The haftarah for the Torah portion of the Book of Exodus drawn from Isaiah 27:6-28:13 and 29:22-23 (according to the Ashkenazi custom) mirrors in a profound way the portion itself.
If the opening chapters of Exodus tell us how the Jews became slaves, the haftarah tells us something far more unsettling: how they disappear. Isaiah’s prophecy does not focus on chains or taskmasters but on spiritual exiles, on Jews scattered so deeply among the nations that they are seemingly lost to our people. And yet, he insists, they too shall one day come back.
At the heart of Isaiah’s vision stands a powerful image: “On that day, a great shofar shall be sounded, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were cast off in the land of Egypt shall come, and they shall bow to the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem” (27:13). This imagery of the “great shofar” heralding the redemption is so evocative that it serves as the basis for the wording of the 10th blessing in the daily “Amidah” prayers.
Who are the 'lost Jews'?
But just who are these “lost” Jews? And what is this “great shofar” that will be sounded?
Both Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) and the Radak (Rabbi David Kimhi, 1160-1235) say that “those who were lost in the land of Assyria” refers to the 10 Lost Tribes of Israel, who were exiled by the Assyrian Empire more than 2,700 years ago. In effect, then, Isaiah is foretelling their return, regardless of just how “lost” they may seem to be.
With regard to the “great shofar,” Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin (1823-1900), one of the most original Jewish thinkers of the 19th century, offers us a profoundly moving explanation. In his work Resisei Layla (“Night Shards: Letter Nun”), he explains that the great shofar is not merely an external call sounded at the end of days: It is the accumulated cry of Jewish history itself.
Every scream uttered in exile, every whispered prayer, every unarticulated yearning of a Jewish soul across generations will merge into a single, overwhelming sound, that of the “great shofar.” And that sound, he teaches, will awaken those who no longer know who they are.
According to Rabbi Tzadok, the “lost” are Jews who have so fully assimilated that they are unaware of their own origins. They do not remember Sinai. They do not recognize Jerusalem as home. And yet, he insists, “none shall be cast off forever.” The Jewish spark inside every Jew cannot be extinguished. Jewish identity may be buried, distorted, or suppressed, but it cannot be erased.
This is a revolutionary idea, and it speaks directly to the haftarah’s placement at the opening of the Book of Exodus. Called “Shemot” (“names”) in Hebrew, it begins with them: “These are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt” (Shemot 1:1). Even as they descend into slavery, the Torah insists on naming them. Identity is the root of redemption.
Isaiah, centuries later, takes this principle to its furthest conclusion. Even when Jews no longer know their names, even when they are “lost in Assyria” or “cast off in Egypt,” the bond remains intact. The “great shofar” does not create Jewish identity; it reveals it.
Sharpening the distinction
In another one of his works, Pri Tzaddik, commenting on the portion of “Nitzavim,” Tzadok sharpens the distinction. The “lost” include those assimilated among the nations who do not know they are Jewish at all. The “cast off in Egypt,” by contrast, are those trapped within the kelipah – the spiritual husk – of exile, aware of their identity but crushed by it, buried under layers of spiritual bondage. Both, he writes, require the “great shofar” to awaken them. But even at the remotest edge of exile, the connection endures.
This reading casts the haftarah in a strikingly contemporary light. We live in an age of unprecedented Jewish freedom and unprecedented Jewish disappearance.
Millions of Jews have melted into the surrounding culture, often without hostility, without coercion, but simply through indifference. They are not persecuted; they have forgotten who they are. Isaiah’s message is that history is not finished with them.
But the haftarah also carries a warning. Much of Isaiah 28 is a fierce rebuke of spiritual complacency, of leaders drunk on their own arrogance, and societies reduced to slogans and empty formulas. Ritual without depth. Identity without meaning. Tradition reduced to habit.
Obviously, redemption does not come through slogans: It comes through awakening. And that is why the haftarah ends not with destruction but with hope: “Jacob shall not now be ashamed… for when he sees his children, the work of My hands, in his midst, they shall sanctify My Name” (29:22-23). The return of the lost is not incidental. It is the sanctification of God’s Name itself.
The exodus from Egypt was the birth of a people who knew who they were. The haftarah of “Shemot” speaks to a later, more painful chapter: the return of those who forgot.
And the “great shofar”? It is not only a sound of the future. It is already echoing: in history, in memory, in the quiet, inexplicable pull that still draws Jews back to their people, their land, and their destiny. And it is a sound that will continue to strengthen in force, until every last member of our people, wherever they may be, heeds its call and, at last, finds his way back home.