Dry Bones

The dead who had been resurrected
in the Valley of Dry Bones
stood up and sang, till they, rejected,
died again, as dead as stones.

Ezekiel tells us of the first
event, the second he suppressed.
The dry bones had to face the worst,
though they’d once triumphed with the best,

as individuals unable to
survive, dependent on their nation,
whose revival helped them to renew
what they had lost in desiccation.

These scattered sinewed bones became
a helpless travesty, like Jews
whose sad extinction I here blame
on links with Jews they chose to  lose,

and thus despite their genes, not able
like dry bones ever to revive,
unlike Jews with the Israel label
who’ll sinew sinecured survive.

Jon D. Levenson, writing about Ezekiel’s prophecy concerning the dry bones (Ezek. 37:1–14) (Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), cites bSanhedrin 92b , where Rabbi Eliezer states: “The dead whom Ezekiel resurrected stood up, uttered a song, and died.” Levenson points out that whereas Ezekiel’s vision focuses exclusively on the nation which he regarded as immortal, Rabbi Eliezer focuses on the individuals, whose mortality does not share the immortality of the nation.

It is curious that the Hebrew name of Lazarus, whose resurrection is reported only in John 11:1–44, and in none of the synoptic gospels, is the same as that of Rabbi Eliezer, who proclaimed that the dead whom Ezekiel revived “uttered a song, and died.” Is it possible that R. Eliezer was refuting the story told in John.