Parashat Haazinu

DVAR TORAH     Parashat Haazinu   October 3, 2025

Rabbi David Edleson    Temple Sinai   South Burlington, Vermont

At the end of this week’s portion, Haazinu,  the next to the last portion in the Torah, we read about Moses’ impending death:  

That very day יהוה spoke to Moses:

Ascend these heights of Abarim to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab facing Jericho, and view the land of Canaan, which I am giving the Israelites as their holding.

You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend, and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin;

for you both broke faith with Me among the Israelite people, at the waters of Meribath-kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, by failing to uphold My sanctity among the Israelite people.

You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it—the land that I am giving to the Israelite people.  (Deuteronomy 32:48-52)

“You may view the land from a distance, but you shall not enter it.”  

It is poignant and almost cruel.  As my teacher Yisrael Knoll teaches, “the Bible overall is a tragedy.  It’s easy to forget that.”

But I don’t think of this as a tragedy.   I think it is very interesting choice for ending the Torah, not with the triumphal entry of the people into the land under Joshua, but with Moses unsure if they will keep the covenant, and having done everything he can, he ascends to Mount Nebo and dies looking over the Promised Land that he will never enter.

The scholars who redacted the Torah into its final version had other choices, but this is what they chose:  a very human, if cinematic ending to an extraordinary life.

What they capture here is what it means to be human, to be mortal.  We are able to think about our past and look to the future but we know we will only get so far.  To be human is to imagine a future you will never see.

This is the last teaching of the Torah.  Moses is mortal.  We are all mortal, and we each stand on our own Mount Nebo and look into a future we will not enter. 

The poet Rachel Bluwstein, known as Rakhel, captured this in a beautiful poem.  Rachel was born in Russia in 1890 and moved to Palestine in 1909 where she joined Kibbutz  Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Gallilee.   She went back to Russia to help teach impoverished Jewish children and while there contracted tuberculosis. 

She returned to Palestine and lived on Kibbutz Degania where she taught, wrote poetry and farmed.   Soon, though, her illness would make that life impossible and fearing contagion, the kibbutz asked her to leave.

 She spent her remaining years in Tel Aviv, poor, earning a living teaching Hebrew and writing.  She died in 1930 at the age of 40.  She is buried in a beautiful cemetery on the shore of Kinneret, a place I go to visit every time I’m there. 

Her poetry is deceptively simple, lyrical, and confessional, but it gained tremendous popularity in Jewish Palestine.  She is still extremely beloved, and many of her poems were set to songs that are still widely sung today.   Many are about the land itself, and others about her longing to have a child, and about her lover who she hoped would come to Palestine but never made it. 

Near the end of her life, Rachel took this image of Moses at Nebo and wrote the poem: “Mineged”  or “across from”.  It was published posthumously in a collection entitled “Nebo.”  

Across from…. Rachel Bluwstein 

The heart waits.  The ear strains:

 Is he coming?  Will he come?

In each expectation

Is the sadness of Nebo.

This across from that – the two shores

Of one river

The stone of decree:

Distant forever

Spread your hands.  See across

There – he’s not coming.

Each one has his Nebo

Upon an expansive land.

מִנֶּגֶד

קַשּׁוּב הַלֵּב.  הָאֹזֶן קַשֶּׁבֶת:

הֲבָא?  הֲיָבוֹא?

בְּכָל צִפִּיָּה

יֵשׁ עֶצֶב נְבוֹ. 

זֶה מוּל זֶה – הַחוֹפִים הַשְּׁנַיִם

שֶׁל נַחַל אֶחָד.

צוּר הַגְּזֵרָה:

רְחוֹקִים לָעַד. 

פָּרֹשׂ כַּפַּיִם.  רָאֹה מִנֶּגֶד

שָׁמָּה – אֵין בָּא,

אִישׁ וּנְבוֹ לוֹ

עַל אֶרֶץ רַבָּה.

In this poem, we see the rich interplay of ancient Hebrew texts with modern Hebrew poetry, building layers of meaning in the imagery and the words themselves.  As I said on Rosh HaShanah, Amos Oz calls Jews not a bloodline, but a “textline.”  In that textline are captured thousands of years of a peoples experiences, language, and engagement with the power of words.  It is something to be deeply proud of.

Shabbat shalom.