There are several great poems in the Torah. The two most impressive are the Song of the Sea (Ex. 15) and the Haazinu in this week’s reading (Deut. 32).
Haazinu calls upon heaven and earth to witness the words of Moses, echoing a similar call in Isaiah 1:2, the haftarah (reading from the Prophets) for Shabbat Chazon. The Haazinu poem talks about God – and about man: about the nations – and about Israel.
God is the Rock, immutable, reliable and just, whilst man is foolish and unworthy. God’s portion is Israel, whom He nursed, supported and believed in, whilst the nations are non-peoples with non-gods. God gave Israel so many blessings – but instead of enjoying the blessings whilst God smiled, they “grew fat and rebelled”. God was vexed with them, and angry – but He would not destroy them, and when others attacked them He came to Israel’s defence.
All this is spelled out in poetic rhetoric which is part of Moses’s farewell speech to his people. The great leader, about to die, looks back over his career and wonders if it was all worth-while. Such is the feeling of any long-term leader, who wonders whether and how far his efforts have succeeded.
The relevance of the narrative to this time of the year is that it gives the Jewish people the occasion to look back over the months that have passed and to wonder whether they deserve another lease of life.
It’s all very well to remind God that He has promised to be with us whatever happens, but there is always the fear that He will say, “You have not kept your part of the bargain – so why should I keep Mine?”
FATHERS & GRANDFATHERS
”Ask your father and he will tell you, your grandfathers and they will inform you” (Deut. 32:7).
Parents and grandparents cherish the memories and have to be consulted like history books. Problem: what happens when they are dead? Will the tradition and memory disappear for lack of a human repository?
Many – most – of us have been through that moment, berating ourselves over all the questions we should have asked, the information we should have gained, the memories we should have made our own.
Maybe your experience was like mine. When I was young I didn’t want to listen (“Dad and his stories!”) but when our parents died we had no-one to turn to.
It’s more than the problem of previous centuries because Jews have been through so many traumas in the last century or so and so much information has been lost.
I was reminded of this recently when I attended the international Jewish genealogical conference in Jerusalem and saw that even the technological facilities we now have are unable to answer all our questions. A lot has to be left to intuition or guesswork, but important as both exercises are, they have their limitations.
We will of course continue to battle for the facts, but as far as the future is concerned let’s make sure that our own memories are recorded and our children possess and cherish them.