From Within the Tent: The Haftarot by Rabbi Daniel Z. Feldman and Stuart W. Halpern, Editors; Yeshiva University Press, New York; ISBN 978-161-329-0316 ©2011, $29.95, p. 719
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California– Ezra and Nehemiah, prophet and governor respectively, introduced the first public reading of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, in the late sixth century BCE, after they led a small group of Jews back to Jerusalem from the Babylonian Captivity. Today, the Torah is read in public more or less the way the rabbis established the procedure in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in the mid-first century CE.
The record of the public chanting of the haftarah, a selection from a portion of one of the books of the prophets or books of the writings, which follows immediately after the reading of the Torah on Sabbath morning and designated festivals, is lost to history. One theory is that the religious leadership during the reign of Syrian-Greek king Antiochus IV substituted a reading of the prophets for the reading of the Torah when Antiochus IV forbade the study of the Torah (and whose anti-Jewish laws subsequently led to the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE.) The Encyclopedia Judaica suggests that portions of the prophets were read to oppose the legitimacy of the Samaritans, who rejected most of the prophetic books and later against the Sadducees, who only accepted the teachings in the Torah. Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, in the Forward to the book From Within the Tent: The Haftarot, agrees that the decision to have a portion of the books of the prophets accompany the reading of the Torah occurred sometime before the first century CE, as early Christian writers wrote of its practice in the synagogues.
From Within the Tent: The Haftarot is a splendid collection of seventy-seven essays, homilies, and exegeses, one for each Sabbath and holiday when a haftarah is chanted in synagogues throughout the world. The commentaries are uniquely written by rabbis, scholars, and professors associated with Yeshiva University. Because From Within the Tent: The Haftarot provides an enormous amount of scholarly information in each chapter, it is a book that should be studied and perused. Some Jews deliberate on the weekly Torah portion and commentaries to enrich their lives, some labor over pages of the Talmud to glean insights into rabbinic thought, and some meditate over the Tanya in order to master the evil inclination and improve themselves. A thoughtful reading of From Within the Tent: The Haftarot can only enhance and enrich the reader’s understanding of the history, theology, philology, and rabbinic and academic wisdom of the prophetic chapters that comprise each of the haftarot and their linkages with the concomitant Torah portion. From Within the Tent: The Haftarot is a Jewish education in itself.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached at fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com