An Ha'azinu story

Haazinu, הַאֲזִינוּ  "Listen!"  Deuteronomy 32:1-32:52

Sefer Torah Song 

Therefore, write down this song and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be a testimony [maintained] within the people of Israel.  Deuteronomy 31:19
 

In a time long, long ago there was a young boy from an Israelite trading post in the land that would, at the end of days, be called the Ukraine and there was  a young Israelite girl from a nearby trading outpost in a place that at the end of days would be called Belorussia. These two were promised to one another and wanted to come to a place in creation which Hashem had chosen for them to set up their Chuppah. Their families, however, had a falling out with one another over many events taking place in the world around them. This was creating severe obstacles that fell in the way of the young boy and girl coming to their great day.

The difference between their families was based on a different opinion about faith in Hashem.  For it was a time of great trouble, violence and robbery and all manner of immorality. Demons came upon the land from the moon, and some came from the stars and reinforced the kingdom of demons which was established there. And they corrupted the people. The weapons of the mouths waging war on the earth at that time were weapons that were able to kill homes and make young children die of old age.  

The father of the young boy held the opinion that they should cast religion to the ground. For he said, is it not written, "Then My anger will flare up against them, and I will abandon them and hide My countenance from them. They shall be ready prey; and many evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall say on that day, "Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us.”  Therefore he argued, “We ought to do what is written here and give up and abandon God as he has abandoned us. Maybe his pity will even override his wrath in the end.”

The father of the young girl replied to the father of the young boy, “Hashem has not truly abandoned us! For it is written, "Yet I will keep My countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.”  Therefore, let us not give up, but continue to be faithful and keep his commandments, even though he has concealed his face from us! Let us be faithful even to the end, to the point were we have no strength left, either to write an aleph or a tav.

The young boy and the young girl did not know what to do when their families would no longer even speak to one another. For the young boy’s father said of the young girl’s father, “He is too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good! I cannot reason with him. There is no point speaking with him any longer.  And the young girl’s father said of the young boy’s father, “How does one reach the soul of a Jew who wants to become a goy?

The young boy said to the young girl, I would go with your family only, leaving my family to follow the error of their ways; we would go to the spot in Creation where Hashem has provided for us to set up our Chuppah, but I cannot abandon my family when I understand and feel the pain that has broken their spirit. For it is written, “A snapped over reed he shall not break; and a flickering flaxen wick he shall not quench; with truth he shall execute justice." Isaiah 42:3.  It seemed to them, then, that they could do nothing but pray.

At this time, the father of the young girl was aged and the time came when he was on his death bed. There is one mitzvah, he said, that I would like to fulfill in a beautiful manner in this time of trouble and abominations before I die.  I would like to fulfill the mitzvah of writing a new Sefer Torah. He sent his daughter to a sofer and said through her to him, “I am on my death bed, but I want to fulfill the mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah in the most beautiful way that I can. How can I do this? I am a wealthy man and will pay you very well if you can do this for me before I die.

The sofer questioned the young daughter of this man as to how many days her father might actually have left in this world. From her answer he realized that there was only one way he could accomplish what the dying man desired. He set out a complete Torah scroll, opening it from end to end on his table. He then set out beneath it and parallel to this Sefer Torah on his table, the  empty scroll that he would write the Sefer Torah for this man upon. He went to the place of Ha’azinu on the scroll and there he began to write this scroll, writing Ha’azinu in its very place on the empty scroll parallel to its exact place on the complete Sefer Torah above it.

No sooner had he done this than the man, the father of the young girl, died and passed on to the next world. He arrived at the place of the academy of Mashiach and of many great tzaddikim from all generations. He found that he was standing in the middle of a great lawn of vibrant blades of grass covering a slope that was leading down from the great academies. His heart beat with excitement, for the knowledge of where he was within him.

Without another thought, his feet picked themselves up and attempted to take him toward the great academies of Torah and its Truth, but as soon as his feet picked themselves up he found that he was turned around and he was facing the other way. Just then, young talmudim of the academies came up behind him. They were smiling with joy and their voices sounded like music, but they interrupted what they were saying and spoke to this man who had just arrived there.

“What are you doing here?” they asked him, “and where are you wanting to go?”

“I am uncertain how I came to be here,” he said.  "I want to go into the academies of the tzaddikim!  I long to learn the lessons that they are teaching there, and maybe even hear a lesson taught in the academy of Mashiach!” However, I found that when my feet tried to go there I was turned around and have been made to face in the opposite direction.

The talmudim of the academies of the tzaddikim immediately saw that this was a very unique man who had come to them for a very special reason. They said to him, “Come with us and we will help you.” They then began to walk down the slope across the great lawn and he followed them.

The next moment they were no longer in the place of the Torah academies and the great lawn on the slope where they had been. Instead the man found that the talmudim of the academies of the next world had taken him to the house of the sofer who he had contracted to write a Sefer Torah form him. They seemed to be suspended above his house in the air and yet he could somehow both see and hear those who were in the house. There were two people talking with one another in the sofer’s writing room. These were the sofer himself and the man’s young daughter.

The sofer had the scroll he had been working on for the young girl’s father rolled out evenly on his table. Only the section of Ha’azinu had been written upon it and was in its exact place upon the scroll. The sofer explained to the daughter how her father had contracted him to write a Sefer Torah for him and that when he had learned that her father was about to die, he had determined to write the parsha of Ha’azinu first, before he died. He had determined to then finish all the rest of the Sefer Torah in the days after his death, so that the parsha of Ha’azinu would have life within the womb of the whole body of the Torah, and the mitzvah of writing a Sefer Torah could in this way possibly be fulfilled by her father even in his death.

When the father who was there in the spirit heard this his breath was caught in his throat. For he did not know that the sofer had done this beautiful thing for him. He then heard that the conversation between the sofer and his daughter continued on. 

“I am very challenged, however,” the sofer said to the daughter. For in these horrific times I have very little work and am a destitute man. I will not have food to sustain me to finish this Sefer Torah for your father if you are not able to help me, as your father is no longer here to pay me as I go.

Then the daughter spoke with great distress to the sofer and said, “I do not know what to do! I pray with my whole soul that this mitzvah will be fulfilled. The trouble that you face I also face, however. For the inheritance that I would pay you with I cannot pay you with. For my father left it legally tied to my wedding and now it seems my wedding will not happen, because the young man whom I would marry has just been taken away into the army of the north and I do not know if I will ever see him again. My mother and I only have enough to live day to day, and the family into which I would marry has tied up my inheritance in legal challenges in the hope that their son will return. When she said these things she began to cry. 

Tears also came to the eyes of her father who was watching and listening together with the talmudim of the academies of the tzaddikim. He looked at them and asked, “What are you showing me and why are you showing me this?”

The talmudim then began to reveal the truth concerning his soul to him, and as they did a new scene began to appear before him. He looked down and he was suspended over the earth, above the place where he had lived and above the place where the young man had lived who was promised to his daughter.  The talmudim said to him, “The sofer was able to finish your Sefer Torah, so as to envelope Ha’azinu within it. This is why you are here. Your sofer did this even though your daughter was only able to give him a few coins now and then. He himself did not live long after finishing this Sefer Torah and both he and your Sefer Torah are waiting for you in a special place. However, this is not the end of your story.

The man then looked down at the place where he had lived and at all the lands around it. He saw all generations of Israel passing as if they were one generation. He especially watched the Holy Land. He then found that he had been taken down and suspended above a house in the same place that he himself had lived, but in a far distant time, even at the end of days. He looked around and saw many things that were very strange to him, but when he saw the people he knew that it was a time like his own time but even worse.

He saw that armies of demons from the moon and stars had now joined forces with the armies of demons that were in the land, and while they seemed to be in control, even fewer people were able to see that they were there. The mouths of war were now even more powerful and were using words to tear out one another’s hearts and every thought in the mind and soul of many was hatred continually. Fallen spirits had joined forces with the evil inclination in the people of earth, even as they had before the flood. In this midst of these wars there were two families of Jews living in the very same two adjacent places where Israelites had once had their trading outposts long, long ago. And the man who had died while performing the mitzvah to write a Sefer Torah was suspended in the air above the house of one of these Jewish families. He was there with talmudim from the academies of the tzaddikim, which were above time and beyond death. He was watching and listening in to what was going on in that house, there in the Ukraine, near the border with Belorussia, in the last days.

“The evidence is very strong, indeed,” said the father from the Ukraine, “even from sometime during the Second Temple period.”

"This is really too much to believe,” said the other father. “Tell me again how this was found. It would be a complete miracle for such a thing to survive for that long in our climate.  It must have come from a desert country. Someone must have brought it here recently.”

"It was found in a completely out of the way place in the basement of the National Museum of Ukraine in Kiev, just as I said.  No one knows how it got there. But scientific tests have been done on it and the evidence is solid for an ancient date for its origin,” came the response.

The man who had been brought there from the next world to listen in knew that it was the remnants of his own Sefer Torah that they were talking about. His heart was moved and warmed to hear that the portion of Ha’azinu had remained intact.

He thought about how long ago from the point of view of these men that his own time was and wondered how indeed his Sefer Torah could have survived at all to this time.

His trading outpost had first been established in the time of King Solomon and King Hiram of Tyre. Although he had lived many years after that, in his time, when there were not wars there were raids. When there were not raids there were thieves and robbers coming and going at will. He never knew how his trading outpost had survived as long as it did. In his time they had traded mostly with Sythians.  The family into which he hoped for his daughter to marry had traded mostly with the Neuroi peoples to the north.  It was well before the coming of the first Slavs. And when the Slavs came there were even more wars, even more barbaric conditions for people to live through. He could not imagine how his Sefer Torah had been kept or by whom through so many generations.

"If you are willing to consider that what we have is the remains of a very ancient Sefer Torah, do you not think that this could change everything? asked the father of the young woman, seeking to speak to the heart of the father of the young man. "I know that you have studied the Dead Sea manuscripts and have concluded that they represent the most ancient tradition. I know that you lean toward the views of liberal scholars on account of this, and that you have concluded that even the true Moshe and Aaron were probably actually polytheists and that monotheism only developed in Israel over time and was written editorially back into the texts. But here, if the evidence is correct, and I believe that it is, we have the remnants of a Sefer Torah with Ha'azinu in perfect condition. And what is in it? What do we read there?"

בְּהַנְחֵ֤ל עֶלְיוֹן֙ גּוֹיִ֔ם        בְּהַפְרִיד֖וֹ בְּנֵ֣י אָדָ֑ם יַצֵּב֙ גְּבֻלֹ֣ת עַמִּ֔ים        לְמִסְפַּ֖ר בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ 

When the Most High gave nations their homes

And set the divisions of humanity,

he fixed the boundaries of peoples

In relation to Israel’s numbers.

"This is exactly in accordance with our traditional text in contrast to what is found in the Dead Sea scrolls." said the Ukarainian Jew.  And looking intently at his companion sitting with him in the library of his home, with a soft voice, he said, "What does this verse mean?"

If you want to believe the evidence of the great antiquity of this sefer, if you want in your heart to return to your God, you already know what it means. It means, as it is written in the verse that follows:"

כִּ֛י חֵ֥לֶק יְהֹוָ֖ה עַמּ֑וֹ        יַעֲקֹ֖ב חֶ֥בֶל נַחֲלָתֽוֹ׃ 

For Hashem's portion is his people;

Jacob, his own allotment.

The two fathers then both fell silent. These two men who had been for some time now in bitter conflict, taking sides with the world to the left or to the right, even to the degree that they were not prepared any longer to allow their children to marry, whom they had themselves promised to one another, these two men now sat in silence only staring deeply into one another's eyes, into one another's souls. Together with the one who had written the Sefer Torah by the hand of his sofer, the very Sefer Torah that now united them, who saw what they saw, they looked into one another's souls and saw all the way back to Mount Sinai.

Having shown him this, the talmudim from the academies of the tzaddikim, now took him in a moment to another scene. Now they were looking down on a wedding ceremony in the Land of Israel. It was the wedding of the young man and the young woman of the Belorussian and the Ukrainian fathers. Hashem had himself brought them to the Holy Land in order that their souls might be joined in one.

The man who had seen all these things turned to the talmudim of the academies of the tzaddikim and said to them, "Take me now to my Sefer Torah and to my sofer and to my family, and take me to the seat in the Torah academies where I can learn and know the greatness of my God.

The talmudim said to him, "We will do all you ask, but answer us this one question. Why do you think that Moshe gave the commandment to write a Sefer Torah in the way that he did, saying, 

וְעַתָּ֗ה כִּתְב֤וּ לָכֶם֙ אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֣ה הַזֹּ֔את וְלַמְּדָ֥הּ אֶת־בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל שִׂימָ֣הּ בְּפִיהֶ֑ם לְמַ֨עַן תִּֽהְיֶה־לִּ֜י הַשִּׁירָ֥ה הַזֹּ֛את לְעֵ֖ד בִּבְנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃

“Now, write down this song and teach it to the people of Israel; put it in their mouths, in order that this song may be a testimony [maintained] within the people of Israel”?

The man did not hesitate but answered them immediately.  "It was because he wanted them to know this one verse,” he said:

כִּֽי־יָדִ֤ין יְהֹוָה֙ עַמּ֔וֹ וְעַל־עֲבָדָ֖יו יִתְנֶחָ֑ם        כִּ֤י יִרְאֶה֙ כִּֽי־אָ֣זְלַת יָ֔ד וְאֶ֖פֶס עָצ֥וּר וְעָזֽוּב׃         

For Hashem will judge and vindicate his people

He will defend the cause of his servants

When he sees that his people are overpowered 

And they no longer have a way to survive in captivity or to find a way to freedom. 

Immediately, the talmudim took the man to his Sefer Torah and did for him all the things that he asked.