The encounter with Elijah takes place deep within. In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, it is “an inner experience, a fact in the soul, a rung that the treasured few believed they attained.”

If an innovative teaching came from Elijah, it was automatically acceptable and beyond any suspicion of foreign influence or heresy.

This is one of many parallels between Elijah and Moses. Whoever composed the early legendary accounts of Elijah (later incorporated into the biblical saga) intended to portray him as a sort of Moses redivivus (reborn).

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.

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

This is the meaning of: Look, I am sending to you [Elijah the prophet]—for the word sending is in the present tense, because it is constantly so, in each person and at all times.

All three rituals are liminal (threshold) moments, fittingly enhanced by Elijah, the liminal personality—part human, part angel—the mysterious stranger who spans heaven and earth, virtuoso of the in-between.2

Kabbalah is boldly innovative yet staunchly traditional. Its formulations are a blend of what the Zohar calls “new-ancient words.”

At a dramatic point in the scriptural tale, Harbonah (a eunuch in the palace of King Ahasuerus) advises the king to hang the Jews’ arch-enemy, Haman. The Midrash attributes this counsel to Elijah, who was impersonating Harbonah.19