Cyberdov

The ‘haftara’ for YH is the same as for P8 – the vision of salvation spoken by Isaiah, which begins with a description of the imminent salvation from Assyria, and seems to morph into a description of Messianic times.

The background is that Sennacharib advanced on Jerusalem with 180,000 troops. Hezekiah inspired a religious repentance in which he and the people pledged their faith in God, and ultimately a plague struck the Assyrian army and Jerusalem was saved. There is a very interesting passage in Kings 2 (ch 18), where Ravshakeh, an officer in Sennacharib’s army, approached the siege lines to speak to the Jews. He makes a point of speaking in Hebrew so that he can address the common people, and the key line is: Don’t listen to Hezekiah when he tells you to rely on God – instead, rely on the king af Assyria, for he will sustain you and enrich you. Hezekiah resists, and inspires the people’s trust in God and their salvation.

Now, the salvation occurred on the first night of Pesach, and according to Rashi on the Gemara in Megilla, this is why we read the haftara of Isaiah’s salvation prophecy on the last day of Pesach. Two obvious questions:

1. why read it on the last day, if it occurred on the first day?
2. I always thought that we read the haftara because at the end of Pesach – a holiday of salvation – we look forward to the future Geulah (this is, in fact, how Mahzor Vitri explains it). Why did Rashi choose to interpret this choice as based on the salvation from Sennacharib, rather than the Messianic Age?

R Elon answers that the key is found in the conflict between Israel and Assyria. The point of including the Ravshakeh incident is that this was not just a military encounter. This was a philosophical encounter – the people chose to trust in God rather than Assyria, and so were saved. And as the haftara makes clear, this idea of trust in God is one that Israel is destined to bring to the rest of the world.

The eighth day of Pesach has a couple of unique customs. The Rosh and the Rashba refer to a custom that people would invite non-Jews to share matza with them on the 8^th day of Pesach – a custom that survives to this day in the form of the Maimuna. In a reverse parallel to Sukkot – after a week long national festival, we turn to universal concerns and inclusion. The haftara reflects the ascendancy of the philosophy of Hezekiah – trust in God – over the philosophy of Ravshakeh – trust in the king of Assyria. Isaiah emphasizes that ultimately, we are destined to bring the idea of trusting in God to the rest of the world – and that is an idea which is encapsulated in the last day of Pesach.

Perhaps the reading of this haftara on Yom HaAtzmaut is designed to remind us that as the State has made us a people with our own land, we have moved from individuals inviting our neighbors to partake of Matza, to a nation that should set an example of Godly behaviour to all the nations of the world.

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