Two Minute Torah Podcast

Ha'azinu 5769 by Rabbi Ruven Barkan

I just returned from an all night educational and advocacy program sponsored by the Chicagoland Jewish High School about the genocide that is still happening in Darfur. After watching the movie "Sand and Sorrow" I felt enraged, as if I was living in America in 1943 as my people were being exterminated before the world's eyes. This is the lens with which I read this week's Torah portion Ha'azinu, days before Yom Kippur. This poem witnesses against humanity for their disloyalty to the covenant. Don't even try to blame this crime against humanity on God: "The rock whose acts are whole, whose ways are all just." (Deuteronomy 32:4) No, this atrocity against humanity is being perpetrated by humanity! "You are gluttonous, gross, and gorging." (v. 15) Our insatiable appetites for comfort empower their equivalent ones for power. The leadership and the people on the ground are equally guilty of both crimes, respectively. What is the result?

"I will sweep them away with evils,

my arrows I will spend against them.

Drained by Famine,

deprived-of-food by Fiery-Plague and Bitter Pestilence;

the teeth of beasts I will send out against them,

along with the hot-venom of crawlers in the dust.

Outside, the sword bereaves,

in rooms-within, Terror!

(Destroying) young-men and virgins alike,

nurselings along with men of gray hair. (vv. 23-25, Everett Fox Translation)

These punishments of fire and brimstone are literally being wreaked upon humanity, on our brothers and sisters in Darfur, everyday, directly because of our inaction.

God is crying.

We Jews have an extra responsibility to take action. At this season -- days before Yom Kippur and weeks before elections in America -- let us hold ourselves accountable. Ha'azinu is witnessing against us.