Shalom! Every Sabbath and major holiday, we have a prophetic portion from the middle part of the Hebrew bible the Prophets that we read as a Haftorah, following the Torah reading. It is interesting always to figure out why the Rabbi selected that particular portion to be read what is read. In the Halftorah on the second day of Passover, Pessah is taken from the second book of Kings and tells about one of the most remarkable kings in the history of Israel. Not that well known and that is well known as Salem and Samuel and Salamon, King Josiah.
He started as (Inaudible) in 639 and I will you that there two different accounts of what happened to here. One is on the second book of Kings, which we read on the Haftorah and the other is on the book of Chronicles, which is the end of the Bible. It retell, saying different stories. But, basically what happened was that Josiah was third in King in 639 and if you read the book of Kings, 1 and 2 you will see that the most of the kings of Israel in Judah and I say that, because when Salamon died, the kingdoms, one of the 10 tribes of the north called Israel, 2 tribes on the south, basically Judah and Jerusalem and the different kings, different lineages. Most of them were terrible. They brought all kinds of idolatry and papacy, disgusting things in the holy temple. Just horrible and I cannot even recognize as Judaism today, so for what ever we descry about how Judaism is suffering, nothing was as bad time of those kings.
Anyway Josiah start it off that way and he had prostitutes in the temple and Idolaters and they had a bow and sierra idols in the temple, all kinds of stuff going on. Now 8 years into his reign, suddenly he had a religious awakening. He decided that he needed to fix things. Now, this is according to Chronicles and so in six to fours later. He started to purify the temple in 627 BC and the six years after that at 621 he come to purify the temple, he found the book which most scholars believe the book of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomy is over 70 new (Inaudible) that are not in the rest of the Torah.
Many bibles scholars not orthodox, they would not agree with this, I think this is heresy believe that the Deuteronomy was probably written around them. In addition to that, it is centralizes worship into the Central Shrine and eventually of course and into Jerusalem in the Holy Temple later in history.
And it also as very tough in Idolatry with the middle of the Deuteronomy for about that and it talks about a renewal of the covenant. And so, based on this book, Josiah realized that they have not been observing Passover correctly, that they have been following God rules correctly and he called all the people together and he read the book and there was a Renewal of the brisk, the covenant and the Pessah.
Now, the Haftorah read and they are taking a larger section from second Kings is a slightly different story that he was repairing the temple much so much because religious revival of Salome the book and their book lead to the acts of purification and the religious revival. As supposed to the chronicle story, which has him doing the purifications, the religious revival and then he finds the book.
So, the writers of second Kings are obviously wanted to place most of the focus of why Josiah decides to reform base on finding the book. They cases the only time, since Sinai. Now we are talking 700 years or so that all of Israel got together, all the people got together, until hear this religious message to recommit to the brisk and it also says that in this Haftorah that there is no Pessah accelerated like this, since the time on the judges and the kings.
So, we are talking now hundreds and hundreds, where Pessah was not absorbing in a significant way. So again, if we can try about Pessah not observed that much or whatever, we have a long time when were not celebrating Pessah in a significant way. So why does Haftorah read on Pessah? Well, perhaps because we have to understand a couple things one is that the message of liberation continue to have to be retold them, retold and retold them in every generation, and to explain to us to use Pessah, because it impetus for religious revival and rejuvenation of re-strengthening. But also, because were should take a look around us and realize, for example in America live in two cultures in Jewish and then the culture America. We are going to Israel in a couple of weeks with a group of (Inaudible) so exciting about going to see Masharim, which is like going back hundred of years into the dark age. The people who want to live, they completely isolated life as fast nest as they can without being part of western civilization, but we are not like that.
We are part of all civilizations, we have to constantly we make compromises. But were in kind of figure out how to live our lives in both societies, but I reminded here about the Josiah is encouraging in exculpating idolatry from the temple of removing the things that were totally mimical to Judaism. Just like today, we have to try and figure out, what is legitimate Judaism and what we can absorb from the common culture to what we can absorb from the common culture and what we cannot.
We all know that the Seder that we experienced on Passover is basically modeled after the Greco-Roman symposium dinners. We obviously have some changes, but you can go through the major sections, the Seder and say this was Greek and this is Greek…. and for example we take the athecoman (ph) for them was a lascivious party at the end of there fancy discussion and we turned in to a dry corrector, which say continue seeing here and doing holy things.
But, this king stands as a great hero of Israel and I want to just read the end of the Haftorah to give you a sense of the magnificent of what king Josiah did and the crude you talked and we need to have courage to confront the challenges facing our people today. The challenges facing Judaism and our covenant, but at the same time live a life in blending both civilizations.
It says in the second Kings 23, there was no king like him, would turned back to the Lord with all his heart and so it might in full accorded with the teachings of Moses. We are going to end him arise after him. So, Josiah was a unique king in the history of the Jew people and God bless.
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