D’Var Torah By: Rabbi Sari Laufer

As an avid reader, I often find myself saving little tidbits and stories. As we open Haazinu, the last Torah portion of Deuteronomy, I come back to a story from the New York Times about a mother taking her son to work with her. After discovering he had forgotten what he needed at home, she asked with some frustration, “What is in your head? What are you thinking about?” “Summer reading.” The son replied, “I have poems in my head. There’s no room for anything else, just poems.” A quick glance shows that Haazinu is different from all other portions: it’s laid out as a poem–unusual for the Torah, a text that is almost entirely prose. The poem in Haazinu creates room for so much else: blessings and curses, fears and hopes, and successes and failures. Moses is trying to cram all the pieces of advice and warnings that he can into his final words to the Israelites, hoping that when he sends them off into an unknown future, they will take his lessons with them. Rabbanit Liz Shayne writes: “Haazinu is not…a love poem, but…we can read the intent behind it as a poem that comes from love…God reaches out to us using the only language we have that can bridge the gap between wildly different experiences…poetry.” Haazinu is complex, filled with longing and anxiety — fitting for both the end of the Torah and the beginning of the High Holiday season. It is not a poem of great certainty. These are not rousing words of confidence, a leader sure of his followers’ potential. Most of the language seems like a veiled threat, a prediction of failure. But, hidden in there is an invitation, one particularly well-timed for this Shabbat. In Deuteronomy 32:18, Moses recites: “God said: I will hide my countenance from them; and see how they fare in the end.” There is a Hasidic teaching from Dov Ber of Mezeritch, telling of a time he once found a young child crying. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends,” the child explained, “and I hid so well that they stopped looking for me and went away.” Dov Ber mused, “This must be how God feels, hiding the Divine countenance from us to the point where some of us stop looking and start living our lives without God.” While on the surface, this seems defeatist, I prefer to see it as an invitation, a crack in the door. One of the overarching messages of the Book of Deuteronomy is of the ever-present possibility of a relationship with God. Deuteronomy – and Haazinu in particular – assumes human fallibility. The text tells us that we are going to mess up, be tempted, and go astray-and, realistically, that’s true. But the text also reminds us that our relationship with the Divine can sway and fray but will not break. God is never so hidden from us that we should give up. This year, we read this text on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is a theologically heavy time; if we are in synagogue or encountering the liturgy, we are encountering God as Ruler and Judge. These are not particularly welcoming images, and, for many, not the God we might willingly seek. Yet that is exactly the work of the High Holidays. We are supposed to seek our best selves through introspection, prayer, confession, and deep interpersonal work. In seeking for our best selves, we find the God of compassion, forgiveness, and love. As in Haazinu, there is the suggestion that when we do the work, God does too. The summer reading season has ended, and most of our heads are filled with schedules, assignments, and endless to-do lists rather than poetry. It’s easy to get lost in the everyday tasks, to let them fill your head and your days and weeks. But along comes the Jewish calendar with its holidays, liturgy, and text to fill your head with the poetry of song and hope, of prayer and possibility, of trying and failing and trying again. The High Holidays are, perhaps, a season of poetry. This is the season, our liturgy reminds us, of returning — of mending relationships, seeking forgiveness, and granting pardon when we can. But it is also a season of mutuality. When we work amongst our loved ones for repair and forgiveness, our prayer (and hope) is that God is also turning and returning, and our game of hide-and-seek will come to a happy conclusion.