Judaism
Parashah of the week: Ha’azinu
“For this is not a trifling thing for you: it is your very life” Deuteronomy 32:47
October 1, 2024 16:38
“For this is not a trifling thing for you: it is your very life” Deuteronomy 32:47
October 1, 2024 16:38Ha’azinu is the final Shabbat parashah (since the last two chapters of Deuteronomy are read only on Simchat Torah).
In the style of biblical poetry, Ha’azinu warns Israel of the consequences of its anticipated failure to keep its part of the covenant with God.
Ha’azinu is read on Shabbat Shuvah after Rosh Hashanah when Jews who hear it find themselves in a place between the sweetness of celebrating the legendary birthday of the world and the period of introspection and self-analysis which Yom Kippur demands.
It is not wholly clear what the redactors of the Torah meant in the phrase, “not a trifling thing for you: it is your very life” but, as Yom Kippur ought not be a single day of confession which soon passes, so Parashat Ha’azinu reminds its listeners that the Exodus and wilderness experience, including the giving of Torah, is not a passing moment without significance but forms the foundation myth and the basic constitution of Jewish life.
Jewish communities are made up of an innumerable variety of Jews. What unites all these types of Jews is not their origins, their beliefs or their practices but their decision to connect to Torah in its widest sense.
When Parashat Ha’azinu observes that “this is not a trifling thing”, it was making a comment on Jewish life itself. Being Jewish is rarely the easy option. It is indeed the very opposite. Jewish life is a choice of joyful but challenging responsibility by which the Jew, beginning with Torah, seeks to make an impact on their own being but, as importantly, on the society and world of which the Jew is a part.
As Jews approach this Yom Kippur, the anniversary of October 7 is fresh in our minds. In a world that has the capacity to - and sometimes seems on the brink of - destroying itself, Yom Kippur demands of Jews a supreme effort of personal vulnerability in an unsparing effort to face the truth about ourselves, to acknowledge the blemishes which disfigures us: greed and envy, self- pity and self indulgence, cruelty and callousness, prejudice and arrogance, hatred and destructiveness.
We might be tempted to turn away from making the effort itself but the Torah, as the basis of Jewish life, may offer a significant method of reaffirming the purpose of our lives.
The American founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan prayed. “Enable us, O God, to behold meaning in the chaos of life about us and purpose in the chaos of life within us. Deliver us from the sense of futility in our strivings... May we behold things in their proper proportions and see life in its fullness and its holiness.”
A life underpinned by the inspiration of Torah and its commitment to particular Jewish ways of doing things and a universal concern for the peoples of the world and our planet is not a trifling thing - it is indeed the fulfilment of life itself.