POETRY OR SONG? THE FINAL ONE FOR MOSES
It’s been an intense week for all of us, and added on to the three days we trooped into the Sanctuary the week before, (Erev Rosh HaShanah, etc.) with Shabbat in between, we’re starting to experience “shul fatigue”. Now, I may have just made that term up, but it’s the feeling you get, AFTER you’ve completed Religious School education, of ‘Gee, wasn’t I just here the other day?’ as you walk up into the Sanctuary. Whether that is a comforting, familiar feeling or something connected to another time and place that is less welcoming is essentially up to you. So too, the understanding of what is a poem and what is a song is left up to us. All the “poems” that have yet been set to music are potential songs. In both cases it’s a matter of perspective; just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too in my opinion and experience, is comfort. If the next time you come into your synagogue you choose to be in the moment, to experience only what is here and now, to allow the possibility of comfort, you change your perception. (Ruach Shabbat in two weeks, just saying)
This week’s Torah Portion Ha’azinu , while sounding very foreign, is a comforting and familiar one for me as it was what I read, not understanding more than a word here and there, when I was Bat Mitzvah. Northern Suburban New Jersey, the mid 70’s, the hair was shorter and the glasses unbearable, but there I was, ready to “do it”, it being reading from the actual Torah scroll. The person is called Bat Mitzvah, the verb is “was”, or if you want to be pedantic “celebrated” because once you woke up Jewish on your 13th birthday you were not only physically capable of reproducing, you were responsible for the outcomes of your actions. You were liable for the consequences of your actions for the first time in your life, whether you did anything to mark that or not. So the party was because your parents could say “Blessed be the One Who exempts me from this one’s punishment” (not kidding, a literal quote of the blessing a father makes in an Orthodox shul).
The accepting of responsibility for one’s own actions has been stressed again and again in our liturgy this month, since the beginning of Tishrei. On a parallel track we have been hearing a recount of many legislative sections of the Torah since we began reading Deuteronomy. Now, just before Moses dies, in this next to final portion of Deuteronomy we see music; music not of instruments, but of poetry. This is Chapter 32, also known as the song of Moses, which is arranged in justified columns and recounts in a different way what will yet be remembered. How did Moses hear it? It’s a matter of perspective…
Oh, and in the next two weeks coming up we’ll celebrate Sukkot and Simchat Torah! There will be opportunities to shake the Lulav and smell the etrog Mon., Tues., Weds. and particularly a week from today when we will include Sukkot in our Shabbat service.
Shabbat Shalom and G’mar Tov Rabbi Leah Benamy
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