Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation (Jewish Lives)

Elijah reveals that divine truth embraces multiple and conflicting possibilities of meaning. God does not merely tolerate the varieties of truth; He commends them by quoting both differing interpretations and calling each rabbi “My son.” By reporting God’s study habits, Elijah affirms the sages’ innovative exegesis.

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.

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

Elijah’s power is limited, because traditionally a prophet cannot invoke his own authority to establish the halakhah:

“I call heaven and earth to witness that whether it be gentile or Jew, man or woman, manservant or maidservant, the Holy Spirit settles upon a person entirely in accordance with the deeds he performs.”

In a sense, however, Elijah is transformed from a biblical zealot into a Jewish bodhisattva.

The notion that Elijah became an angel accords with rabbinic tradition, but the Zohar alludes to a more radical view: Elijah was originally an angel, even before his biblical phase.

If Elijah eventually enlightened the kabbalists, as the patron saint of the Carmelites he also inspired two of the greatest Christian mystics.