Haazinu 5774 - English

By Rabbi Guido Cohen - A.I. Montefiore, Bogotá Colombia

The Torah made Poetry

On this Shabbat we read Shirat Ha’Azinu, the song or poem with which Moses says goodbye to the people of Israel, before leaving life on earth to move on to eternity.   Along with Shirat Ha’Yam, the song intoned by Moses’ sister when crossing the Sea of Reeds, they constitute two very peculiar pieces of the Torah.  First, because they have a meter and images which make both texts beautiful poems, but also due to the way they are written on the Sefer Torah, as per the masoretic tradition, as verses instead of prose.  If you have the chance to approach the Torah next Saturday, while it is being read, or if you pay attention to the moment when the Magbia raises the text before the congregation, you will notice that the columns in our parashah are narrower, each column occupying half of what they usually occupy.  A few days ago, somebody asked me if the Torah contained other examples of poetry.  It took me some time to think of an answer.  And since we are talking about Torah and poetry, I would like to share with you an extended and written version of my answer.

Beyond all technical terms typical of a literature scholar, I like to think that, in truth, Ha’Azinu is a small and beautiful poem within a large poem called Torah.  Of course, I’m not making a statement about literary genre, but rather about the theological implications involved on binding with the Torah, in one way or another.

Children, who are not used to the things that we adults call “Normal” or “abnormal”, enjoy a beautiful age in which they do not question the authenticity of a specific text or movie.  As they grow older, our children start to notice that there are things in what we read or see on TV, which do not happen in the “real” world in which we live.  It is then that questions such as these arise, “Do ninja turtles actually exist?”, “If I lose a tooth, will the Tooth Fairy really come and buy it during the night?”

As adults, we explain to them that there are things that happen in movies or in stories, which do not necessarily happen in “real life.”  It is not that they are “lies” or that what happens in that splendid fairy tale “is not true,” but that they are things that occur just in fairy tales.  As we grow older, we try to build our own perspective around that which we sometimes call “fiction;” however, if we do not feed the child that lives inside us, we slowly lose the pleasure derived from those stories, which tell us things that did not actually happen.  Moreover, we feel somehow comforted when, at the beginning of a movie, we are told that it is “based on true facts.”  Thus, we start to lose our ability to be moved by a beautiful poem or fantastic story.  If it is not true, at least it has to be plausible.  And if not, it is not for me!

And nevertheless, some more others less, we continue to appreciate the beauty of a nice poem, and we even let ourselves be moved by a movie scene which tells a story that never ever happened.  We shed a tear when we see ET climbing on his bicycle, in search of his home, or tremble with fear when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Voldemort, threatens Harry Potter with his Dementors.  Even though we know that it is not “true,” we decide to take part in that “fiction.”  Those knowledgeable in literature call this the “fictional pact.”  This pact is a sort of agreement between the reader and the author, according to which the readers take on the rules of the story in which they are immersing themselves, granting a dimension of “reality” to what happens in the unreal world of that particular fiction.

Perhaps we can find one of the best examples of how this works in Michael Ende’s beautiful novel, on which the movie “The Neverending Story” is based.  Bastian, the story’s main character, immerses himself in the book he is reading, through Auryn’s power, until his life becomes the life of a character in the story.  With the help of Atreyu and the empress, the border between the fantastic story and Bastian’s life starts to fade, until it almost disappears.

What does this have to do with the Torah?, you readers can wonder.  Somehow, I believe the entire Torah is like a great poem, like a fantastic and marvelous text in which we decide to “immerse ourselves,” to turn those texts into the story of our lives.  When we read the Torah in terms of true and false, plausible/implausible, we usually plunge into two assertions that remove us from the true spirit of that majestic text.  Some claim that everything that is written in the Torah is true, making up stilted theories explaining how the world was created in six days, how it is possible for a phenomenon to occur once every x years so the tide is extremely low, and likewise with each of the fine images found in this poem.   Others choose the opposite path: they label the Torah as a “lie” and, therefore, they convince themselves that there is nothing worthy of being read in that ancient text, full of inaccuracies regarding the world.

Only a few venture into the “pact” and read the Torah as poetry.  They are often the same ones who can coexist with the tender-hearted artichoke who dressed up as a warrior (Pablo Neruda, Ode to the Artichoke), or with the talking Donkey in Shrek.  They are those who understand that wonderful texts (and the Torah is the “queen” of those texts) have an infinite reserve of meaning, waiting to be created or revealed by the readers.

Last week, in Nitzavim, we affirmed that we were there, agreeing on the covenant with God and making the Torah our text.  And this week, the Torah surprises us with poetry.  As if he wished to reassert the power of the poetic, warning us to not search for a “text book” in the revelation of the divine word, Moses bids farewell treating us with poetry among that great poem that is the Torah.

May we have our hearts open to be moved and venture into the covenant, which proposes to make our existence something that revolves around that sage, inexhaustible, and symbolic source of wisdom.