Diana Lipton

Skin and Bone, Spirit and Self: Interpreting Ezekiel's Vision

Ezekiels vision of the valley of the dry bones contains what may well be the most powerful and memorable images of a book overflowing with powerful and memorable imagery. Readers, Jews and Christians alike, have traditionally found in this vision an extraordinary sign of hope concentrated in the idea of resurrection; even the dead can live. For me, however, it signifies something very different, though equally extraordinary: the depth of Gods desire that people should empathise with Him, and the extent of His willingness to help them reach that goal. The interpretation I am offering here will not address the theme of resurrection. I want to focus rather on that aspect of Ezekiels vision concerning creation, the simple giving of life, and it is of little significance to my account that the lifeless bones had once lived. There may be some whose hackles are already rising at what must sound suspiciously like an attempt to remove the theme of resurrection from the Hebrew Bible text with which it is most closely associated. Let me reassure them; mine is only one interpretation, and, indeed, this interpretation is only one of mine. But let me also offer them a minor challenge: the Hebrew Bible, unlike many of its translators and exegetes (Christian and Jewish), does not say that the bones will live again, but only that the bones will live. In order to help me with my interpretation, I want to ask you to read Ezekiels vision of the bones with an intertext, or, more precisely, with a set of intertexts. That is, I want you to hold in your mind another group of narratives, and examine Ezekiel 37 in their light. The texts I have in mind concern the legend, well-known to many, of the golem. The golems most famous incarnation moved against the back-drop of late-medieval Europe. Tales of a supernaturally large, artificial man, created to perform domestic tasks for Rabbi Elijah Baal Shem of Chelm (who died in