Deuteronomy - Cycle One - 3201-3252 - HaAzinu A Death Chant

What happens when we die? We don’t know. Given our scriptures, we could join with the angels, enter God’s kingdom, turn to dust. There are so many veils of perspective but one thing we know; it’s going to happen, without a doubt. We wait for it all our lives. You would think then that it would be predominant in our prayers. The focus of Judaism though is on life. Even if you look at the Mourners Kaddish, it’s about the greatness of God and life, not about the fear of death.

And what does this all have to do with HaAzinu? Here, Moses teaches a song to the Israelites, a death chant. In it, all life is squeezed to its very essence. There’s anticipation, an emphasis on structure, on conflict, on explosive imagery, all compressed into relatively few lines. The kinetic energy that results enables the absolute merging with the one great light. After all, in the next parasha we learn that when dead, the eyes of Moses had not dimmed and his natural powers had not left him. So, this is my question, is there an equation here? Could it be true that the more we are in tune with the elements of life, the stronger the connection with the divine? It certainly is the essence of life that propels our light to God not only when we die, but in the here and now as well. The song therefore seems to be a gift. And perhaps if we study it and its elements (some of which I list above) the closer we will be to God.

Let’s begin before the song. Before we even know it, it’s huge. We have been waiting; it has become like a cell in a microscope. This happens all the time. A child eats his dinner to get the cake for desert. We work hard for years to make the down payment on the house. And during these years, during these moments, we hear our future over and over again. There’s an engine moving us forward, that of our minds. What we forget is that we’ve created the reality of the greatness. We therefore need the consummation to be as big as that reality. And so it works for the song of HaAzinu. We are set up to hear it. In the previous parasha, not only is it mentioned four times, Moses writes it. Even more, it is written before the words of this Torah, making you wonder if it is the sediment or the blue print, the action packed version of all of the trials and moral lessons of the Israelites. Of course, expanding on this idea, this Torah would then be the sediment of all of the scriptures and these scriptures would be the sediment of all human life, past, present and future. Now look when God instructs the song to be written….not in Exodus, not in Genesis, but right before the death of Moses. Therefore, the song and death are highly connected. We can hear both before we hear them. We can feel both before we feel them. They are both so highly anticipated that they take on the greatness necessary to connect human life to divine consciousness.

Next, let’s look at the structure of the song. In the Masoretic text, we have two columns with writing, an even white space in the middle. It’s as clear as daylight. On all planes of reality, the white space can be seen as an opening. At the most basic level, it’s an opening between letters. Some people might liken it to the opening of the Reed Sea and therefore the song becomes a battle cry. Others might see the opening in our hearts, there to help bring release to our personal struggles and conflicts. And as the opening pushes even deeper within us, it becomes that which connects us to the divine. What surrounds it? The lines do, a compression of the physical world to allow for it. As it says in the Haftorah….He placed the darkness all around him as pavilions…then the channels of the sea appeared…the world’s foundations were laid bare…He reached from up high. He took me. You can almost see the greater energy rising from our hearts and centers. You can almost see a funnel, a spiral. The light now travels through our bodies as an experience. Because Moses (a prophet) was able to create an astonishing compression of the physical world , the light travels through his body with such power it finally explodes inward and upward towards God.

This brings us to the actual meaning of the words. In a song we expect a pretty tune, thoughts on love or hope. Here, we get curses and accusations…Destruction is His children’s fault, not His own, you warped and twisted generation.. Can you imagine a pretty tune to match with those words? A resounding rhythm? Well, if you are familiar with Bob Dylan or Edgar Allen Poe, it wouldn’t be too hard. Songs use powerful words and images all the time to bring conflict and therefore compression…to force the light out of the two forces…to give the light power to merge and rise. In fact, now that we’ve established the conflict between the words and the tune, let’s center in on the words themselves. The overall gist is of a benevolent God who is offended by His sons and daughters and therefore curses them. Nice God. Bad people. Blessings and then curses. Take another step in, and we have two opposing images side by side and then, another step in and we get conflict within an image. They seem to explode out at us. For example….He let them suckle honey from the bedrock…their grape cluster is bitterness to them. Now let’s look at the names used for God. In this small parasha there are 7. There’s God, Mighty One, Father, Master, One, Most High and Power. All of these name changes certainly bring about even greater conflict, And, I bet if we studied the Hebrew letters and wanted to write about a hundred more pages we could find conflict letter to letter and within the letters themselves. One thing is clear. Conflict creates compression and this compression leads to the propelling of our divine sparks as an offering‐up. Conflict on the earthly plane leads to absolute connection on higher levels.

Finally, if the image of the spiral is still difficult to imagine, think of people in a circle. Think of them chanting this song (as demanded by God). The hearing and chanting goes beyond time, generation to generation, witness to witness. The song becomes a reflection and then a reflection of a reflection and so on. The circle becomes three dimensional and once again, becomes a spiral, bringing us all closer to God.

In the end, we are all still chanting this song, the sediment of the songs…not only this one, all of Torah, creating our own funnels and spirals for our divine sparks to explode into the divine upon our death and even during our life. This piece of enlightenment, this gift, doesn’t just have Moses’ name tag on it. It’s for us all. Conflict, as painful as it is, is the most powerful catalyst for connection with God. The objective is to create distance and equanimity. That way we can maintain our strength and open heart. We can allow the kinetic energy to build until it just propels us to the divine.

So, may we accept conflict with distance and without pain. May we sing a song of life whether it’s filled with curses or blessings. May we embrace the song. May we accept our humanity. May we honor both the lines and the white space. May we join hands as one and listen to the beautiful tune of the divine. And, may we all allow ourselves to dance with the force of light up the spiral into the radiance of God’s eyes.