For Our Children and Their Children After Them: Haazinu.22

 For Our Children and Their Children After Them

D’var Torah for Parashat Ha-azinu

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

October 6, 2022

Ha-azinu (“Listen,” Deuteronomy 32:1-52) is also known as The Song of Moses. A beautiful poem with stunning imagery, this portion presents yet another warning for the Israelites to obey God’s mitzvot (commandments) even after they have settled and grown comfortable in the Promised Land.

The common saying, that there is no atheist in a foxhole, is true. When all hope seems to be gone, only faith has the power to lift us up. The opposite, however, is also true. When danger seems to dissipate, we grow too comfortable, forgetting the dangers that are always there. “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” (Deut. 32:15) is how Moses foresees the future of the people. Having gained control of the Land and reaped its fruit, Israel is destined to forget God’s ways and even rebel against God. The consequences are sure to follow—God’s anger will flare up, and the People will be dispersed from their Land.

Moses calls up the mountains and the heavens as witness to God’s faithfulness. He also reminds the people to heed the lessons of the past—how God saved them from the Egyptians and guided them across the desert to the Promised Land: “As an eagle awakens its nest, hovering over its fledglings, it spreads its wings, taking them and carrying them on its pinions” (Deut. 32:11). No bird carries its young on its wings; it shelters them beneath its wings. However, God provides shelter from below, warding off the danger presented the enemies down on the ground who may be shooting their arrows upward in an effort to destroy God’s chosen people.

For many of us, this vision, poetic and grand as it is, brings up doubts and misgivings. There have been too many times when this promise failed to materialize. 

While these questions persist, the long-range view gives us a different perspective. The Song of Moses was written about two and a half millennia ago. And yet we—the descendants of Moses and the ancient Israelites—are still here. With all the uncertainty that sometimes clouds our vision, the real proof of the truth of God’s promise is our miraculous survival through history. 

Ha-azinu, this week’s Torah portion, calls God the rock and foundation of all that exists. It is our faith and trust in God that keeps us going, no matter what.

Maybe it’s the precarious nature of life itself that has us holding on to the promise that God will always be there for us. Maybe it’s the richness of the teaching that the Torah offers, lending meaning, beauty and purpose during times when life seems both meaningless and futile. 

Whatever the reason, the Jewish faith persists to this day, as does the Jewish People.

At the end of this beautiful portion, God commands Moses to climb up Mount Eber—the last mountain Moses will ascend. From this peak, Moses will see the Promised Land, yet he will not enter it. So we, too, on rare occasions, are granted a glimpse of the future. Like Moses, we may not be able to witness the moment of the crossing over. But we are filled with faith that, as long as we teach the word of God to our children, at some point in their future, they will be granted this reward.

It is this hope that keeps us steady in our beliefs, that at some unspecified moment in the future, our descendants will reap the rewards of God’s promise. And so we take whatever small steps we can to help them reach that point. It’s the least we can do for our children and for their children after them.

© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman