Parshat Ha'azinu

Francesca R - September 18, 2026

Gut shabbes, everyone! I'm Francesca, one of many TBRS planners and general fans of this community. I feel grateful to be together for our twenty-first Shabbat during the Days of Awe, standing on the precipice between 5786 and 5787, tipping towards Yom Kippur.

The Torah portion this week, Ha'azinu, reflects where we are in the Jewish year. It's the second to last Torah portion that is read before Simchat Torah, the holiday that comes after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Sukkot, when we celebrate reaching the last word in the Torah scroll and winding it back to read this sacred text from the beginning again.

All of this is to say that Parshat Ha'azinu is intense. It consists of the last song or poem that Moses recites to the people of Yisrael before his death, when they are about to enter the land of promise that he is barred from. Though Moses begins this poem gently - Deuteronomy 32:2 reads, "May my discourse come down as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, Like showers on young growth, Like droplets on the grass" - he soon takes up a harsh and scolding tone. He calls the past generations who wandered in the desert "unworthy children," and "dull and witless people." Moses seems to employ scare tactics, reminding the people of times when their ancestors stepped out of line and kindled G-d's wrath, resulting in "wasting famine, ravaging plague, deadly pestilence and fanged beasts."

In this final song of Moses, consolation only comes from the promise that despite the failings of the people, G-d will still protect them from external foes and wreak vengeance on their enemies. The G-d described here is one of absolute power. Moses speaks in G-d's voice and says, "See, then, that I, I am the One, There is no god besides Me. I deal death and give life, I wounded and I heal: none can deliver from my hand."

To my ears this is the G-d of some quintessential High Holidays prayers, which asks who shall live and who shall die in the year to come, who by fire and who by water, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by pestilence and who by earthquake, the list goes on and on.

I will confess that this image of the divine - G-d as judge or all-powerful king - is not my favorite. And though this aspect of G-d is certainly present in Parshat Ha'azinu, I wanted to draw our attention to an alternate vision that also appears in the text.

Deuteronomy 32:10-11 reads (in the JPS translation):

"G-d found them in a desert region, in an empty howling waste - then engirded them, watched over them, guarded them as the pupil of one's eye. Like an eagle who rouses its nestlings, gliding down to its young, so did [G-d] spread wings and take them, bear them on pinions, the Eternal alone did guide them."

In this early section of Parsha Ha'azinu, G-d appears in the shape of a bird, and in the guise of a caring parent or teacher. G-d's role is to rouse, feed, carry, teach, and support.

Commentaries on this verse where G-d soars and glides like an eagle often connect Deuteronomy 32 to Genesis 1. In the very first verses of Genesis, the spirit of G-d is described as "hovering" or "brooding" over the face of the water, before the work of creation fully begins. In Christian traditions, this image of G-d as a bird has been enhanced by representations of the Holy Spirit as a dove, and by Jesus's descriptions of himself as a mother hen in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

It's very common for birds to make appearances in sacred stories, especially those about creation. Just a few examples include the Haida creation story, in which the trickster Raven brings light to the world. Ravens also hold a prominent place in Norse mythology as messengers and sources of wisdom. In Yoruba cosmology, a five-toed-chicken helps create dry land by scratching at the earth and scattering sand.

In a variety of traditions, birds seem to be associated with creation, and perhaps with birth or parenting. Maybe the image of G-d as an eagle protecting and supporting its young in Parsha Ha'azinu is meant to balance the strictness and judgement of other passages, bringing the themes of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur together. Life and death, creation and destruction.

Because this is TBRS, a proudly anti-Zionist community, I want to draw our attention to one final piece of this verse I've been dissecting. In Deuteronomy 32:11, G-d-as-eagle does not only glide over its young, but picks them up and carries them, bears them on its own pinions or wings.

The image of G-d carrying the people on eagle-back is compelling to me. First of all, it reminds me of The Lord of the Rings, which I always think is fun. But secondly, it suggests the possibility of movement and radical rootlessness. I recently learned the Yiddish word luftmensch, which literally means "air person." Usually, a luftmensch is a slightly derogatory word for a person who has their head in the clouds, an impractical dreamer who may wander from place to place or struggle to find a long-term occupation. At The Bushwick-Ridgewood Shul, who among us hasn't been or loved a luftmensch?

It's a word I'm thinking about how to reclaim, perhaps to mean someone who rejects nationalism or forms of capitalism.

How wonderful and freeing could it be, to be an air-person, to embrace connections to all lands or to no lands at all?

To bring us to a little discussion this Shabbes, I'll pose a couple less rhetorical questions.

• What reactions, if any, do you have to the image of the divine as a bird in Parsha Ha'azinu?
• Why do you think Moses' final song or poem includes both images of harsh and violent punishment, and gentle nurturance?
• Have you ever watched birds or learned about them? Why do you think they appear in so many sacred texts and stories from around the world?

Shabbat shalom.