Elijah

In a contest with the prophets of Baal, Elijah rebuilds an altar to YHWH that was on Mount Carmel and makes an offering. Later, he bemoans the destruction of other YHWH altars (1 Kgs 18–19). But doesn’t the Book of Kings clearly state that only the altar in Jerusalem was legitimate once Solomon built the Temple?

A Devar Torah inaugurating Project TABS / TheTorah.com

Jewish tradition seems to have difficulty with the relationship between fathers and sons. Hence the last verses of Malachi, a coda to the Nevi’im section of Tanakh, imagines ultimate redemption through a metaphor of father-son reconciliation, with the fire and brimstone prophet Elijah its unlikely, antagonistic harbinger. Leave it to the poet Yehuda Amichai to step in and offer a counter-model to rescue the metaphor.

Conflicting traditions come to a head in an exchange between two cantors and a congregant in a 13th century Egyptian synagogue.^[1]