Ha'azinu - Shuva 5787: Do It Now!

Moshe opens his final shira, or song, to the Jewish people with the following words:

“Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and may the earth hear the words of my mouth.”(Devarim 32:1)

Rashi explains that Moshe called upon the heavens and the earth to serve as witnesses to the covenant between the Jewish people and Hashem. Moshe knew that although he would soon die, the heavens and the earth would remain as eternal witnesses to that covenant.

Rashi adds something remarkable. The heavens and the earth would not merely observe the behavior of the Jewish people; they would also respond to it. When the Jewish people are worthy, the heavens will provide rain and the earth will produce its fruits. When the Jewish people forsake the covenant, the heavens will withhold their rain and the earth will withhold its produce.

Rav Henoch Leibowitz, zt”l, asks a fundamental question. Hashem has countless messengers through which He can carry out His will. Why was it necessary for the very witnesses to the covenant—the heavens and the earth—to become the agents through which the Jewish people would be rewarded or punished? Why does the shira specify that  יד העידים תחלה the witnesses will be the first to punish them?

Rav Henoch explains that there is an important lesson in human psychology. When we see that the very witnesses to our actions are responding to those actions, it creates a much greater emotional sense of urgency. A person may intellectually understand that he has done something wrong, yet that knowledge alone does not necessarily cause him to change. When the consequences become tangible and immediate, however, he is much more likely to recognize the seriousness of his behavior and take action.

But this raises another question.

Moshe was speaking to the generation that had experienced more Divine miracles than perhaps any generation in Jewish history. They had personally experienced the well of Miriam, the manna and the Clouds of Glory. They had stood at Har Sinai and received the Torah. For forty years, they had learned Torah directly from Moshe Rabbeinu.

If anyone should have had a powerful awareness of their relationship with Hashem, it should have been this generation.

Why, then, did they need an additional emotional stimulus to remain faithful to the covenant?

The answer is that even such a generation needed more than intellectual knowledge and personal experience. Hashem knew that they also needed to feel the consequences of their actions.

If this was true for the generation that personally experienced the miracles of the wilderness and received the Torah from Moshe, how much more is it true for us.

We live thousands of years later. We did not see the miracles of Egypt. We did not stand at Har Sinai. We did not receive the Torah directly from Moshe himself. It is therefore not enough for us merely to know intellectually that that our actions matter, and that we need to do teshuvah. We need to find ways to make those truths emotionally real to us.

This lesson is particularly relevant as we approach Yom Kippur.

We know that Yom Kippur is the day on which we stand before Hashem in judgment and that our fate for the coming year will be sealed. But knowing this intellectually is not always enough to motivate us to change. Perhaps this is one of the purposes of the many reminders that surround us during these days: the shofar, tashlich, selichos, the confession of Vidui, asking for forgiveness and forgiving others, and the whole atmosphere of Aseres Yemei Teshuvah. They help transform something that we know intellectually into something that we can feel emotionally.

We need to feel the urgency of the day—to recognize that our decisions and actions truly matter and that this is an opportunity to make meaningful changes in our lives.

May we internalize the urgency of the day with our whole heart and transform that urgency into action. In that merit, Hashem should accept our teshuvah and bless us and the entire Jewish people with a year of good health, peace and abundant blessing.

Good Shabbos and Gemar Chasimah Tovah!