Parashat Ha'azinu
Entering The
Void
In his final
speech, Moses warns us against repeating his mistakes, but he also communicates
the passion and love we need to achieve our potential.
By Rabbi Susan Friedman
The following article is reprinted with permission from The Union of American Hebrew Congregations. For a free e-mail subscription to the UAHC’s
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Parashah Overview
- Moses sings his last song, a love poem
to God and a chastisement of the people, who are not worthy of Adonai.
(32:1–6)
- The poem recounts the blessings that God
has bestowed on the Israelites, the wicked deeds they have committed, and
the punishments that God then inflicted upon them. (32:7–43)
- God tells Moses to begin his ascent of
Mount Nebo, from where he will see the Land of Israel from a distance but
will not be allowed to enter it. (32:45–52)
Focal Point
Give ear, O heavens,
let me speak;/Let the earth hear the words I utter!/May my discourse come down
as the rain,/My speech distill as the dew,/Like showers on young growth,/Like
droplets on the grass./For the name of Adonai I proclaim…. Take to heart
all the words with which I have warned you this day. Enjoin them upon your
children, that they may observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching. For
this is not a trifling thing for you: It is your very life; through it you
shall long endure on the land that you are to possess upon crossing the Jordan
(Deuteronomy 32:1–3; 45–47).
Your Guide
Why does Moses
invoke heaven and earth when it is the Israelite people whom he is addressing?
How does Moses
convey his humanity in this song?
Why would Moses
think that his final words might be regarded as “trifling” by his audience?
How does the water
imagery in Moses’ description of the Torah make his point?
In what way does
this closing statement about enduring on the land attempt to balance the
reality of Israel’s exile in Egypt?
Why does Moses
address the heavens at the start of his song and address the Israelites
directly at its conclusion?
By the Way…
Sons, heed the
discipline of a father. Listen and learn discernment, for I give you good
instruction. Do not forsake My teaching (Proverbs 4:1–2).
Honor your father
and your mother so that you may long endure on the land thatAdonai your
God is giving you (Exodus 20:12).
“It is your very
life” (Deuteronomy 32:47). A person who leaves a child like himself [or
herself] is not considered to have died. That being the case, a person lives
eternally through the Torah (Shlomo Kluger in Torah Gems, vol. III, p.
328).
Your Guide
In Proverbs 4:1–2,
sons are instructed to heed the discipline of a father. In his song, Moses
instructs the Israelites to take all his words to heart. What are the similarities
in these two texts? Does Moses regard the Israelites as his children?
How can the ability
to separate a role from a person, as in honoring one’s parents despite their
mistakes, strengthen individual and societal life?
Do you agree with
Kluger that “a person lives eternally through the Torah?” Did Moses achieve
this?
D'var Torah
We come now to
Moses' final words. Moses stands at the edge of his life, ready to accept the
isolation of the present moment. He seeks the rapt attention of all that is
around him--the heavens, the earth, the elements, the nations of the world,
certainly Israel, and most certainly God.
As an adult, I have
never been able to read this text without recalling the famous opening line of
the speech by Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Friends,
Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I have come to bury Caesar, not to
praise him.”
Mark Antony’s
purpose in delivering his speech is very different from the one he claims to
have in the opening line: What he is set on doing is instilling a sense of
shame in his audience for the betrayal of greatness, for the besmirching of
Caesar’s name. Moses, too, has a very different purpose for his speech than
simply to praise God.
Moses wants to give
the people a distillation of everything he has learned over the course of his
eventful life. He wishes to provide the Israelites with the greatest of
impossibilities--a degree of certainty in their fragile lives. In this moment,
when he is approaching the end of his life, he seeks to leave behind some
assurance for his spiritual children that if they avoid the mistakes he has
made, they will attain an intimate relationship with the divine territory that
he has been denied.
So what does remain
for us, the generations that have followed, the children that have been taught?
Surely not the ability to avoid the mistakes our forebears have made. Over and
over again, we continue to commit the same ones. Just like our ancestors, we
overstep boundaries, engage in excess, remain overly attached to old successes,
and often fail to live in our present experience. As a result, we are left
hungry and thirsty, with a need to acquire things and to fill the void within
us with possessions and activities.
But Moses has yet
another lesson for us--one that can quench our thirst and provide us with a
balm for our pain. He offers us the opportunity to connect with the passion
that he expresses in this magnificent poem. Like Moses, we can understand how
much the earth, the young trees, and the grass yearn for moisture. We can
reflect on our own complacency and comprehend how misguided we have been. We
can look out into a future that is far beyond our reach and see and love the
generations that will follow.
Then we can turn to
the Torah, consider the roles we were meant to play, and find a way to
transform the empty thirsty beings that we have been into ones worthy of
populating a land flowing with milk and honey.
Susan Friedman is
the rabbi of Beth Shalom, Cary, N.C.
The Union of American Hebrew
Congregations is the central body of Reform Judaism in North America,
uniting 1.5 million Reform Jews in more than 900 synagogues. UAHC services include camps, music and book
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