In the past posts, we have seen the Torah single out two events as those that Jews need to retain in their continuing and active memory. Today, we will see that the Torah also privileged certain parts of the Torah text over others. The messages of those texts, Haazinu and the first two paragraphs of Shema, reinforce and expand the basic picture of Jewish emphases we have been constructing.

A Song For Lasting Memory

Haazinu is a remarkable section of the Torah in several ways. First, at least according to some commentators, it was the need to write Haazinu that led to the mitzvah to write a Torah scroll. Rashi and Rashbam explain the word שירה, song or poem, in Devarim 31:19’s “ועתה כתבו לכם את השירה הזאת למדה את בני ישראל שימה בפיהם, Therefore, write down this poem and teach it to the people of Israel, put it in their mouths,” as a reference only to Haazinu.

In a halachic context, though, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 21b) cites this verse as the source for the obligation to write a personal Torah scroll. Rambam codifies the obligation as the 18th of his positive commandments, and explains the discrepancy by noting that we are not allowed to write only part of the Torah as an official scroll. For him, then, the verse should be read as, ‘write an entire Torah, which contains within it this song.”

This means that at least Rashi, Rashbam, Rambam, and Sefer haChinuch (in Mitsva 613, where he records Rambam’s view) thought God was telling Moses to write down Haazinu, to teach it to the Jewish people, and place it in their mouths. It was only because of the prohibition to write partial scrolls that we ended up with a mitzva to write the entire Torah; otherwise, each Jew having written and possessed Haazinu would have been the basic reminder God wanted.

The definition of placing a song in someone’s mouth is not completely clear, but the thrust of the Talmudic discussion seems to see it as requiring knowledge of Haazinu and its messages. In Eruvin 54b, R. Akiva sees the words as indicating knowledge beyond basic learning, which was covered by the words למדה את בני ישראל, teach it to the Jewish people; the added clause obligates Moses to teach it to the point that it is well ordered in Jews’ mouths. Later on the same page, R. Hisda rereads the verse homiletically, with the word שימה, place, changed to סימנה, make signs, to suggest that mnemonic devices are necessary to the study of Torah.

Taking this one step further, in a different context, Ramban claims that the Biblical term to place something in someone’s mouth refers to teaching it well enough that it not be forgotten, and no part of it lost (1). That seems to drive the halachic understanding of the verse as well, since the requirement to write a Torah scroll was assumed by Rosh, as ratified by Tur and Shulchan Aruch in Yoreh Deah 270, to mean to have available the means of learning Torah, not just a technical requirement to write a Torah scroll. It also explains the custom recorded by Rambam, in Hilchot Tefilla 7:13, that some Jews recited Haazinu as part of the liturgy every morning.

I should perhaps note that in one of the published yahrzeit lectures—about which I teach at the WebYeshiva—the Rov z”l assumes that שימה בפיהם actually means reading without understanding. However, he then takes for granted that the words two verses later, וענתה השירה הזאת לעד, and this Song will act as a witness towards them, assume learning with understanding. And, of course, the Rov applied this idea to all of Torah, in line with what we have seen about Haazinu.

I cite so many sources because no one of them asserts an obligation to keep Haazinu in mind all the time, although that would seem the simple reading of the verses and all of their readings are consistent with that idea. That it is also seen as the explanation for the Jewish people’s suffering—as in the verse to which the Rov pointed—seems, to me, to define its messages as central to an Orthodox worldview and to how an Orthodox Jew approaches the world, and hence part of our mission.

I also cite so many texts because of the rarity, in my experience, of a well-established understanding of Haazinu. While most Jews we meet know the basic Exodus and Revelation stories, the content and meaning of Haazinu are esoteric to even fairly educated Jews. Looking into Haazinu, rejuvenating its place within the Jewish experience of the world is certainly one contribution I hope these discussions make to the tenor of Jewish thought and conversation.

The Message of Haazinu

With that introduction, it will be no surprise that Haazinu echoes ideas we have already seen. The Song is forty-three verses long, so I will not attempt to extract all of its points, but two central ones jump out in this context, both demonstrable from one verse.

The seventh verse reads זכר ימות עולם, בינו שנות דור ודור, שאל אביך ויגדך, זקניך ויאמרו לך, translated as “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; Ask your father and he will inform you, your elders and they will tell you.” Rashi understands the reference to world history to mean that we should recognize that God has punished nations in the past (including the Jewish people) for their failures, and that we should also realize that God has the power to bring the Messianic era and the World to Come, should we merit it. Rashbam seems to encapsulate the Song’s message as being the recognition that God punishes sinners, since that is the element he emphasizes when explaining the Torah’s call to place the Song in the people’s mouths.

While I am picking a particular verse and two commentators to support the point, the simple reading of the Song says as much. The first part (until verse 15) speaks of what God did for the Jewish people, taking them out of Egypt, protecting them, and giving them great material bounty. Four verses then outline the Jews’ abandonment of God, leading to a brief review of the consequences of our so doing, including God’s removing protection from us and our suffering. Verse 29 comes back to the theme of our needing to recognize this flow to history, that if only we would be wise, we would understand that the course of our national history is not natural, it ebbs and flows with our faith.

There is more, and a full interpretation of Haazinu, like all of Torah, is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, but we have, for our purposes, seen enough to show that the central theme of the Song is an idea we have already considered within the context of the Exodus, that the Jewish people live under God’s Providence and that at least their national fortunes are intimately connected to their spiritual state. It is a theme we will see again shortly, when we get to the recitation of Shema, but I want to note one other aspect of the verse.

One of the ways tradition understood the end of that verse, שאל אביך ויגדך, ask your fathers and they will tell you, is that it asserts a Jewish need to follow tradition. We will have to revisit the extent of this requirement when we come to speak of halachic process and of the role of custom.

For now, though, we have seen that Haazinu was the source of the mitzvah to write Torah scrolls, now understood to include surrounding oneself with books of Jewish learning. That would suggest that the focus of that learning extends from the focus of the Song, that in some extended sense all Torah learning is meant to place before our continuing consciousnesses the idea that the history of the Jewish people is based in its relationship with God.

Though there may seem to be little practical outlet for such a view today, since we have to negotiate political issues with others who do not share that perspective, it is nonetheless central to our internal experience of history. That many Orthodox Jews fail to internalize it, and that even those who theoretically subscribe to it often do not realize how central it is to a Jewish experience of the world, is an example of the loss of the sense of mission I have been noting.

Keriat Shema

The final two texts the Torah itself identifies as central to a daily Jewish experience are those we say as the first two paragraphs of Shema. The Torah says, in each case, that Jews must keep “these matters” that God commanded on their hearts, teach them to their children, and speak about them “when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, and when you lie down, and when you arise.” Although the definition of “these matters” might be taken as referring to all of Torah, tradition narrowed it to the sections of the Torah in which the verses appear.

The requirement to speak about them at defined times, when you lie down and when you arise, would seem to obligate twice-daily recitation, but as an halachic matter, that is an issue of continuing debate. The most extreme position holds that any recitation of Shema is only Rabbinically obligated, but the majority position, it seems to me, is that at least the first two paragraphs are Biblically ordained (2).

The first paragraph reminds us of the Jewish belief in a single God (a term we will have cause to discuss when we get to the discussion of Principles of Faith), the undefined (perhaps better phrased as multiply defined) obligation to love that God wholly and completely, and the obligations to place reminders of that connection to God prominently— in our speech, as articles of clothing, and adorning our dwelling places.

The second paragraph speaks of reward and punishment, speaking most explicitly of a direct relationship between religious observance and material prosperity. At the very least, the verse is clear that, within the Land of Israel, material success, particularly in terms of rain, which is still an issue in our advanced scientific times, depends on the Jewish people’s relationship with God, their proper fulfillment of the Torah.

I would call this the issue of Divine Providence, except that some, often labeled rationalists, argue that the Torah only means that God embedded in Nature a connection between rain or drought and Jewish observance, with no new Divine input. The irony of this view, to my mind, is that it is seen as more rationalistic than views which speak openly of God’s intervention into Nature. It does so, however, at the cost of blurring the lines between metaphysical and natural, since it assumes that Nature responds to religious realities. An Israeli meteorologist, in this view, would have to study weather patterns and religious patterns to make accurate forecasts about how the Kinneret will or will not be filled!

According to the text, when the Jews love God and serve God with all their hearts and souls, they can expect prosperity; when they fail to, at least in terms of worshiping other gods, they can expect drought, crop failure, and expulsion from the Land. Service of God or its lack directly affects at least the Jews’ national fortunes when in the Land of Israel.

I recognize that all of this can strike readers as loose, as “hashkafic” rather than halachic, and therefore less obviously obligatory. In a few posts from now, we will turn to demands the Torah phrased as mitzvot, which therefore are halachic, and find similar conclusions from another perspective. For now, though, we can note that our discussion of Biblical verses seems to define an Orthodox Jew as someone who walks around with the constant (or, at least, continual) consciousness that he or she is a member of a people whom God took out of Egypt as the first step in a continuing relationship.

The definition of the human side of being a proper partner in that relationship is remembering the event of the Giving of the Torah, as well as much of its content, particularly those parts of the Torah that remind us of the connection, at least as a nation, between success at serving God (or failure) and our general success in life. How such an internal consciousness plays out in practice would be the mission of Orthodoxy as described thus far, but I will not pause to detail those ramifications yet, since we have several other texts that enrich and flesh out that picture more fully.

Were we to stop here, then, we would have already laid theological propositions many who call themselves Orthodox today dispute, yet we have barely begun. As we move forward, we should continue to check our Orthodox “pulse,” to see where the contemporary religious climate may have led people astray from their most basic commitments as Orthodox Jews.

Our next step is to show that the Talmud itself also highlighted certain texts as capturing central themes and issues of Judaism. By examining those, and seeing how they correlate to what we have found so far, we will find further support for the necessary part these ideas must play in a lived Jewish experience.

(1) Commentary to Bamidbar (Numbers) 23:5, שיגרוס אותם בפיו ולא ישכח ולא יפיל מהם דבר.
(2) Minchat Chinuch 420:1 summarizes the various positions. I have, here and elsewhere, translated בניך as your children when it more literally means your sons, and despite Jewish tradition limiting the obligation of these recitations to men. As I will argue in a later post, while women are exempted from specific obligations, the underlying theology is as obligatory upon them as upon men.