91快播

Beyond Reach

Sep 20, 2017 By Barbara Mann | Commentary | Ha'azinu

Attentive the heart. The ear listening:
Is anyone coming?
Every expectation contains
the sadness of Nevo.

One facing the other鈥攖wo shores
Of a single river.
The rock of fate:
Ever far apart.

Parts That Are Left Behind

Oct 14, 2016 By Sarah Diamant | Commentary | Ha'azinu

As we approach the end of the Torah and read Moses鈥檚 parting words, we share with you this work which was created as part of 91快播鈥檚 Artist-in-Residence program, and is on display at 91快播 as part of the Corridors exhibition.

Making Every Word Count

Oct 14, 2016 By Arnold M. Eisen | Commentary | Ha'azinu

Ha鈥檃zinu is remarkable in two respects: what it says, and how it chooses to say it. My focus here will be the latter, but let鈥檚 note with regard to the former that in this, his final address to the Children of Israel before a set of farewell blessings, Moses reviews all of his people鈥檚 past, present, and future. He begins by calling on the God who had called Israel into being and called him to God鈥檚 service. He reminds Israel that God has chosen them and still cares for their well-being. He prophesies that despite all that God and Moses have said and done, Israel will abandon God, as they had in the past. God will punish them, as in the past, but never to the point of utter destruction. In the end, God and Israel will reconcile.

Dialogue with the Past

Oct 4, 2003 By Lewis Warshauer | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Shabbat Shuvah

Among all the societies where Jews have lived, America has been least conducive to maintaining a sense of the past. A building from thirty years ago can be a historic landmark; kitchenware from forty years ago qualifies as antique. Objects from the past are allowed to have a fashionable revival but ideas, stories, and concepts from the past are considered outmoded.

A World Without Teshuvah

Sep 18, 2004 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Rosh Hashanah | Yom Kippur

The Torah is largely a series of legal texts set in a narrative context. It is not replete with outbursts of poetry. Our poetic sensibility seeks satisfaction elsewhere in the Tanakh – in the passion of the prophets, or the poignancy of the psalmist, or the protest of Job, or in the sensuousness of the Song of Songs. The Torah touches only some of our senses. And yet, it closes in a great poetic flourish. As Moses nears his end, he switches from didactic prose to incandescent poetry.

On This Very Day

Sep 26, 2014 By Joel Alter | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Shabbat Shuvah | Yom Kippur

It鈥檚 difficult to overstate the pathos of Moshe鈥檚 last days. This man (and he is most assuredly a man, not a god, not a saint), who never wanted to be a leader鈥攁nd after his first, impulsive attempt at leading was met with contempt from those he tried to save and condemnation from Pharaoh, his adoptive father (Exod. 2:11鈥�15)鈥攃arried the burdens of prophetic leadership with fierce loyalty to both of his masters, God and the people.

Teshuvah: Seeking the Hidden Face of God

Sep 26, 2014 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Ha'azinu | Shabbat Shuvah

This coming Shabbat, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is known as Shabbat Shuvah, the 鈥淪abbath of Return.鈥�

The Heavens, the Poet, and the People

Sep 25, 2015 By David G. Roskies | Commentary | Ha'azinu

Between May and December 1943, the poet Yitshak Katzenelson was incarcerated with his last surviving son, Zvi, in Vittel, a German transit camp in France. There Yitshak kept a diary-cum-journal in Hebrew and completed The Song of the Slaughtered Jewish People in Yiddish, the longest epic poem to have survived the Holocaust. The pivotal ninth canto is a bold, even blasphemous, response to Parashat Ha鈥檃zinu.