From dry bones to recent hope

Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster explains how Jews interpret the famous passage concerning the dry bones in Ezekiel. 

On the Shabbat which falls throughout the week of Pesach (this yr April 4) we read Ezekiel 36:37 – 37:14. This prophecy includes the famous vision of the ‘dry bones’. Ezekiel tells the people, exiled in Babylon, that though they could presently feel like ‘dry bones’, ‘hopeless’ and ‘cut off’, G-d will eventually revive them and convey them out of their graves.

Why can we read this prophecy on Shabbat during Pesach? Rabbi Hai Gaon of Babylon (939-1038 CE) cited the oral tradition that the resurrection of the Jewish dead would happen in Nissan, the primary month of the Hebrew yr.

In addition, the resurrection itself would happen ‘with the dew of Torah.’ On Pesach, which all the time takes place in Nissan, we also start praying for dew. So, reading this Ezekiel passage during Pesach itself is suitable.

G-d tells Ezekiel: ‘Son of man … prophesy to the bones and say to them: “Dry bones, take heed to the word of the Lord (Ezekiel 37:4).”‘ 

Later commentators compare the ‘dry bones’ to people who find themselves devoid of Torah teaching. For many individuals this lack of awareness is as a consequence of circumstances beyond their control. Either they grew up in a spot where it was forbidden to show Torah; or their parents were ignorant; or there was a scarcity of teachers. Torah is a lifeline – in comparison with water – which reanimates our ‘dry bones’.

And where there is an acceptable teacher, that teacher shouldn’t wait for optimum circumstances, but start teaching immediately, even in a ‘low place’, equivalent to the ‘valley’ of Ezekiel’s vision. 

And Ezekiel was successful, even in ‘a low place’. For ‘I beheld and behold, there got here up sinews and flesh upon them, and skin covered over them (37:8).’

‘And then the spirit got here into them they usually got here to life. And then they stood on their feet, an exceedingly great host (Ezekiel 37:10).’

Ezekiel explains that there are three levels of hopelessness (v 11): ‘our bones are dried up; our hope is lost; and we’re cut off.’ Each level is more hopeless than the preceding one. 

‘Dried up’ implies that at present we’re devoid of Torah learning, but we all know that we are able to still return.

‘Our hope is lost’ refers to our considering that after so many ‘arid’ years change is unattainable.  There is not any way back in any respect. 

But ‘We are cut off’ implies that we’ve left the community altogether. Unlike after we lose hope, after we are cut off altogether there is no such thing as a one in any respect to whom we are able to turn. 

However, at this crisis point G-d Himself steps in (v 12): ‘Behold, I Myself, the Lord G-d, will personally open your graves and lift you up out of your graves.’ In the last resort, subsequently, G-d Himself is our saviour (v 14): ‘And I’ll even set you down in your individual Land.’

Thus a private call by the prophet to revival from the Babylonian diaspora is linked to the Exodus story of Pesach. This is when, ‘with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm’, G-d leads us out of Egyptian servitude, through the arid desert, and eventually into the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 5:14). 

But the story doesn’t finish here. Around 150 years ago, in 1877, Jewish poet, Naftali Hertz Imber, wrote the words of what would develop into Israel’s national anthem, HaTikvah, the Hope. 

Imber’s words were fastidiously chosen to answer this exact same Ezekiel prophecy. The song includes the road: ‘our hope will not be yet lost.’ These words contrast with Ezekiel’s second stage of hopelessness: ‘our hope is lost.’  Not yet, it isn’t!

Imber was writing exactly 70 years before the UN Partition Plan of 1947 granted statehood to the Jewish people within the Land of Israel. This UN vote itself took place only two years after the tip of the Shoah, during which the Jewish people had been abandoned by their fellow human beings. At that point the Jewish people had truly felt as if there have been no hope left.

Many have compared the concentration camps, the extermination camps and even the post-war DP camps to a veritable modern-day ‘valley of dry bones.’

UK rabbi, Reverend Leslie Hardman, the Jewish chaplain who, on April 20 1945, led what he called these ‘dry bones’ out of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, records how the left-for-dead skeletons spontaneously burst into the HaTikvah, singing those very words: ‘our hope will not be yet lost’. 

These same words would, three years later, develop into the National Anthem of the new-born State of Israel.

The State itself was largely populated by the Jewish remnant, the nearly-dead Holocaust survivors, themselves resurrected by the ‘outstretched arm’ of G-d.

But, as Ezekiel prophesied, every thing became ‘knit together’ (v 7). The recent State was declared by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, while the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem was still being waged. There was no time to lose. 

And, despite the perfect efforts of some, Ezekiel’s prophetic vision continues to be revived on a every day basis on this flourishing, blissful, fertile and youthful country which, with G-d’s help, will proceed to be an indication of real hope to the world and an everlasting light to the nations.