D'var Torah Parsha Ha'azinu 5783

Parsha Ha’azinu, D’varim (Deuteronomy) Chapter 32 is also called the Song of Moses. It’s the next to last parsha in the Torah. Songs are found only sporadically in Torah, the best known probably being the song at the crossing of the Reed Sea by Miriam, Moshe, and the Israelites. In this parsha, it provides emphasis for the address Moshe has just given to the people as they prepare to enter the land promised to them by HaShem.

Before getting into the description itself, some fascinating facts arose in my research. First, according to the commentary in the Robert Alter translation, this parsha is older than the rest of D’varim, perhaps as far back as the 11th century BCE. The poetry style is more akin to the pre-Biblical poetry of Ugaritic civilization, so called for its origins in Ugarit, a port city in ancient Canaan on the Syrian coast today. A characteristic of this style of early Hebrew prayer are lines offered in couplets, where the second line emphasizes the first.

Ugarit and other coastal trading centers were impacted by Greek trading vessels. The first verse hints at this.

“Give ear oh heavens that I may speak
And let the earth hear my mouth’s utterances.”
Wording very akin to the beginnings of Homeric epics.

The lines are not unlike the beginning of Isaiah (per Alter), calling upon heaven and earth to be witness. He goes on with prayer that his words (Torah) will be like the rain falling upon the earth.

“Let my teaching drop like rain,
My saying flow like dew,
Like showers on the green
And like cloudbursts upon the grass.”
It continues to declare the glory of HaShem, reminds of the history of the journey. It predicts that the people (stiff-necked that we are) will be tempted to follow other deities, and HaShem’s anger will be raised, and Their people will be driven from the land and suffer greatly. But when they learn the evil of their ways, in the end HaShem will be there and their enemies will be vanquished. As the song nears its end, an interesting verse can be found.

“I put to death and give life.
I wound and I heal,
Nor is there any power that can deliver out of My hand.” D’varim 32:39 Per Rabbi Yitz Greenberg of HADAR, this is the only allusion to life after death in the five books of Torah. We don’t spend a lot of time on what happens after we die, focusing on this life and what we do in the here and now, but a core belief of our faith is resurrection with the coming of Mashiach. The focus on what we do today, can be found in Mishnah Avot 4:22: “Better one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than all the life in the world to come.”

So, in thinking on this parsha, the original poem and the book of Deuteronomy that preceded it, two things came to mind. First the power of song, and the second, the power of repetition. These two and their influence upon memory. The other day I was talking with one of our rabbis at my shul. Because of age and disability, she checks up on me ever so often. Our conversation turned to this parsha, and I reflected on how the poetic structure of early Biblical poetry reminded me of the adage that any teacher worth their salt knows, to repeat an important fact at least three times for it to stick. She laughed and said to be sure and notice the repetition that takes place in our Yom Kippur service. Now considering Moshe’s prose address leading up to his poem, we have clearly surpassed the repetition rule to remember something.

However, first on my list was the power of song. Allow me to share something about me. I live with Minor Cognitive Impairment. It’s that step between ordinary old age memory loss and dementia (Major Cognitive Impairment.) I do all sorts of mind exercises to combat this, writing dvar’s like this being one. But the parts of the brain that processes song is different from the one that handles other memory actions. So it is that today, I went into the kitchen to add ice to my thermos three times before I completed the task. I laugh so I don’t cry. Each time I would get distracted and forget what I first went in there for. But song? Only occasionally on Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat services, or Saturday morning for that matter, do I need to open my Siddur. The Hebrew Psalms and various chants are all committed to memory. Goodness, I remember song lyrics from Broadway tunes and pop tunes that I learned 50-60 years ago. Repetition and song are key to our collective memory, to our collective existence.

At the center of our Jewish journey is the call to zachor, to remember. A poem written as long ago as the eleventh century BCE, reinforced with the prose of Deuteronomy, will be once again read, and remembered in our annual Torah cycle. One more Torah portion follows this one, to be read along with the beginning of Bereishit (Genesis) on Simchat Torah, and the cycle begins again for 5783. Shabbat Shalom! We remember!

Jessica Wicks, 10-3-2022.