PARASHAT HA’AZINU

PARASHAT HA’AZINU                                                              by Herschel

Deut 32:1-52; 2 Samuel 22:1-51; Replaced by: Hosea 14:2-10; Micah 7:18-20; Joel 2:15-17;

Acts 24–26

Dev 32:1-6

1.   Give ear, O heavens, - הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם – ha’azinu hashamayim - and I will

speak; and may the earth hear the words of my mouth:

2.  May my teaching drop like the rain, may my utterance flow like the dew;

like storm winds upon vegetation and like raindrops upon blades of grass:

3.  When I call out the Name of Hashem, ascribe greatness to our God:

4.  The Rock! -- perfect is His work, for all His paths are justice; a God of faith

      without iniquity, righteous and fair is He:

5.  Corruption is not His -- the blemish is His children's, a perverse and twisted

      generation:

6.  Is it to Hashem that you do this, O vile and unwise people? Is He not your

      Father, your Master? Has He not created you and firmed you?

In last week’s parasha called Vayeilech, HaShem instructed Moses to write the words of this song which is the substance of this Shabbat’s Torah portion called Ha’azinu – ‘give ear’ - and Moses is instructed to teach it to future generations;

Deut 31:19-20

"Now therefore, write down this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel.

So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.

This is the context for this 2^nd last parasha in the book of Deuteronomy. On Simchat Torah, we read the final portion in Devarim – v’zot habracha – and then, we roll the Torah scroll back to Gensis 1 and commence a new cycle once again.

Now, on three distinct occasions recorded in scripture, Moses, overflowing with emotional and spiritual fervor, sings a song of praise to HaShem. You will find these 3 instances recorded in Exodus 15, Deuteronomy 32 and Revelations 15

These songs are known as The Songs of Moses or in Hebrew ‘Shirat Moshe’ – שירת משה. According to the Torah’s definition, a ‘shirah’ or ‘song’ is a profound and unusual spiritual phenomenon. According to the Talmud (Mechilta 15:1), there have been only ten songs from the beginning of creation to the end of the scriptural period.

SLIDE 2

Robert Frost wrote that “I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost

 in translation”.

When Hashem tells Moshe to “write this song (shirah) for yourselves” in Parashat Vayelekh (Devarim 31:19), the pshat is that it’s referring to the song that comes next – Haazinu. And yet, the halakhah says that it’s referring to the entire Torah, and that this is actually the last of the #613 mitzvot – write a sefer torah.

THE CHAZAL (Sages) IDENTIFY NINE SONGS THAT HAVE BEEN SUNG:

1.    a) the night of the exodus (Isaiah:26:1)

       b) the song of the Shabbat

2.   Shirat hayam – the Song at the Sea

3.   The song of the well (Num 21 – the well that accompanied them

                                                                      through the wilderness)

4.   Ha”azinu – Moshe’s 2^nd song

5.   Joshua’s song

6.   The song of Devorah and Barak

7.   a) David’s song – the entire book of Pslams

      b) Hannah’s song after she conceived Samuel

8.  The inauguration of the Temple (Psalm 30:1 – a psalm for the

                                                                        dedication of the Temple)

9.   The Song of Songs

The tenth and final song will be sung when

Messiah comes/returns

The rabbis teach that we sing a song to HaShem’s glory when we become aware of His Presence or we see His Hand at work in our midst. 

When we become silent because of His Spirit in our midst, the natural and only possible human response is to burst out worshipping in our heavenly languages. That is when a true shirah arises and enters the heavenly courts!

This understanding of a shirah or song, has its equivalent in the new covenant. As any one of the new covenant writers became aware of the Father’s marvelous plans and purposes, they frequently burst forth into a song or as it is known in Greek, a doxology. A doxology is a short hymn of praise to God and is derived from the Greek doxa, glory + logos, word or speaking. 

Illustrations of this abound throughout Paul’s letters and often, I suspect that Rav Sha’ul was living in a perpetual spiritual high. A perfection example occurs in Romans 11, where after explaining G-d’s eternal purposes with Israel, it is as if Rav Sha’ul simply cannot contain himself and he bursts out in a doxology;

          Rom 11:33-36

³³             O the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God!

            How inscrutable are his judgments! How unsearchable are his     ways!

³⁴              For, ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has been his

            counselor?’^c 

³⁵              Or, ‘Who has given him anything and made him pay it back?’^d

³⁶              For from him and through him and to him are all things.

            To him be the glory forever! Amen

A doxology may be likened to Torah’s definition of a ‘shirah’. Having established that a shirah or song is the human response to the dawning awareness of G-d’s greatness and majesty, we can proceed to examine the 3 Songs of Moses.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks elaborates beautifully on viewing the entire Torah as a song:

“And why call the Torah a song? Because if we are to hand on our faith and way of life to the next generation, it must sing. Torah must be affective, not just cognitive. It must speak to our emotions. As Antonio Damasio showed empirically in Descartes’ Error, though the reasoning part of the brain is central to what makes us human, it is the limbic system, the seat of the emotions, that leads us to choose this way, not that. If our Torah lacks passion, we will not succeed in passing it on to the future.

Music is the affective dimension of communication, the medium through which we express, evoke and share emotion. Precisely because we are creatures of emotion, music is an essential part of the vocabulary of mankind.. . .

Song is central to the Judaic experience. We do not pray; we daven, meaning we sing the words we direct toward heaven. Nor do we read the Torah. Instead we chant it, each word with its own cantillation. Even rabbinical texts are never merely studies; we chant them with the particular sing-song known to all students of Talmud. Each time and text has its specific melodies.

The same prayer may be sung to half-a-dozen different tunes, depending on whether it is part of the morning, afternoon or evening service, and whether the day is a weekday, a Sabbath, a festival, or one of the High Holy Days.

There are different cantillations for biblical readings, depending on whether the text comes from Torah, the Prophets, or the Ketuvim (“the Writings”). Music is the map of the Jewish spirit, and each spiritual experience has its own distinctive melodic landscape.

Judaism is a religion of words, and yet whenever the language of Judaism aspires to the spiritual it modulates into song, as if the words themselves sought escape from the gravitational pull of finite meanings. Music speaks to something deeper than the mind. If we are to make Torah new in every generation, we have to find ways of singing its song a new way. The words never change, but the music does”.

Psalm 40:1-5¹   For the music director, a psalm of David.²   I waited patiently for ADONAI. He bent down to me and heard my cry.³ He brought me up out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.   Then He set my feet on a rock. He made my steps firm.

⁴ He put a new song in my mouth — a hymn of praise to our God.   Many will see and fear, and trust in ADONAI.⁵ Blessed is the one who put his confidence in ADONAI,

May our mouths burst forth continuously in a new song, singing praises to our God, as we rejoice in His goodness revealed to us in the Person of Yeshua,