and the story goes on to tell us about the miracles of Elijah: The first miracle happened when God instructed Elijah to hide in a cave near a water source, and God arranged for the miracle of ravens bringing food to Elijah every day. After some time, the water source dried up and God told Elijah to go to a nearby town where a woman would take care of him. He found the woman, who was despairingly gathering sticks to make a fire to bake her last loaf of bread for herself and her son before their food supply is used up and they starve to death. The woman agreed to give some bread to Elijah, but then her jug of flour and her jug of oil miraculously stay full for the duration of the drought. The next miracle happened when the son fell ill and died. Elijah covered the boy with his own body and cried out to God to return the boy’s life. Miraculously, the boy lived again. The story ends with the woman saying, “Now I know you are a

man of God and that the word of the Lord is truly in your mouth” (1 Kings 17:24).

We did not know anything about Elijah before he made the pronouncement of a drought to Ahab. By performing miracles, the reader learns that Elijah was a legitimate prophet.

Rabbi Roberts asked our group why we thought that human beings need miracle stories. There are people who are unwilling to associate unexplained happenings to some omnipotent being. But there are other people who are unwilling to attribute random things to pure chance. And these people will not give credit for things they consider “miracles” to some Everyday Joe. The miracle worker must be, somehow, connected to God.

What could have been the purpose of this particular miracle story? Scholarly study of the reign of King Ahab shows that he was actually a very successful king. However, in 720 BCE the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, in a devastating event that resulted in the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Most people are not comfortable with the explanation that, “Hey, stuff happens!” In an example of Magical Thinking, people look for an explanation, no matter how stupid, for the bad things that happened. It was not just “because.” The leader of the community must have done something to anger God, and the entire community had to pay the price. In this story, the wrongs of Ahab led to the ultimate destruction of the northern kingdom.

Faith helps people get through hard times. The current coronavirus pandemic is certainly a hard time for us today. We can see examples of modern-day Magical Thinking in statements that unproven drugs are “miracle cures.” Or, perhaps the virus will just go away! As the saying goes, there are no atheists in a foxhole. And it is understandable why people, even in our modern, scientific times reach for miracles.

Stay safe, everyone!

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Roberts taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter