A thought on Parshas Haazinu

"...ha'azinu ha'Shomayim...v'tishma ha'aretz..." "...listen, heaven...hear, earth..." (32:1) The parsha begins with Moshe's appeal to heaven and earth that they bear witness to his admonitions to the Jewish people. Ha'azinu, the parsha, is the prophetic song of Moshe, foretelling the Jewish future and the interactions which we will have with the nations around us, with HaShem, and with each other. The song, in a sense, began with parshios Nitzavim and Va'Yelech. It reaches its crescendo here. Back to our opening verse: Moshe asks that "the heaven" and "the earth" heed his words. Rashi's interpretation of this imagery is that Moshe is citing heaven and earth as "witnesses" which will always endure and thus will always serve as secure reminders to us, who are living beneath the heavens and reside on earth, that we have a mission to carry out and that we have been instructed and warned about our roles therein. The Panae'ach Raza, however, has a different interpretation than Rashi. He cites an aggadic view found in the writings of our sages which considers "the heaven" as a euphemism for the neshama, the heavenly part of each person. The term "the earth", in turn, is a metaphor for the mortal, corporeal part of each person that, like the earth itself, is material substance which has been taken, then formed, from the earth, as the Torah explained in the saga of genesis. With this view, Moshe is appealing to each Jewish person, asking that we take to heart and internalize all that he is forecasting and forewarning. We need to hear him with our souls. We need to hear him with our minds also. We need to be thinking about our spiritual future, and we need to be mindful of our physical future. Our mission is to function on earth appropriately, while concurrently aware that the world to come, where existence is on a spiritual plane, is dependent on how we live our mortal lives. We must know that we serve HaShem by observing those commandments which are decidedly spiritual and heaven-bound, yet by meanwhile maintaining our personal and interpersonal conduct in the manner which the Torah dictates. Our souls are engrossed in fulfilling the mitzvos "bein adam l'makom" while our bodies are attending to the "mortal virtues" which are mitzvos "bein adam l'chaveiro". This is the message Moshe seeks to convey in "listen, heavenly part of you... hear, mortal part of you..." The message to our souls and selves is entirely about mitzvos, as the Panae'ach Raza notes: the opening three words of "ha'azinu ha'shomayim v'adab'eira" - listen heaven as I speak - equal in gematria 613. Moshe laid forth all of the Torah commandments in appealing to each of us, body and soul. May this first Shabbos of 5775 be one of unifying our souls and our mortal selves in a balanced, consistent and stable manner. Good Shabbos. Good Year. D Fox