Ha'azinu/Shabbat Shuva

Rav Johnny's original thoughts on the weekly parsha

This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shuva as it falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and because Rabbis would deliver a lengthy sermon on this special Shabbat to stir and inspire their community to [Te]Shuva (repentance).

Alongside this, this Shabbat we also read the penultimate portion of the Torah known as Ha’azinu where Moshe poetically describes the journey of Bnei Yisrael and their dynamic relationship with God throughout this period.

Like the greatest of poems, each line of Ha’azinu is rich with meaning and steeped in metaphor. As a result, translations often struggle to capture the layered meanings of the words used by Moshe.

One example of this is Devarim 32:9 where Moses reflects on the fact that ‘the Lord’s portion (chelek) is His people, Yaakov (Jacob), the share (chevel) of his inheritance.’

As should be evident, the use of the words of chelek and chevel is an elegant way to express the parallelism between God’s ‘portion’ of His people, and His people’s ‘share’ in their inheritance.  

However, a point often not captured by most translations, though alluded to by numerous commentaries, is the fact that the word chevel (share) also means a rope (nb. this is because people would use ropes to measure land). Given this, the question, as addressed by the Sifri and subsequently quoted by Rashi, is what the connection is between Yaakov and a rope?

The answer is that rope is generally made up of three separate threads which are then twisted together to form a stronger cord. And so, because Yaakov was the third of the patriarchs, his merit, along with that of his father Yitzchak and his grandfather Avraham, intertwine to create an inseverable cord between the Jewish people and their inheritance of the Land of Israel.

But beyond representing our national connection to God and to the gifts which God has given us, numerous Jewish thinkers, including Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (Nefesh HaChaim Sha’ar 1 note 5; Ruach Chaim on Avot 1:1) and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman of Liadi (Iggeret HaTeshuvah Ch. 5), interpret the above-mentioned verse as depicting the Jewish soul - whose source above is God, and which is rooted in our physical body on earth. And just as any movement of a rope below is felt above, so too, the deeds of our soul in this physical world leaves an impression in heaven.

Thinking about this idea, and given that we read the Book of Yonah (Jonah) on Yom Kippur, it is significant that the captain of the boat where Yonah seeks refuge is called the Rav HaChovel – literally, ‘the master of the rope’. In terms of etymology, this is because the captain is the one who makes the decisions about when to throw the rope with the anchor into the sea, and when to open and tie the sails. And why is it significant? Because both the Zohar (Parshat Vayakhel 7), and the Vilna Gaon (see his commentary to Yonah 1:6), explain the captain’s words to Yonah to ‘wake up’ as describing the way in which our soul urges us to ‘wake up’ and do teshuvah.

Personally I love this idea, because if we think of our soul as being perpetually tied to heaven, and our deeds as being perpetually felt in heaven, then we can better appreciate the idea that sometimes our ‘captain’ calls on us to wake up and to change our ways such that we increase our awareness of the divine origins of our soul.

This is what Yom Kippur is all above, and accordingly, this interpretation helps us understand why we read Yonah on Yom Kippur and what our task is on this holiest day of the year.

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom & Gmar Chatima Tova!

To book a single online spiritual coaching, halachic consultation or Torah study session with me:

To join my Paid Virtual Community costing $25 per month for which you will receive four one-to-one Virtual Rabbi sessions per year, a subscription to my paid ‘unplugged’ newsletter, and a 10% discount to all my VirtualRabbi online classes: