PARASHA 053 MAIN PAGE
Ha-azinu D'varim/Deuteronomy
32:1–52
The name of the Parshah, "Haazinu," means "Listen" and it is found in
Deuteronomy 32:1.
The greater part of the Torah reading of Haazinu (“Listen In”) consists
of a 70-line “song” delivered by Moses to the people of Israel on the
last day of his earthly life.
Calling heaven and earth as witnesses, Moses exhorts the people,
“Remember the days of old / Consider the years of many generations / Ask
your father, and he will recount it to you / Your elders, and they will
tell you” how God “found them in a desert land,” made them a people,
chose them as His own, and bequeathed them a bountiful land. The song
also warns against the pitfalls of plenty—“Yeshurun grew fat and kicked
/ You have grown fat, thick and rotund / He forsook God who made him /
And spurned the Rock of his salvation”—and the terrible calamities that
would result, which Moses describes as God “hiding His face.” Yet in the
end, he promises, God will avenge the blood of His servants, and be
reconciled with His people and land.
The Parshah concludes with God’s instruction to Moses to ascend the
summit of Mount Nebo, from which he will behold the Promised Land before
dying on the mountain. “For you shall see the land opposite you; but you
shall not go there, into the land which I give to the children of
Israel.”
|