Sources from essay by Rabbi Noam Katz in The Social Justice Torah Commentary
As this penultimate Torah portion unfolds, the prose of Deuteronomy transforms into two pillar-like columns of poetry. The stark contrast in genre and textual format beckons the reader to take notice, in much the same way that Moses rouses the heavens to give ear and jolts his earthbound audience to heed every word that escapes his lips: "Give ear, O heavens, let me speak, / Let the earth hear the words I utter!" (Deuteronomy 32:1). This will be the final speech of Moses' illustrious career, his swan song, and he wants to ensure that his message is neither misheard nor misconstrued. Experienced orator and skilled politician that he is, Moses addresses the Israelites with a soliloquy that is at once a recollection of their past and a vision for the future.
-Rabbi Noam Katz
(1) Give ear, O heavens, let me speak;
Let the earth hear the words I utter! (2) May my discourse come down as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
Like showers on young growth,
Like droplets on the grass.
(3) For the name of יהוה I proclaim;
Give glory to our God!
(4) The Rock!—whose deeds are perfect,
Yea, all God’s ways are just;
A faithful God, never false,
True and upright indeed.
(5) Unworthy children—
That crooked, perverse generation—
Their baseness has played God false.
(6) Do you thus requite יהוה,
O dull and witless people?
Is not this the Father who created you—
Fashioned you and made you endure!
(7) Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of ages past;
Ask your parent, who will inform you,
Your elders, who will tell you:
(8) When the Most High gave nations their homes
And set the divisions of humanity,
[God] fixed the boundaries of peoples
In relation to Israel’s numbers.
Here Moses recounts two of God's initial gifts to humanity: the distribution of inhabitable land to disparate communities and the establishment of set boundaries for nations relative to their, and Israel's, populations. The first hearkens back to the aftermath of Babel, wherein God confounds the speech of humans and disperses them across the earth (Genesis II:1-9). This moment in biblical history foretells the creation of tribes, ethnic groups, and local as well as national entities, who are ideally united by a shared set of social standards, language, and government.
In order to build a society in which these splintered nations are not constantly at war, God bestows a second gift: borders, prescribed boundaries that delineate where one's people will reside and how they will self-govern therein. Tribal and national lines will be divinely decided and lands apportioned, God promises, "in relation to Israel's numbers." And while this proclamation speaks to the apportionment of all the world's lands in relation to Israel, logic follows that a similar distribution of land should occur within Israel's borders as well—that the twelve tribes shall inherit territories commensurate with their population, resulting in an equitable, though not necessarily equal, distribution of land.
-Rabbi Noam Katz
(1) יצב גבולות עמים, after the tower of Babylon episode, when humankind had lived in a single community, God separated them, dividing them up, and established territorial boundaries for the various new nations. Instead of destroying the people who had engaged in building the tower as a challenge to God, God did not destroy them as God had the generation of the deluge, but limited their future scope of influence, by assigning only clearly marked territories within which they could be sovereign.
According to Sforno, self-governance requires an acknowledgment of the limits to one's land and authority. The opportunity to govern does not grant a nation or its leadership carte blanche to attack its neighbors, conquer more territory, or abuse its own citizens. While the concept of basic and inalienable human rights did not emerge until the dawn of the Enlightenment, this passage from Haazinu depicts an ancient ethic of equitable land distribution — and, implic-itly, equitable treatment of the individuals who make up each sovereign nation.
Today, our democracy depends on such civilized treatment of its population, on its citizens having the freedom to speak, to express, to assemble, to hold property, and to vote. This last freedom, above all, ensures that our leaders are fairly elected according to the will of the majority, in relation to our numbers. By putting the power into the hands of the individual voter holding a ballot, those serving in government come to recognize the limits of their own authority, so that tyrants cannot arise, officials cannot overstay their welcome, and presidents cannot claim to be infallible.
-Rabbi Noam Katz
In 1965, the authors of the Voting Rights Act celebrated a landmark victory, but they might not have foreseen the myriad ways that state legislators, governors, and special interest groups would try to undo its protections in the ensuing decades. What good is the right to vote when others work tirelessly to suppress, silence, or seize this basic tenet of democracy? What value does an election hold if its victors do not represent the will of the people?
Haazinu might well hold the answer—or, at the very least, the prophetic stump speech that is just as pertinent today as it was in biblical times. Moses's exhortation to the Israelites shows an awareness of the inherent duplicity of the body politic. His subtle reference to the generation of Babel —victims of their own self-importance —and his subsequent recall of God's delineation of borders for each tribe provide a blueprint for how societies should behave in any age.
We might imagine Moses exhorting Americans: Do not deify yourself so as to showcase your superiority; it will surely be your downfall. Do not artificially redraw the borders, both within and beyond your allotted territory, in order to guarantee your continued dominance over the land and its people. Those boundaries, says Sforno, are there to remind you of your own limitations-which is very much a good thing, a healthy mindset to keep you humble and human. Instead, do distribute the land, as well as the voices and votes of its citizens, in a fair and equitable manner corresponding to the people's numbers. Construct a community that adheres to the principle of "one person, one vote," so that the citizenry will always enjoy equitable and proportional representation.
Haazinu isn't merely Moses's final speech. It's his first one, too, and each one in between. It is a version of what he has consistently preached to the Israelites since accepting the mantle of leadership, from their redemption out of Egypt to their rebirth in the wilder-ness. Regardless of the literary genre or rhetoric he employs, Moses's one sermon, the sermon of his life, is a vision of the world in which justice prevails, hope looms in the heavens above, and the earth listens intently to the needs of its inhabitants, providing for them a bedrock of equity and equality.
-Rabbi Noam Katz
Discussion Questions by Ariel Tovlev
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How does the story of Babel relate to God setting divisions and borders for differ-
ent groups of people? What is Sforno’s interpretation of this passage?
2. What is partisan gerrymandering? According to Rabbi Katz, how does partisan
gerrymandering go against Moses’s final warning to the people?
3. What do you think about God setting geographic divisions among the peoples?
Are God’s geographic divisions something we as Reform Jews should honor?
If so, how might we protect different peoples’ right to have autonomy and
self-governance in their own fixed spaces? If not, how might non-geographic
divisions of people (e.g., religious communities, racial communities, LGBTQ+,
etc.) be honored and given autonomy?