The Prophet Who Has No Name

This past July 22 to 23, Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av in our Jewish calendar, observant Jews throughout the world engaged in a sunset to sunset fast to commemorate the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians around 586 B.C.E.

On the seven Shabbats following Tisha B’Av, the prophetic readings following the weekly Torah readings are known as the sheva de-nechamta, Aramaic for “the seven (haftarot) of consolation.” Each of these readings is intended to bring comfort to us Jewish people during our journey from the dark despair of Tisha B’Av to the renewed hope and light of our new year, Rosh Hashanah.

As it turns out, each of the seven haftarah readings following Tisha B’Av is taken from the writings of a biblical prophet who has no name. As Rabbi Gunther Plaut (1912-2012) in his massive 1996 Haftarah commentary put it, “…chapter 40 (of Isaiah) opens the prophecies of the Second Isaiah. This unknown preacher-poet lived during the exile in Babylonia (sixth century B.C.E.), and at some later time, his writings were attached to those of First Isaiah, who lived well over a century earlier.”

Though nobody knows the name of Second Isaiah, much of the world knows the power of his writing. Listen to the very opening words of the first of the seven haftarot of consolation: “Nachamu, nachamu, ami. Comfort, yes comfort, My people.”

The climactic seventh of the haftarot of consolation begins with Isaiah 61.1: “I greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being exults in my God, who has clothed me in triumph and robed me in victory, as a bridegroom whose head is adorned, as a bride bedecks herself in finery.”

And the final three verses of this concluding haftarah of consolation in Isaiah 63.7-9 read, “Let me recount the Lord’s loving acts, the Lord’s praiseworthy deeds for all the Lord has done for us and the great goodness, and mercy and love the Lord has shown the House of Israel. God said: They alone are My people, children who will not be false to Me. So God became their Savior. Afflicted in their affliction, God’s Presence saved them. In love and pity did God redeem them, carried them and raised them high in all times past.”

As I have read and reread the seven haftarot from Second Isaiah, I am struck by how this prophet who has no name is able to evoke God’s love affair with those wretched Jews trapped in exile in Babylon. With his gift of words, the prophet brings those of us who “hear his words” to feel the tenderness between God and the people of Israel — the depth, the essence which seems to live beyond language.

I would suggest that much of Second Isaiah’s poetry evokes, but fails to clearly define, what the rabbis centuries later clarify as their notion of the chosen people — an idea which we express in our chanting our kiddush every Friday evening as we welcome Shabbat. We come to the words, ki vanu vacharta v’otanu kidashta mikol ha’amim (for You have chosen us and have sanctified us above all peoples). I confess that whenever I come to these particular words, I feel both privileged and uncomfortable: privileged to be able to partake in the richness of Jewish experience, but uncomfortable with the words which seem to imply that God favors us Jews above all other religious groups, that we are indeed God’s “chosen people.”

For several decades I have been wrestling with this notion that we Jews are God’s chosen people. In powerful and continuous dialogue with Catholic and Protestant clergy and laity — and, of course, with my fellow Jews — I have come to realize that every historically established religion is, in its unique way, chosen by God. We Jews are no exception; we too are a chosen people, but not the chosen people. Second Isaiah, the prophet who has no name, has given voice to a universalist perspective in a passage not included in the sheva de-nechamta, in Isaiah 56.7, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

I can only wonder how this statement meshes with the prophet’s more particularistic views of his fellow exiles in Babylon of the sixth century B.C.E.

JAMES B. ROSENBERG is a rabbi emeritus at Temple Habonim in Barrington. Contact him at rabbiemeritus@templehabonim.org.