Our annual pesach guest.

He is the man who never dies, and so, like the Jewish people, he is forever evolving. His persona, and the legends about him, morphing along with us as our long, winding history demands.

In the dark days of the Roman Empire, Jews imagined Eliyahu heralding their relief at the end of time, and in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction, still feeling adrift from the painful loss, the Rabbis lauded Eliyahu as the wise Torah scholar singularly capable of resolving the otherwise insoluble. The vulnerable Jews of medieval Europe clung to mystical accounts of their wandering protector, and when he manifested as a beggar or wagon driver in Hassidic lore, Eliyahu reminded those searching for the divine spark that if they look carefully enough it can be found in the most humble and unexpected of places.

But the biblical Eliyahu was a zealot. He roved the countryside performing miracles in the name of God and then vacillated between rage and despondency when those miracles did not secure decisive victory against those he was battling. Eliyahu summoned rain and fiery blasts from the sky, convinced that if the misguided worshippers of Baal would just experience God’s incomparable strength, they would concede Israel’s rightness. But they did not. The thrill and electricity of the miracles inspired some but did not convert or even dishearten Israel’s fiercest adversaries.

So, Eliyahu went to the desert to die. No longer interested in fighting a war he considered unwinnable; the prophet simply gave up.

“What are you doing here, Eliyahu?” God asked. Plain words laced with profound critique.  How dare you quit, God was saying. How dare you defect when your people need you most.

Eliyahu tried to explain. He spoke in absolutes and binaries—of winning and losing, of outright success or abject failure. Eliyahu spoke the language of ideologues, but vision and patience, God wanted him to know, are what Jewish history is made of.

So, God sent Eliyahu back to continue where he left off. Back to his land and his people so Eliyahu could learn that true greatness lies in the ability to persevere; in the stamina and resolve shown in the face of instability and irresolution.

Which is why the midrash tells us to set a seat for Eliyahu at every brit milah (circumcision). Because the same Eliyahu who doubted the faithfulness of the Jewish people will, God declared, spend eternity bearing witness to their commitment to the covenant. And every year we invite Eliyahu to our seder so that he can see that we are still transmitting our story, listening for God in the silence.

When Eliyahu visits our homes this year there will likely still be fiery blazes lighting up the night’s sky, and brave pilots overhead performing modern day miracles that would have stunned the Baal prophets of old. But Eliyahu will see something else when he steps through our doors, because it is what he has learned, over the millennia to notice.  Eliyahu will see tables brimming with food bought in the fragile lulls between missile barrages.  And he will see mothers smiling at their younger, buoyant children, cloaking the fear for their babies-turned-soldiers that has settled into their hearts. Eliyahu will see the chairs that have gone empty and the broken fathers who guard them, the newly single mothers trying desperately to keep their heroic husbands’ traditions alive, and he will see returned hostages sing about freedom with a fervor that even he, the zealous prophet, cannot fathom. Eliyahu will see Jews in homes throughout the diaspora chanting the words “in every generation they stand up against us to destroy us” with a sobered acceptance and renewed conviction, and he will see that we are still singing despite the pain, and we are still fighting despite our deep, unceasing ache for peace.

We are a point on a continuum. We know it and we are not going anywhere.

And then Eliyahu, who once made the mistake of giving up on the Jewish people, will look down at the Israeli newborn just home from the underground, makeshift hospital in which he was born, he will kiss his soft, flushed cheek and whisper in his tiny ear, “see you next week.”

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)