Ha'azinu (Give ear) האזינו

The Eighth Day

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak, O earth hear the words of my mouth.  May my teaching drop like rain, may my words flow like dew, like downpours upon plant leaves and like raindrops on blades of grass. (Deuteronomy 32:1-2) [In the Land of Israel, the first rain has a name - יורה yoreh. Yesterday, we were blessed by the yoreh as it quenched the earth's thirst after a dry summer.]האזינו השמים ואדברה ותשמע הארץ אמרי פי יערף כמטר לקחי תזל כטל אמרתי כשעירם עלי דשא וכרביבים עלי עשב 

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for God has spoken. (Isaiah 1:2) שמעו שמים והאזיני ארץ כי יהוה דבר

The Lubavitcher Rebbe draws on Midrash to teach that Isaiah's words were spoken as a continuation of Moses' oration.

"Give ear" is listening that speaks in a tone of closeness.  "Let the earth hear" is hearing that bears the accent of distance.

Moses was closer to heaven, the source of rain, than to earth.  Isaiah was closer to earth from which plants grow to sustain all life.

Moses gave us torah, spiritual drops from heaven that create wellsprings that nourish the material blessings of daily life.

Moses could only see the Land of Israel from a distant mountain top.  Isaiah lived in the midst of the complexities of life in the Land.

Isaiah's vision of bringing spirituality down into every aspect of everyday life reaches a higher level than Moses' view from above.

Ha'azinu summarizes the torah as the Israelites are about to enter their Land. The images and tweets here summarize life today in our Land.

We repeat one image from each of the 5 books of the torah. Image 6 is Genesis reappearing as we rewind the torah scroll and begin again.

Bereshit (Genesis). The plant leaves in Ha'azinu are leaves of Bereshit. We photographed all Creation within ten steps of our front door.

Shemot (Exodus). Our granddaughter plays at welcoming Shabbat when we tune out, turn off, unplug, resting from our creation to honor God's.

Vayikrah (Leviticus). All torah is in a potato if we reveal it by carving out letters that have no separate existence from the potato itself.

Bamidbar (Numbers). Hamas charter: " Jews hide behind trees that cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him."

Devorim (Deuteronomy). In Hebrew, am segulah, a special people, is related to am segol, a purple people.

The Jewish People is assigned a special role to teach what every artist knows – that purple emerges from mixing blue with red.

Bringing the blue of sky down into the red (adom) of earth (adamah) lowers spirituality into the earth-bound world of physical reality.

Beresit 2 (In the Beginning again). On the eighth day, we become the partners of God in the continuing creation.

Miriam recycled our Sukkot etrog (citron) by pressing cloves into it, creating a refreshing scent at the conclusion of Shabbat every week.