Who is the Greatest Jewish Prophet?

As a Bible major, I became fascinated with the writings of the prophets. Many of them had shared attributes. 
They tended to be loners, they arose during times of social and political crisis, they could correctly predict what would happen, they often wrote in parables, and their messages were often presented in the form of allegories or parables. 
Prophets were messengers of God and had the ability to receive God’s word. They are described in the Bible as charismatic people endowed with a divine gift.
They could receive divine revelation and then teach what had been revealed to them. Rabbinic views suggest that the ability to hear God’s voice depends on the individual. In order to “hear” God, one must have a strong will and use all of one’s heart and mind to discern God’s words.
The great prophets of Israel perceived God everywhere: in the wind, in the rushing waters, in the fiery flame, in the desert sands. There are an array of amazing prophets in the Bible. 
Ezekiel was the first major prophet to have had a vision of God’s throne in heaven. In the first chapter of his book, he has an incredible vision of the Divine Throne-Chariot, a strange and mysterious apparition whose main feature was its ability to be drawn by four-faced living creatures.
The prophet Jeremiah, a contemporary of Ezekiel, is considered the most self-revealing. No prophet told so much about himself as he did, revealing an array of emotions that allows the reader to feel his poignant sorrow toward an Israelites people that went astray.
As a young child, I fell in love with the prophet Jonah. The intrigue of this book is Jonah’s attempt to escape from the divine command by sailing from the Land of Israel.
After his wonderful deliverance from drowning by being sheltered in the body of a whale, he was obedient to a second commission from God. Jonah went to Nineveh and there proclaimed that it would be destroyed in a matter of 40 days.
God spared the city after all the people of Nineveh repented. It is so ironic that Jonah, a prophet who attempts to flee from his divine mission, is the only prophet to be successful in changing the ways of a people, who are spared from destruction.
By far, the prophet who is most intriguing to me is Moses. In Rabbinic tradition, Moses is considered the greatest of all the prophets.
The Bible describes him as the only prophet able to see God “face to face.” I understand this to mean that Moses had a special intimacy with God and was able to get the attention of God whenever he chose to do so.
Moses certainly went through numerous challenges and saw firsthand many of God’s divine wonders, including the splitting of the Red Sea and the formulation of the Ten Commandments. He was able to endure, on more than one occasion, a fast of 40 days.
His face is described as so radiant with God’s presence that at one point he had to wear a veil in his ordinary interaction with people. And while God is described as speaking to other prophets in a dreamlike vision, God spoke with Moses “mouth to mouth.”
He is also the model of a visionary leader, successfully guiding the people of Israel from the degradation of slavery to the Promised Land.
I still continue to be perplexed as to why God did not allow him to enter into the Promised Land, given all that he did for the Jewish people. But that’s a discussion for another time.
 
ED. NOTE: Rabbi Isaacs is rabbi at Beth Judah Temple, Wildwood. He invites questions emailed to his website, www.rabbiron.com