Ha’azinu: To Be Witnessed

Last updated on: September 29, 2025 at 2:39 pm by Hebrew College

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Ha’azinu: To Be Witnessed 2025-09-29T14:39:59-04:00 Hebrew College

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Parashat Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52)

By Gila Axelrod

In Parashat Ha’azinu, Moses delivers a poetic final address to the Israelites, centering on the story of their relationship with God. At first glance, this poem is alarming to read.

It begins innocuously, with flowery descriptions — hopes for Moses’ words to trickle like dew and drop like rain (Deuteronomy, 32:2). The poem proclaims God’s perfection and wholeness. But in an instant, this wholeness becomes a foil to Israel’s inadequacy.

While God is צַדִּ֥יק וְיָשָׁ֖ר (righteous and upright), his children are described as עִקֵּ֖שׁ וּפְתַלְתֹּֽל (crooked and twisted) (Deut., 32:3-4). And the inadequacy doesn’t stop there. Throughout Moses’s address, the people of Israel are chastised for forsaking God, worshipping other entities, and neglecting and forgetting the One who created them. They are called “children one cannot trust,” and even deemed unwise (Deut., 32:20). The speech emphasizes how they have strayed and disobeyed.

One cannot help but ask: why is this Moses’s final address to his community? After a Torah’s worth of beautiful, brutal, multi-faceted relationship between God and Israel, why is this the note that Moses wants to leave them on? And, I wonder, what should we make of this parasha arriving right after the Yamim Noraim?

The other day, I spoke to a friend who was simmering with frustration. “I keep telling my mom to stop, especially now that I’m an adult, but she won’t!” she said. “I love you, I love you, I love you, every other sentence — it’s relentless!” As long as she could remember, her mother would shower her with these words — along with how “amazing and perfect and flawless” she was — until they began to lose their meaning.

My friend knows she is wonderful, but like all humans, she is not perfect. She is well aware of her own struggles and shortcomings; the times she messed up, that compound to make her who she is. And so, every time she received this barrage of compliments from her mother, she did not feel seen as herself. In not feeling truly seen for the specific, flawed person that she is, she could not feel the meaning of these words. They felt like a template, overly general — perhaps meant for someone else.

I couldn’t help but think of the comedy Long Story Short, which captures snapshots of a Jewish family from childhood through adulthood. In it, the mother greets her children with suffocating hugs and kisses. “I LOVE YOU I LOVE I LOVE YOU, SAY IT BACK!” she blares into their ears each time they come into contact. By the time her children grow up, they are virtually unable to utter those words. “You know?” they say to each other instead, upon ending a phone call. “I know.”

I think of these instances, where being showered with words of love and affection had the opposite effect on the recipient. And suddenly, Moses’s song takes on a whole new meaning. In this song’s perspective, God knew all of our sins, our flaws, our worst intentions, our non-trustworthiness, our messiness; in short — our humanness.

The words of verse 10 make this clear: יְסֹבְבֶ֙נְהוּ֙ יְב֣וֹנְנֵ֔הוּ יִצְּרֶ֖נְה
Using Yaakov as a metaphor for the people of Israel, God “surrounded him, understood him, and guarded him.”

These three words emphasize that God truly witnessed us; paid close attention to us, and understood who we were. With all of our imperfections.

And yet, God still chooses us; claims us as God’s people.

Over these Yamim Noraim we have experienced many different versions of God, including King, Judge, and Creator. And in Ha’azinu, we get glimpses of God as a protective parent. “Like an eagle protecting its nest, over its young birds… he spread out his wings.” (Deut. 32:11)

Moses urges his people not to take his words lightly, to keep this song with them and pass it down for generations. There must be something deeply essential here. While as a whole, Moses’s poem may be a bit harsh, within it lies a model for our relationships with God and one another: love from a place of specificity and understanding.

After all, is this not the kind of love we seek in our human relationships as well? A kind of love that pays attention, understands, and surrounds us. A kind of love that is honest, that recognizes our humanity and mistakes; holding the difficult with the beautiful.

Maybe this is the version of love that we so desperately need during these High Holidays. Not a God with a blank template; not a God who says we are flawless. But rather, a God who witnesses our best and worst parts – and chooses us anyway.

Gila Axelrod (she/they) is a second-year rabbinical student at Hebrew College. Before starting this journey, Gila was honored to serve as Editor in Chief of New Voices Magazine. After studying Jewish Thought and Sociology at JTS/Columbia, they went on to manage research programs at the Shalom Hartman Institute, create an LGBTQ+ Rosh Hodesh group, complete a year of service with Americorps, and run workshops on body acceptance. Gila loves to write and talk about grief, disability theory, neurodivergence, queerness, and how these topics can be understood through a Jewish lens. She lives in Cambridge with her girlfriend Hannah, and their beloved new puppy, Penny Babka.

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