Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation (Jewish Lives)

Who but Elijah would presume to address Ein Sof directly? His intimacy with God enables him to know the unknowable and trace the indescribable.

His eternal zeal now impels him to care deeply for all of Israel—not only those who faithfully keep the Sabbath, but even those suffering in hell.

At a dramatic point in the scriptural tale, Harbonah (a eunuch in the palace of King Ahasuerus) advises the king to hang the Jews’ arch-enemy, Haman. The Midrash attributes this counsel to Elijah, who was impersonating Harbonah.19

Elijah’s ethical paradigm—mishnat ḥasidim—is incumbent upon anyone truly devoted.

This is the meaning of: Look, I am sending to you [Elijah the prophet]—for the word sending is in the present tense, because it is constantly so, in each person and at all times.

For the rabbi in distress—and for his oppressed and colonized people—Elijah breaks the rules of the game, in which the Romans governing Palestine (or the Persians governing Babylonia) always win and the Jews always lose. Elijah in disguise opens unpredictable possibilities.

In the words of the twentieth-century mystic Abraham Isaac Kook, “Originally, before he was sweetened, he perceived acutely the depth of ugliness and contamination in which this lowly world is immersed. Therefore he blazed with zeal to eradicate the spirit of impurity and those clinging to it. After being sweetened, he perceives every spark of holi

unlike his predecessor, Jesus celebrated the kingdom as already present—in his teaching and actions. His emphasis was less on doom and more on the good news that God was about to restore His scattered people.

This is one of many parallels between Elijah and Moses. Whoever composed the early legendary accounts of Elijah (later incorporated into the biblical saga) intended to portray him as a sort of Moses redivivus (reborn).