Written by Hindy, ח תשרי תשפ”ד, September 22, 2023
What causes the soul to sing?
For Shabbat Shuva, this week’s parsha is Parshat Haazinu. This Shabbat is special to me for two reasons. The first being because it is the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur next Sunday, and the second because it is perfectly placed around my beloved grandmother’s yartzeit. Haazinu is quite short, hailing one perek long, and yet it manages to teach a lesson with the element of surprise. In this parsha, Moshe addresses Bnei Yisrael, this time knowing his death is imminent. The verses prove he is instilling his last bits of wisdom into his students, trying to make every moment count. But, as opposed to explaining more mitzvot or providing insights as to what The Nation is obligated to do, this week Moshe addresses them in song.
Quite surprisingly, our greatest teacher is singing! His song starts out to be all about Hashem. Moshe calls Him his “Rock”, blesses Him for His kindness, and shows it through the beauty of His work. Moshe teaches the people that God is the source of their blessings, and all outcomes. He tells them that their prosperity will come from Him, but also that when The Nation turns away from Him, the wrathful punishment they will receive is also from Him, and that when they return to God, the comfort that they feel will be from Him as well. In each instance listed, it is a relationship with the same G-d; our one and only Creator. This is the context that I was originally touched by in the song, but when I learnt the parsha I just didn’t understand why Moshe was singing at all.
It only came to me once I connected Moshe’s song to an occurrence exactly two years ago this week, in my life. I’m going to share a very intimate experience from the week before we lost my grandmother, because I do find its relevance to Haazinu, due to how it fell out. The Sunday night before she passed, I was with my Grandma Madeleine. When I was with her that night, words did not seem to be enough. Whatever I thought I wanted to say didn’t feel justified, none of it felt important enough. Although I did not intend to, I ended up singing. Phrases and verses, meaningful ones-were coming into my head and the melodies were coming along with them. Most of these were actually in Hebrew. Tehillim which I did not know I had memorized, parts of the shacharit tefillah, even a Hebrew lullaby, they were all things I sang to her. Because somewhere inside, they were sung to me. This is how I was able to speak to her soul, knowing it’d be the last time seeing her in that state.
It has been two years since experiencing this. I am still able to go back to that moment, to the time I knew I was saying goodbye, to the second I began singing. Just as Moshe Rebbenu was confronting his passing, and accepting it through song, so too I confronted the nearness of the grief that would soon overtake my family, and I recognized it through the act of singing. I think that there is a spirituality which comes with saying goodbye through song. I believe that this is what Moshe was doing when he was singing to Our People. He was saying goodbye through song. The connection of the events of my week to this week’s parsha is just another reminder that God planned this, God planned it all.
May we all take this as a blessing, a reminder that the singing from the soul we will continue to do in this season of the Yamim Noraim, may serve as a release for us. May the soul of my grandmother, Malka Simcha Tova bat Shmuel be given an aliyah as we learn more of this parsha, and may the music I found, be found in each of you, as your tefillot are accepted by Our Maker.
Shabbat Shalom, and gmar chatima tova,
Hindy