During this auspicious time of year,
we are exposed to an abundance of drashot (sermons) and divrei Torah. In
the world of social media, this translates to a host of video clips speeches as
well. All in all, there is a great surge of words coming at us, and these words
are important, for these are the words meant to inspire us to teshuva.
The majority of this week's parsha is
what one might call Moshe's final sermon, although, in truth, the words of
Haazinu are the words of the song Hashem taught to Moshe and Yehoshua to teach
to Bnei Yisrael. The opening verses contain what one might say is an
allegorical encouragement for giving Torah sermons. The parsha begins:
"Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!
May my discourse come down as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, like
showers on young growth, like downpours on the grass."
In these four phrases there is one
common metaphor - forms of water. In fact, one could even say it is
specifically water that comes from shemayim. Most of the time when one
hears the comparison of Torah to water, to mayim chayim, one thinks of a
river or a lake, a clean body of water thriving with life and necessary for
life. But rain and dew are also forms of mayim chayim.
The Tzena Urena points out on this
verse that the Midrash says: “Just as rain gives life to the entire world, so
the Torah gives life to the entire world; just as dew brings joy to the people,
so Torah brings joy to people.” The terms used in the first two phrases are matar
and tal, just as we daven throughout the “rainy” season (in Israel) by
adding “ten tal umatar" to our prayers. Tal and matar
are physical blessings, so it is interesting that the second set of phrases use
less familiar terms: saeerim and rvieevim. Saeerim, according
to Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, could be connected to the word saeer,
hair, perhaps referring to streams of rain so thick as to be visible. Riveevim,
he translates as a downpour, based on the word's connection to the Hebrew word rov.
The Tzena Urena explains on the word saeerim that the subtext was: “My
words are like a storm wind which comes on the grass, as if it wishes to uproot
it. In truth, this wind is beneficial to the grass and the crops for the wind
makes it grow and strengthens it.”
Rain comes in many forms. Perhaps
Moshe is telling the people, and the generations to come, that the words of
Torah that he is about to impart - words that foretell hard times and teshuva –
must also be seen as an over-arcing blessing. Rav Hirsch comments that Moshe
wanted his words to be:
"Taking into and to the hearts
of his people, and the soil of their minds and hearts which had so long remain
hard had become softened and loosened, so that the seed of light and warm, of
knowledge and life could come up and shoot forth, and that his promises,
refreshing like the dew, would always provide the courage of his people and
keep them up right in the hard times that lay before them, that both - the
Torah and the Promises - would prove themselves purifying like storm-showers on
the meadows and finally fructifying like a rich and plentiful fall of rain on
vegetation."
Nothing in Torah is by chance, and it
is not a coincidence that we read these words on the eve of Sukkot. Not only is
Sukkot the time when we begin to daven for rain, and thus benefit from
remembering that the bracha of rain comes in many forms, but it is the holiday
during which we remind ourselves to be aware that our successes, both
agricultural and otherwise, are blessings from Hashem. If we can keep that in
mind throughout the year and remember to put our Avodas Hashem and His
Torah first, then we can move towards the promised return written in the song
of Haazinu.
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