יאשיהו המלך

King Josiah is the young king who restored the Torah after it had been nearly forgotten entirely. He came to the throne as an eight-year-old child, in a time when idolatry filled the land after the reigns of Menasheh and Amon, and when he grew he rose and purified Judah and Jerusalem of the idols and high places, with the zeal of one seeking to restore a lost world.

During the renewal of the Temple service, the priest Hilkiah found the scroll of the Torah that had been hidden and forgotten, and when they read before Josiah the curses in it, he tore his garments and wept, for he understood how far they had strayed. He made a renewed covenant with God, and renewed the Passover offering such as had not been done 'since the days of the Judges' (II Kings 23:22). One king returned an entire generation.

Josiah fell in battle at Megiddo against Pharaoh Necho, a death the people lamented bitterly, and Jeremiah the prophet composed laments over him. His life was short but full: one who found a lost Torah scroll and restored it to the center of the people's life, 'and before him there was no king who returned to God with all his heart' (II Kings 23:25).

What do we learn from him? That even when the Torah has nearly been forgotten, one king with a whole heart can restore it. Josiah teaches that weeping over the distance is the beginning of the repair, and that one who finds a lost truth and re-establishes it at the center, with all his heart, can change the face of an entire generation, even in a short time.