“I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.”

This verse at the end of the Haftarah, which are the final words of the last prophet of the TaNaKh, Malachi, is the source of the name of the Shabbat before Pesach: ‘Awesome Shabbat’.

Most of the Sabbaths in our calendar are named after their Parasha, but ‘Shabbat Nachamu’, ‘Shabbat Chazon’ and ‘Shabbat Shuva’, which are named after the Haftarah, received a designation based on the first word in the Haftarah, and only ‘Shabbat haGadol’ –’Awesome Shabbat’ gained its unusual name based on a word in a verse before the last one in the Haftarah.

The prophecy in this verse is also exceptional: A prophet at the beginning of the Second Temple period, Malachi, prophesying the return of Elijah, a prophet who preceded him by a few hundred years – this is not a conventional prophecy. It is possible that the belief that the prophet Elijah didn’t die like a normal person but might come back to life, was common even before the time of Malachi, and relied, apparently, on the description of Elijah’s rise to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings, 2, 11) and perhaps on a belief that Elijah did not succeed in completing his mission. The Lord ‘dispossessed’ him from his duties too early, owing, apparently, to his extreme zealotry and his harsh accusations of Israel (See 1Kings 19:14). This belief in the thinking of the Sages finds its expression in the discussion on the last mishna of Eduyot (8, 7), an intellectual-midrashic debate in the style of a halachic debate: What will be the role of the prophet Elijah in his forthcoming ‘return’?

Apparently, the rest of Malachi’s prophecy makes it clear: He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents. But the Sages (HaZaL) wish to expound further on this. The words hint at a generation gap but do not clarify what causes dispute and tension between fathers and sons and what would Elijah do to cure this tension. The first opinion is of Rabbi Joshua who claims he got it from his Rabbi, Johannan Ben-Zakay, who himself received it from a very ancient source: The uncertainty of who is the son of which father? What is a real genealogy dynasty and who created for himself a forged genealogy, especially in order to be a member of the Cohanim and receive the benefits that come with this status. There were families in the late Second Temple period that managed to gain power in the Beit Hamikdash (Temple) court through intrigues and bribery and to dispossess veteran cadence families from their role. The Sages express their aversion to this questionable Cohanim takeover, by emphasizing the belief, which relies, apparently, on a different verse from Malachi’s Prophecy (3,3) that Elijah will be able to tell the difference between real Levyim and Cohanim and fake ones, or as Rabbi Joshua puts it:

“To expel those (ineligible ones) that were received through violence, and to reinstate those who were removed by violence”.

Although Rabbi Joshua attributes this ‘halacha’ to an ancient source, to ‘Moses from Sinai’, it is not acceptable to all other Tannaim. Rabbi Judah thinks that Elijah will not remove the offspring of those assimilated in Cohen or Levy families, but will only reinstate the offspring of the families who were removed by violence. Rabbi Shimon says that Elijah will come to settle differences between the Sages, but most of the Sages are in the opinion that Elijah will neither expel nor reinstate, but will come ‘to make peace in the world’.

That opinion contains a psychological and sociological analysis for all generations: Peace begins at home! The generation gap can cause differences, not only inside the family, but throughout society, sometimes going as far as causing a split and a ‘Civil War’. An example: Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, who ignored the elders’ advice to lighten the tax burden and adopted the opposite advice of his young councelors, which led to a crisis and to the division of the Kingdom into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah (1 Kings, 12, 1-17).

The tension between fathers and sons could lead to extreme consequences: The sons will wage a war only to ‘prove’ their independence and maturity to their parents. That is why most of the Sages think that when Elijah will ‘reconcile parents with children and children with their parents’, his real mission will be “la’asot Shalom ba’Olam” – “To make peace in the entire world”