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Parashat Ha’azinu
Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg

The Messenger Came in the Night
Rachel (translated by Robert Friend)

The messenger came in the night
and sat on my bed,
his body all protruding bones,
the eye-holes deep in his head;

and I knew time’s hands were dangling
(as though the words were unspoken),
that the bridge between future and past
had broken.

A bony fist now threatened,
and I heard aghast
sardonic laughter that said:
“This poem will be your last.”

This parasha represents the beginning of the end of Moses’ poetry. One more Torah portion after this, and we hear his voice no more.

Thanks to Suzanne Levine, I recently read an article from a poetry journal that spoke of the poem as witness. From what I could understand of this very scholarly article, the poem is as close as you can get to putting the present into words before the present slips away into the past. Poetry has the power to bear witness to and to evoke the immediacy of experience and of feelings.

In her poem above, the early Zionist poet Rahel alludes to her poetic voice, her very life, as the bridge between future and past. And she anticipates how with her death that bridge will be broken. Perhaps she fails, however, to recognize that her poetry will continue to bridge those places for her devoted readers. When we read her poem, we are transported to the present of that composition. We become the bridge.

Moses opens his poem, Ha’azinu, with the words,

“Give ear, O heavens, let me speak;
Let the earth hear the words I utter!”

Even now that Moses is gone, his poem bears witness, and calls all of Creation to witness, the message of the last moments of his life. In the final moments of his life, Moses reminds the people of how God been there for them, steady as a rock, and how God has sheltered them like a mother bird. He prophesies that the Israelites will stray and will reject God, that they will forget. God will threaten to hide God’s face from them, but God will ultimately save them again.

As we study this poem together I want to ask - what is Moses actually feeling and experiencing in this moment of his life? How does he see his life and his death? What does he want to bear witness to, with this poem, which will be his last?