Why was Elijah privileged to be able to revive the dead? Because he did the will of the Holy One, Blessed is He, and he would sigh over the honor of Israel every day as if Israel were in danger of being destroyed from the world. In every generation that Elijah found righteous men, he would embrace and kiss them and bless the Holy One (Tanna d’Bei Eliyahu Rabbah 5:11).

Elijah still lives (Seder Olam Rabbah 21).

Perhaps more than any of the glo- rious personalities depicted in the Bible, Elijah the Prophet has transcended Jewish history and Jewish time. At the most dramatic moment of the Passover seder, the door is opened for Elijah, the “cup of Elijah” is symbolically raised, and the messianic strains of “Eliyahu Hanavi” are intoned, thus revealing a deep and age-old Jewish belief in the coming of the messiah. Elijah is welcomed at every circumcision ceremony, where the kos Eliyahu (“Elijah’s cup”) is transformed into kisei Eliyahu (“Elijah’s chair”). He graces many midrashim, stories, and narratives - often in mufti - where he performs acts of kindness and redemption. On Shabbat Hagadol, the Sabbath preceding Passover, his name is invoked in the Haftarah lection: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord (Malachi 3:23).

The biblical Elijah, interestingly, seems devoid of sentimentality. He accepts his prophetic mission piously, first with a small act of lovingkindness to a widow, later exacting punishment upon Ahab and Jezebel’s false prophets of Baal. The brutality of the punishment is rivalled by Elijah’s powers over nature. He brings forth the rain and resurrects the dead in a parable redolent of the New Testament (I Kings 17:17-24). He travels forty days in the desert to receive, like Moses, God’s testimony on Mount Horeb. There, after experiencing the power of the Lord’s natural forces (earthquakes, wind, fire), Elijah hears a “still small voice.” Truly alone, he accepts Divinity’s commands, sounding much like Herman Melville’s Ishmael: “I, even I only, am left” (I Kings 19:14).

Finally the reader witnesses Elijah’s exquisite departure from his earthly career. As his protege and successor, Elisha, watches, “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” whisk the uncompromising prophet heavenward (II Kings 2:11). The loyal Elisha literally takes up Elijah’s mantle and continues the miraculous performance.

Miracles, resurrection, fiery endings. The message is clear, and it makes the rabbinic commentators uncomfortable. The religion of the early prophets and of the Torah was being challenged by these new leaders of the people. Elijah the Tishbite came from the tradition of Moses, but by the time his chariot traced a fiery arc in the sky, he had initiated a “new revelation.” That this narrative served the literary and philosophical aims of the authors of the New Testament would have disturbed Elijah, who was a Ben Adam - one of our people, but that development was historically inevitable. And yet, despite his being “borrowed” by a new tradition, Elijah remains, in his rabbinical garment, one of our most beloved and cherished “personalities.” Eliyahu Hanavi.