Sermons

Shabbat Ha’azinu 5786

Love, lift us up (where we belong) 

Not every portion has a theme song, but when it comes to Ha’azinu, reflecting on the people’s struggles and how God has been faithful to them, every year somehow there’s an eighties soft rock ballad that comes back to me. For a people who have been travelling through the wilderness for decades, a verse that says “the road is long / there are mountains in our way / but we climb a step every day” – well, that’s pretty perfect. You’ll more likely know it from the chorus: “love lift us up where we belong / where the eagles cry / on a mountaintop high” – and even if you’re now hearing Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes in your head, you might need to rack your memory a little to dredge up the final line of the chorus: “far from the world we know / where the clear winds blow”…

As with many good songs, when you hear these lines sung, it’s easy to visualise the soaring heavens and the broad wings of eagles – and near the end of the section of Torah we read today, you’ll find the lines that create a similar image in Parashat Ha’azinu: “כְּנֶ֙שֶׁר֙ יָעִ֣יר קִנּ֔וֹ עַל־גּוֹזָלָ֖יו יְרַחֵ֑ף יִפְרֹ֤שׂ כְּנָפָיו֙ יִקָּחֵ֔הוּ יִשָּׂאֵ֖הוּ עַל־אֶבְרָתֽוֹ׃ Like an eagle who rouses its nestlings, gliding down to its young, so did [God] spread wings and take [the people], bear them along on pinions” (Deuteronomy 32:11). This isn’t a new image – just before the Ten Commandments, God reminds the people of “how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me” (Exodus 19:4) – but it’s a beautiful one, of God carrying the people through dangerous times.

Rashi brings a teaching from midrash (Mekhilta) that develops this image a little further: the eagle has no need to fear attack from above, because it soars higher than other predators; it only needs to fear attack by human arrows from below. So the eagle thinks, “It is better that the arrow pierce me than that it should pierce my chicks,” and carries its young not in its talons, but on its wings: out of love, putting itself between them and potential harm. The eagle sets an example that many humans have followed, doing some astonishing acts out of love, including putting themselves literally in the firing line to protect others. This week, our minds go especially to the extraordinary people who do this as members of CST, the emergency services and our community security teams, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all those who ensure that, shaken though we are by the tragedy of Thursday’s horrific attack in Manchester, we can also know that their protection means we are safe to keep living Jewish lives.

The same love drives people to smaller but vital acts of carrying others through times of danger, this week seen especially in all the messages checking in with those living in Manchester and messages of support from non-Jewish friends. These are acts which rarely make headline news, perhaps because they are so ordinary, but their very ordinariness should reassure us that while an occasional individual may choose to harm, it’s far more normal for humans to choose to heal, to encourage, and to help each other. The idea that humans are fundamentally good, that the world is kept turning by love, may sound either trite or counterintuitive (or both), but it’s an idea that underpins much of the liturgy with which we spent so many hours on Yom Kippur. Our ancient rabbis were clear that there are only a very few unforgiveable sins, committed only rarely, and so our prayers reflect a vital premise: that atonement is possible because each of us starts from an essence of goodness, from the spark of Divinity within us. At the heart of the High Holy days is the idea of God wanting our t’shuvah, our return to the best selves that are

actually our true selves – so when we realise we have strayed and seek to change, God’s forgiveness is ready to welcome us back to our essential goodness.

This Jewish perspective of goodness as the basic human norm, not evil, isn’t always easy to remember in a world where pain and injustice are daily realities. Yet keeping a vision of how we might live, were we all truly to return to our most divine selves, is where our tradition can be particularly helpful. Rabbi Shai Held, in his book Judaism is About Love, describes Judaism as “about a set of dreams for what will one day become true…” When we try to act out these dreams, Held suggests, “we can catch glimpses of what a redeemed world would look like; we can create glimpses for others of what a redeemed world would look like” (Judaism is About Love, p.258/260). So how do we hold onto this in a world that is clearly not yet redeemed?

There’s another image of God, used repeatedly in Parashat Ha’azinu, that might help. At least five times, God is called הצור (hatzur), the rock – an image of solidity and security. Yet the midrash (Sifrei Devarim 307:1) cracks the rock open: it breaks that middle letter vav in two and rereads the word as הצייר (hatzayyar), the artist – the one who looks beyond ‘what is’ to see visions of possible beauty and works to bring that beauty into being. When the rabbis of the Talmud (Berachot 10a/Megillah 14a) read Hannah’s prayer (1 Samuel 2:2), which has also come into our Torah service liturgy, they read “ואין צייר כאלהינו – there is no artist like our God.” No artist may be quite like God, but here as elsewhere, even a human attempt to be like God may be enough to do some real good. The combination of הצור and הצייר suggests that what truly grounds us in rock-solid security is a vision of the world and ourselves that might one day become true, and a commitment – like the divine Artist – to bringing that world into being, or at least creating glimpses of it for others.

Finding within the rock an artist’s vision of the beauty that could be: this is what might help us find the strength to carry each other even through dangerous times. And that vision may inspire us to demonstrate the love that resists despair or rage; love that holds us through our moments of fear and sees us through creating space to mourn and finding courage to heal. It will be choosing to love that lifts us back “up where we belong” and takes us “far from the world we know” towards the world of which we dream.