Can we view the Ha'azinu poem as parental instructions before entering the new historical era?
Consider the years of ages past;
Ask your father, he will inform you,
Your elders, they will tell you: (8) When the Most High gave nations their homes
And set the divisions of man,
He fixed the boundaries of peoples
In relation to Israel’s numbers.
Why do you think we see a metaphor for God associated with traditionally maternal role in the following verses instead a paternal image?
In an empty howling waste.
He engirded him, watched over him,
Guarded him as the pupil of His eye. Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings,
Gliding down to his young,
So did He spread His wings and take him,
Bear him along on His pinions; The LORD alone did guide him,
No alien god at His side.
To feast on the yield of the earth;
He fed him honey from the crag,
And oil from the flinty rock, (14) Curd of kine and milk of flocks;
With the best of lambs,
And rams of Bashan, and he-goats;
With the very finest-d wheat—
And foaming grape-blood was your drink. (15) So Jeshurun grew fat and kicked—
You grew fat and gross and coarse—
He forsook the God who made him
And spurned the Rock of his support.
Forgot the God who brought you forth.
Do you ever experience the feeling of Divine Maternal energy when it comes to forgiveness on Yom Kippur?
What do you think about gendering Hashem in general?
Is the dichotomy of paternal and maternal even justified, when it comes to talking about Hashem?
D'var Torah by Rabbi Shira Milgrom:
One year, in my reading of this week's parashah, an idea jumped out of the text: almost the entirety of Haazinu is the Song of Moses. This is his second shirah, "song," as the people of Israel stands poised to enter the Promised Land, the end of the wilderness journey. The first shirah catapulted the people into this journey at the shores of the Sea of Reeds. This second poem is filled with images of God: circling, guarding, and carrying the Israelites as an eagle would its young (Deuteronomy 32:10-11); a rock—steady, faithful, and perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4), a father—who created and made us (Deuteronomy 32:6).
Most surprising in this poem are the many feminine images of God. First, the Rock: "You neglected the Rock who begot you, forgot the God who labored to bring you forth" (Deuteronomy 32:18).
And then there's my favorite: "God set them atop the highlands, to feast on the yield of the earth; nursing them with honey from the crag and oil from the flinty rock" (Deuteronomy 32:13).
God fed us—suckled us—with honey from the rock. This primal metaphor of being nurtured by God's goodness, wisdom, and Presence is framed with milk and honey - dairy and sweet. It is not surprising, then, on the holiday in which we open ourselves to remember what it is must have been like to be so close to God's revelatory Presence, we eat the foods that remind us of being suckled directly on that Divine sweetness. (This phrase also names Rabbi Lawrence Kushner's exquisite introduction to Jewish Mysticism, Honey from the Rock—a book I read and reread.)
Mothering, maternal, feminine images of God are not limited to this week's parashah. Like Deuteronomy, the Book of Genesis comes to a close with blessings and poems. On his deathbed, Jacob gathers his sons around him and blesses them. To Joseph, he says,
"by the God of your father, who helps you, Shaddai, who blesses you, blessings of the heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies below, blessings of breasts and womb" (Genesis 49:25).
This poem takes the form of poetic parallelism—couplets in which each part echoes the other. Our poem/shirah of Haazinu is similarly structured:
"Give ear, O heavens, let me speak;
Let the earth hear the words I utter!" (Deuteronomy 32:1)
Ear -- hear
Let me speak -- I utter
Earth -- heaven.
In the Genesis poem, "God of your father" is parallel with "Shaddai," as "heaven" is parallel with "earth." Rabbi Arthur Waskow, suggests that we understand the Divine Name, "Shaddai," as "the Breasted God".1 It is as obvious a suggestion as it is unconventional and unpopular. Rabbi Waskow notes the name Shaddai is concentrated in the Book of Genesis.
Indeed, at the Burning Bush, God tells Moses, "I am the Eternal [YHVH]. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHVH" (Exodus 6:3). Moreover, Waskow points out, each time El Shaddai is invoked in Genesis is to invoke blessings of fertility:
"When Abram was 99 years old, the Eternal appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai—walk along before Me and be pure of heart, and I will set a covenant between us, and multiply you exceedingly' " (Genesis 17:1-2)
"May El Shaddai (translated as 'God Almighty') bless you, and make you fruitful and numerous, so that you become a host of peoples" (Isaac speaking to Jacob, in Genesis 28:3)
"God appeared to Jacob again on his return from Paddan-aram and blessed him. . . . And God said to him, 'I am El Shaddai, be fruitful and multiply. A people and a host of peoples shall come from you, and kings shall go forth from your loins' " (Genesis 35:9, 11)
"By the God of your father, who helps you,
Shaddai who blesses you,
blessings of the deep that lies below,
blessings of breasts (shadayim) and womb" (Genesis 49:25)
This is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return and renewal—a call to hear the shofar's cry, Hayom harat olam, "Today is the birth of the world," or "Today is pregnant with eternity." Spiritual wholeness will mean engaging the range of images our tradition offers us—so that we can indeed be nourished by honey from the Rock.
Rabbi Sacks on Ha'azinu 5779
In Ha’azinu, Moses does the unexpected but necessary thing. He teaches the Israelites a song. He moves from prose to poetry, from speech to music, from law to literature, from plain speech to vivid metaphor.
Why? Because at the very end of his life, the greatest of all the prophets turned to emotional intelligence, knowing that unless he did so, his teachings might enter the minds of the Israelites but not their hearts, their passions, their emotive DNA. It is feelings that move us to act, give us the energy to aspire, and fuel our ability to hand on our commitments to those who come after us.
Without the prophetic passion of an Amos, a Hosea, an Isaiah, a Jeremiah, without the music of the Psalms and the songs of the Levites in the Temple, Judaism would have been a plant without water or sunlight; it would have withered and died. Intellect alone does not inspire in us the passion to change the world. To do that you have to take thought and turn it into song. That is Ha’azinu, Moses’ great hymn to God’s love for His people and his role in ensuring, as Martin Luther King put it, that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” In Ha’azinu, the man of intellect and moral courage becomes the figure of emotional intelligence, allowing himself to be, in Judah Halevi’s lovely image, the harp for God’s song.
This is a life-changing idea: If you want to change lives, speak to people’s feelings, not just to their minds. Enter their fears and calm them. Understand their anxieties and allay them. Kindle their hopes and instruct them. Raise their sights and enlarge them. Humans are more than algorithms. We are emotion-driven beings.
Speak from the heart to the heart, and mind and deed will follow.