Torah Study Blog

We are at the end of the Festival of Sukkot, known in the Torah as the Feast of Booths. In Leviticus 23 we are told that this is a time to, “rejoice before the Lord.” And in Deuteronomy 16 we are told, “the Lord your God will bless all your crops and all your undertakings, and you shall have nothing but joy.”

Sukkot is a joyous celebration at the end of the harvest. In the agrarian society of the early Israelites the success of the crops was essential. If your crops survived, you survived.

The haftarah portions for Sukkot are much less cheerful. The haftarah from the first day of Sukkot is from Zechariah 14. The portion describes how Jerusalem will, “be captured, the houses plundered, and the women violated.” But God will come and exact justice for the Israelites and “smite them with this plague: Their flesh shall rot away while they stand on their feet; their eyes shall rot away in their sockets; and their tongues shall rot away in their mouths.”

The reason this portion is affiliated with Sukkot is because the portion goes on to say that the enemies will come to “bow low to the King Lord of Hosts and to observe the Feast of Booths.” Each week there is a haftarah reading from the middle section of the Bible, known as the Prophets. This portion is clearly linked because of the Festival reference. We don’t know exactly when our ancestors linked haftarah portions to Torah portions, but we know it was at least as far back as the 1^st century CE. The Christian Bible book of Luke says that Jesus went to synagogue on a Shabbat and read from the Prophet Isaiah. This is one of many examples where the Christian Bible can provide us valuable information about our own early practices.

Scholars estimate that the Book of Zechariah was written in 518 BCE. The Persians had defeated the Babylonian Empire and welcomed the formerly exiled Israelites to return to their home country. Although the exile was over, the people still had to rebuild their national identity and they were still subjugated to another, although kinder, king. This passage in Zechariah is a pep talk. God will come and fight for you and you will never have to suffer like this again!

The haftarah for today is from Ezekiel 38 & 39. Ezekiel lived from (circa) 622-570 BCE, so he lived during Jerusalem’s fall to Babylonia and the subsequent exile. Ezekiel wrote about a time when Jerusalem was tranquil and a prince named Gog from the land of Magog took it into his head to march on Jerusalem. According to Ezekiel, God will disrupt the efforts of the army of Gog so that, “every man’s sword shall be turned against his brother” and God will, “give you as food to carrion birds.”

According to Louis Finkelstein, who was a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the story of Gog from Magog used code in the Hebrew writing that only people who were “in the know” would catch. Finkelstein said that the Ezekiel prophecy was actually indicating that the God of Israel would bring down Babylon.

Similarly, Jeremiah 25 recounts that God instructed Jeremiah to present a cup of wrath, or poison, so several local kings, and they will “retch and act crazy, because of the sword that I am sending among them.” Then Jeremiah lists the kings that God has targeted and the last one listed is Sheshach. Through a different code, cryptographers have deciphered that Sheshach indicates Babylon.

The Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible also uses ciphers. Chapter 13 says: “Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.” Because of this passage, the number 666 is commonly known as the symbol for Satan. However, cryptographers have deciphered that the Book of Revelation is actually indicating the Emperor Nero who persecuted the early Christians and, to them, represented the ultimate evil.

The theory is that the Gog from Magog story, the cup of wrath story, and the 666 story are all told in secret code. This is like the author Dan Brown’s book The Davinci Code. Through his book, he threw open the doors to long discussed secret codes. Are they real, or are people seeing things that just are not there? Who knows? But we do know that, if the codes were real, the writers and their followers were protected by the use of codes. And if you know the key to the code the stores reveal that, with the help of God, we will get through terrible times.

Generally biblical stories of a better time ahead are preceded by a calamity first. There is a cleansing, and then things can get better. According to the Rabbis the cleansing is a way to pave the way for the coming of the messiah who would save Israel. The messiah came to be understood as the one who would bring God’s kingdom to earth.

The Book of Revelation is all about the end of times. Unlike the story in Ezekiel about Gog from Magog, in Revelation 20 there is a story about Gog and Magog who are demons rallied by Satan to do battle with Christ – it will be the apocalypse.

Rabbi Jaech took this opportunity to express her concern about division in the world today. There is no such thing as a war to end all wars. She mentioned that there are a significant number of fundamentalists in the world who want to stoke the divisions, with the hope that the apocalypse will come. They believe that after the apocalypse the Kingdom of God will be ushered in. These people are happy with the strife in Israel, and in other parts of the world, because they are trying to inflame the passions of others. This is a frightening time in our world.

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