Torah This Week
Welcome to Torah This Week, where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL
faculty and associates on the Torah portion of the week.
HA'AZINU
(Deuteronomy 32:1 - 52)
The story of our people begins with a song of triumph and freedom at the Red Sea and
ends with the final song of Moses as we stand ready to enter Eretz Israel. The unequivocal
victory over Egypt has given way to ambiguity. Physical survival is assured, but spiritual
health is still in question. Neither God nor Israel has abandoned each other in spite of
disappointments and anger, but the frustrations of God are clear, as if God must be
convinced to protect the people of the covenant. Israel seems, as always, to be searching
for itself, hoping to find in alien gods and other cultures a greater sense of wholeness.
Israel is uncomfortable with its status as a sacred and unique people, its obligations to
follow God rather than the commonness of its neighbors. It is against the people's longing
for the banal and the ordinary that Moses critiques:
O dull and witless nation,
Is not God the Parent who created you,
Fashioned you and made you endure
(Deut. 32:6)
The commentators jump on this, realizing that the rejection of Torah is not toward a
higher goal, but a repudiation of the Jewish mission to be a covenantal people. It is not
simply that the environment around us is so compelling, but that we are tired of the
burden. Sapped of energy, Israel displays spiritual exhaustion and disbelief that the
world can be redeemed. In the last words our tradition attributes to Moses, this prophet
of prophets look into the soul of the Jewish people and fears our desire to "escape
from freedom." Moses calls on mountains and sky, on all the nations and past
generations of Jews to witness the choice Israel must make --and he implores us to choose
life, to affirm the covenant: "For this is not a trifling thing for you; it is your
very life, through it you shall long endure
" (32:47).
(David Elcott)
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