This Shabbat we shall listen to the reading in the Torah, one portion before the end of the fifth book.  It is a song:  Moshe's "swan song."  Moshe the Liberator and Lawgiver, Moshe Rabenu, the Master, suddenly turns poet...  The thirty second chapter of Deuteronomy begins with words that flow like honey: "Ha'azinu hashama'yim va'adabera, vetishma ha'aretz imrey fi.  Ya'arof kamatar lik'khi, tizal katal imrati.  Kis'irim aley deshe, ukhirevivim aley esev.  Ki shem Adona'y ekra, havu godel l'eloheynu.   Hatzur  tamim po'olo ki khol derakhav mishpat, el emuba ve'eyn avel, tzadik veyashar hu.    Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth. May my teaching drop like the rain, my speech condense like the dew; like
gentle rain on grass, like showers on new growth.  For I will proclaim the name of
the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God!  The Rock, his work is perfect, and all
his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he;" Oh, how we love to hear this song.  Moshe Rabenu, this great man, who took us out of Egyptian slavery and brought us to our appointment with God at Sinai, makes our 'inheritance' sound as great and as valuable as any one of us would like it to be.

But then, as we read on, suddenly and without a word of warning,  he 'turns' on us, as he continues his sweet sounding rhyme, "Shikhet lo banav mumam, dor ikesh uptaltal  -- yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation.  Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?  Remember the days of old, consider the years long past; ask your father, and he will inform you; your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods;  the Lord's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.  He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared
for him, guarded him as the apple of his eye.  As an eagle stirs up its nest, and
hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them
aloft on its pinions, the Lord alone guided him; no foreign god was with him. He set him atop the heights of the land, and fed him with produce of the field; he nursed him with honey from the crags, with oil from flinty rock; curds from the herd, and milk from the flock, with fat of lambs and rams; Bashan bulls and goats, together with the choicest wheat-- you drank fine winefrom the blood of grapes."

What has happened to our beloved shepherd?  Why has Moshe, who fought with God Himself to preserve the People Israel, now turn on them?  His prophetic eye beholds the future of this people he has guided and taught, chided and cajoled.  He knows their nature, and God has revealed to him their coming transgressions.  He sees that "Jacob ate his fill; Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You grew fat, bloated, and gorged! He abandoned God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.   They made him jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him.   They sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared."  He knows that there is no escaping the wrath of God which this behavior will bring.  It is in the pain of a father for his children that Moses informs Israel, "The Lord saw it, and was jealous he spurned his sons and daughters.  He said: I will hide my face from them, will see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faithfulness."

Knowing the full might of the Lord, and the depth of His anger and wrath, Moses foresees that God will punish our future generations more severely than He has done to the time of Moshe's rhapsodizing.  Still, he wishes to plant within us an unending hope of redemption.  God will be punishing Israel to teach them a lesson, He says, "See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand."  Moshe concludes the words of his poem with a final exhortation to Israel:  "Take to heart all the words that I am giving in witness against you today; give them as a command to your children, so that they may diligently observe all the words of this law.  This is no trifling matter for you, but rather your very life; through it you may live long in the land that you are crossing over the Jordan to possess."

Moshe is done -- his "song" has been sung.  There is nothing left for him to do but to leave the camp of the Israelites, to go into the hills and die and be buried by his able assistant and heir, Joshua.  There will be no grave to make into a shrine.  Moshe, eved Elohim – the Servant of god, broken hearted and yet hopeful, leaves the stage, as we all must do, to allow the next cast of heroes and villains to take up the drama where he leaves off.  His role is done, his act of over -- but the play's not done!  Shabbat will be
followed by Sukkot, which will be followed by Simkhat Torah.  What was shall be again, we shall recommence the reading of the Torah, and all that is old shall be new again.  That is the secret of Israel's survival.  We go on, life goes on, and the saga continues to this day!  With God's help and Israel's perspicacity, it shall continue for another thousand generations.


Amen