Ha'azinu: poetry

Ha'azinu: poetry

This weeks parsha is a poem.  A poem  is something that is  hard to understand.  A poem conveys  the sense that there is something deeper than the ordinary meaning of the words.  It broadcasts the complexity of the issues it deals with. 

I have considered writing the stories of my parents' survival.  When I sat down to write it, I recgnized that it needed to a poem.  Prose implies a simple, linear truth,  The poem implies that the important truth cannot be reached, it is hidden behind the images and in the structure.  It is a truth that has a magical quality , too powerful to be captured in words obeying ordinary grammar.

The poem reveals layers of the world that we sense, but have trouble communicating.  It has an element of music, the ineffable and moving. (Jabberwocky)

When I read a poem, I know that I must wait for the end, return to the beginning, go the end and return again. It is a vortex, the tornado that transports Dorothy.  I have no expectation of  complete understanding.

Haazinu is introduced as something the Israelites will remember and carry with them.  A poem is the conveyor of the tradition, a truth that transcends the present, a prophecy and testament to the prophet

I do not understand  poetry because I do not understand the world.  Part of the reason that I do not understand  is that I do not want to look. 

Vayelech: prediction

Vayelech: prediction

Vayelech speaks about Moshe preparing for his death.  He designates Yehoshua as his successor, he writes the song that Israel will carry with them through all the hard times to come.  Moshe warns Joshua of Israel's inevitable rebellion and fall. 

The premise of the parsha is prediction. These predictions are not like those of the (other) prophets.  The (other) prophets warn the people of the consequences of their rebellious actions.  They describe the severity of Gd's reaction to their sins.  They are explicating the warnings seen at end of  Bamidbar.  They are describing a reaction. 

Moshe is predicting the behavior of the people.   He is predicting that they will rebel.  He has already described the consequences of rebellion against GD in detail.  Now, he is making an actuarial  statement.  The probability of misbehavior is overwhelmingly high.  It is not psychlogy, it is statistics.

The most determined of future events is death.No one denies that every living person will die. 

 Failure is also overwhelmingly probable.  Success is the outlier, the rarity. That is the second law of thermodynamics.  Pretty depressing. But facing the truth is the first step in dealing with it. 

That is what Moshe does.  He deals with his mortality and the overwhelming probability that the Israelites  will fail to abide by their Divine contract.  He deals with succession and he writes the Torah. He immortalizes the message

Pre Diction: what is said before, before the event, before the demise

Shabbath Tshuva: derailleur

Shabbath Tshuva: derailleur

On the day before Rosh Hashannah, I biked to the hospitals to see some sick patients before the the 2 day Yom Tov.  On the way there, my bicycle broke, I could no longer shift the front gears.  I was stuck in low gear.  It slowed me down, but I could make it.   On the way home I stopped at a bike shop.  The bike needed a part that had to be ordered. 

I wondered what message, relevant to the season of reflection and repentance  was being sent to me.

David Khaneman, in Thinking Fast and Slow ( p40) describes the state of "flow." He describes this state of effortless concentration as " and optimal experience."  Interruption is something that I find very annoying.  I (used to ) become angry when interrupted.  

On Rosh Hashannah, I was studying Talmud with Ellisheva, my daughter.  It was a small passage about  how a women could come to own property independent from her husband.  We were in the flow. My pager beeped.  It was  a pharmacist who asked me about  a drug interaction in a patient that I see for lymphoma.    I had prescribed neither of the drugs in question.  I was annoyed that I was called on Rosh Hashannah.  I yelled at the pharmacist.  My anger came from the interruption ( I later called to apologize). 

The Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanna is the binding of Isaac.  the comentators imagine Abraham as extremely reluctant to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  But,  out of the depth of his faith, he becomes determined to carry out the command of the Almighty Creator in every detail.  He becomes so determined, so in the flow, that almost nothing can stop him.  Only a second call from heaven: Abraham, ABRAHAM, could derail  him. ( see Kli Yakar)

I understood the message of the bicycle.  I needed a new deralleur, a new part that allows for a smooth change of gears.  I needed to learn how to be derailed without resentment or anger

To climb the hill, all I need is the low gear,  To get there in time, I need both gears... and a good derailleur. 

Nitzavim: immediate

Nitzavim: immediate

Parshath Nitzavim is about immediacy.  The intrinsic urgency of the words  usually gets lost in the sense of urgency that comes from the impending Day of Judgement.  I read the parsha and feel rushed to make peace with Gd, and I attribute it to the season.  It is also in the words... and the calendar, and the turning leaves, and the shortening days.  They  conspire to recreate the reflective mood and  I become frightened

 Nitzavim: you are standing- in a  position that  cannot be maintained indefinitely.  Standing, not sitting , not reclining.  There is a confrontational quality to this standing.  Standing at attention, standing before the law.  Standing bolt upright. Nazev means perpendicular, great posture.

Today is Sept 11, 14 years after the Radical Sunni Islam  perpetrated an act of war against the United States.  The most upright and perpendicular of towers in New York collapsed  killing almost 3,000 innocent people. The tower is rebuilt, I do not think this war is over

In Man's Search For Meaning,  Viktor Frankl emphasizes the importance of good posture in surviving the Nazi concentration camps. If the guard saw slouching signalling  weakness, the prisoner was beaten, weakening him further, and then she was killed   In the body of this book, Frankl also deals with moral posture, doing the right thing regardless of the circumstances.


Yesterday was the birthday of my father-in law, Irwin L Treiger. There was no one more upright than he.  I am honored to have merited marrying his daughter.  Irwin Treiger  remained standing through all temptations, always maintaining honesty and fairness.  He made the covenant of his ancestors his priority, supporting Jewish education and Israel

 Today is the yahrzeit of my father, who survived the Treblinka death camp.When I was a boy, in part because of his reluctance to talk about the details of this place ( a place dubbed by Vasilly Grossman "Hell"), I feared that he had done terrible things in exchange for his survival. After I organized a meeting of the Treblinka survivors in Israel, I learned that my father was perfectly upright. He had kept his deal with Gd in the most trying of circumstances.  He had kept the agreement alluded to in the parsha, the deal with those present today and those that are not present; a deal made  before he was born and a  deal that I try to keep.  He had chosen life.
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Ki Thavoh: You have arrived at your destination

The parsha is named: "when you arrive".  It describes a ritual of recognition of arrival, a ritual that we repeat at the seder on Passover ( although we have not arrived) .A dream of arrival,

The bulk of the parsha is a tirade, the ills that will befall the nation that has arrived, failed to recognize its Redeemer, and has strayed from the commandment. .   The nation that should have been great, and instead suffers every fall ind indignity .  These sanctions  are part of the deal, the agreement that trades arrival  in the Promised Land of milk and honey for (absolute) obedience.

At the end of the parsha we are told that until now we did not understand, but now we can understand the  miracles  ( 29;3)  This is also a kind of arrival, the arrival at understanding.

Understanding, in its common meaning is a floating thing.  The feeling of understanding is a sense of anchoring, but from that anchored position, one only sees as far as the (current) horizon. From a larger perspective, the body to which one is anchored may, itself,  be floating.  This is the story of science.

Aristotle tells us to trust observation and generalize from it. A body in motion must have been set in motion by an unmoved mover.

Newton sees the planets in motion and they do not stop. Motion in a straight line is no different from rest.  Motion does not require a mover, stopping needs a cause.

Rockets allow the earth to be viewed from space. Where has heaven gone? The old understanding is replaced by the new. We cannot see the end to possible perspectives.

But the heart understands. We can never arrive at the ultimate understanding, but we must deal with where we are.  The heart is our anchor.