Who Was the Greatest Prophet?

Everyone asks questions. For the Jewish people, asking questions is a national pastime. Even our holiest books are filled with questions. The great sages of Jewish tradition ask every conceivable question about every conceivable topic. 
Children and adults love to ask questions. For the past 42 years as a congregational rabbi, I have been fielding the many questions of my students in a session called Ask the Rabbi. 
I created an Ask the Rabbi box which was available in my religious school into which students were encouraged to place their questions.
Over the years I have collected hundreds of questions, and have decided to devote several future articles to offering my answers to some of the more interesting ones. I am old enough now, and wise enough I hope, to realize that I do not have all the answers to all of these questions. But I have done my best to provide a response that will be helpful to the questioner.
Who do you think was the greatest prophet to have ever lived?
There are many excellent and immortal prophets in the Jewish tradition. Ezekiel was the first major prophet to have had a vision of God’s throne in heaven.
In the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, 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’s, 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 Israelite 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 40 days. God spared the city after all the people of Nineveh repented. 
It is ironic that Jonah, a prophet who attempts to flee from his Divine mission, is the only prophet in the Jewish Bible to be successful in changing the ways of a people, who are spared from destruction.
The prophet who is most intriguing to me is Moses. According to the great rabbinic sages, and even the Bible itself, Moses was considered to be the greatest of all the prophets.
The Bible describes him as the only prophet to see God “face to face.” I interpret this to mean that Moses got God’s attention 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.
I still continue to be perplexed about why God did not allow him to enter into the Promised Land, given all that he did for the Israelites. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Feel free to e mail me at askrabbiron.com and let me know who you think was the greatest prophet ever. I would love to hear from you.
 
ED. NOTE: Rabbi Ron Isaacs is the Interim rabbi of Beth Judah Temple, Wildwood. To ask a question, go to the website rabbiron.com.