A BISSEL TORAH: HAAZINU: MOSES THE TRAGEDY
By: Suri Davis
The Torah portion, Haazinu, listen heaven and Earth, because I, G-d, will talk…
The Torah portion ends, with the disgrace of G-d sending Moses up to the mountain to die, but first he has to see the land of Israel, “vshama lo tavo/but you will not enter” the land of Israel. G-d is clear, starkly clear, that you forewent leading the people into Israel, because you, Moses and Aaron, did not believe in G-d when He directed that they talk to the rock to draw water, and instead, they hit the rock.
G-d gave them the opportunity to sanctify His name with the miracle, and they desecrated His name by hitting the rock rather than talking to it. The great and holy Moses, the only prophet to talk to G-d face to face. The utter embarrassment and public punishment, being sent to a mountain so close to Israel, to see Israel, and not enter.
We don’t know where Moses is buried. We don’t have mention of Moses in the hagaddah. The whole of Deuteronomy is a restatement of the Jews’ history in the desert. Comparing it to the original, we can see the focus change from Moses’ role in publicly enacting the miracles, to G-d’s active hand in those same miracles.
This torah portion comes out every year, the Shabbos after Yom Kippur. It appears to me that the reason for this juxtaposition is that if we feel horribly that we have sinned, we might take comfort from knowing that even Moses sinned. If you think that you are righteous and will not be punished for sinning, even Moses who was certainly righteous, did not escape punishment either.
One might ask, this is what Moses gets after years of dedication to G-d? The rabbis tell us that those who are righteous are punished in this world so they can enjoy the world to come in a closer position to G-d.
Also, sanctifying G-d’s name, is revealing your own faith in G-d and spreading that faith to others. It does not only affect yourself, it affects those around you whom you can bring closer to G-d and faith. But when you desecrate G-d’s name, one of the sins for which we repent on Yom Kippur, not only have we shown a personal lack of faith, but the act that we’ve done, seen by another, will lead to the other person seeing our lack in faith in G-d and stating wow this Jew did so and so, that is horrible for a Jew to do, and we will bring shame upon us and upon Jews and G-d in general.
So we start with praise of G-d for all He has done to bring us to the point of nationhood, and bringing us to our homeland, His home, but G-d cant let go of the knowledge that no sooner will we cross the Jordan into Israel that we will sin, and G-d uses Moses as an example to warn the Jews that if they sin, they too will be punished.
Tis the season to reverse the sinning and singing. We have repented of our sins, and now we are ready to sing song and rejoice with our union with G-d by living in Sukkahs, which show our trust in G-d that He will protect us in our temporary abodes. It brings us back to the days when we were vulnerable in the desert subject to the natural elements and enemies, and G-d placed His cloud of glory upon us to protect us from all. And for this we rejoice for eight days.
Happy Sukkoth.
Good Shabbos.
-Suri