The Song That Became a Scroll

Dvar Torah for Parshas Haazinu, Shabbos Shuvah 5787
Rabbi Binyomin Terebelo, Founder and Director, Museum of the Scroll

This Shabbos we read Parshas Haazinu, and it is fitting that a museum devoted to the life of Torah scrolls should pause over it, because Haazinu is the parsha from which the very existence of every Sefer Torah is derived. The Torah calls these words “the song,” הַשִּׁירָה, when Hashem commands Moshe, “וְעַתָּה כִּתְבוּ לָכֶם אֶת הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת” (דברים ל״א, י״ט). From this verse the Gemara derives one of the foundations of Jewish life: “אף על פי שהניחו לו אבותיו לאדם ספר תורה, מצוה לכתוב משלו” (סנהדרין כ״א ע״ב), even one who inherited a Sefer Torah from his parents is commanded to write his own. The Rambam counts this as a positive commandment (ספר המצוות, עשה י״ח) and codifies it as the mitzvah “על כל איש ואיש מישראל לכתוב ספר תורה לעצמו” (רמב״ם, הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה פ״ז ה״א). He explains that although the verse speaks only of “the song,” the Torah may not be written in separate portions, and so the obligation embraces the whole Torah; the Sefer HaChinuch lists it as the final mitzvah, מצוה תרי״ג. In other words, every scroll that has ever been written, including every scroll in our care, exists because of a command given in the parsha of this week.

There is something to learn even from the shape of the words on the parchment. The Gemara records the teaching of רבי שילא איש כפר תמרתא that all the songs of Tanach are written אריח על גבי לבנה ולבנה על גבי אריח, half brick over brick and brick over half brick, the way a mason staggers the courses of a wall. Two passages are the exception, the ten sons of Haman (אסתר ט׳) and the kings of Canaan (יהושע י״ב), which are written אריח על גבי אריח ולבנה על גבי לבנה, like directly over like, and the Gemara gives the reason: שלא תהא תקומה למפלתן, so that there be no rising from their fall (מגילה ט״ז ע״ב). רש״י explains the terms: the אריח is the writing, the לבנה is the blank space twice its width, and “no rising” means that the fallen are left no room to set their feet beneath them. Here is the puzzle that every sofer confronts. שירת הים (שמות ט״ו) is written in the staggered form of the songs. But שירת האזינו is set in two even columns, with a gap like that of a פרשה סתומה down the middle of every line, exactly as the רמב״ם prescribes, “כל שיטה ושיטה יש באמצעה ריוח אחד כצורת הפרשה הסתומה ונמצא כל שיטה חלוקה לשתים” (הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה פ״ח ה״ד), and as the שו״ע codifies (יו״ד סי׳ ער״ה ס״ה). To the eye it is the same unbroken column that the Gemara reserves for the fallen. Why should the song of Moshe wear the form of the sons of Haman?

The ר״ן, in his commentary on the רי״ף (מגילה פרק א׳), answers in two steps. He first prefers the reading of רבנו תם, for whom both אריח and לבנה are written lines, the short and the long. In שירת הים and שירת דבורה a long line sits above a short one and a short above a long, while in the list of Haman’s sons the short words ואת, ואת, ואת stand one directly above another, and the long names likewise. Why does the Gemara call this a shape of no rising? Because a wall built with staggered courses has projections, “בליטות ושיני החומה,” the teeth of the wall, to which a builder can bind new stone and strengthen it, whereas a wall that is “שוה בשני ראשיה ואין בה בליטות,” even at both ends with nothing projecting, can never be added to. The names of Haman’s sons and the kings of Canaan stand in even columns because nothing will ever be built upon them. Then the ר״ן turns to our parsha: “ושירת האזינו נמי כיוצא בזו היא, שעמודיה שוין, מפני שיש בה מפלתן של רשעים, כדכתיב מראש פרעות אויב, וכתיב כי דם עבדיו יקום ונקם ישיב לצריו.” Haazinu too stands in even columns, because it too tells the downfall of the wicked, in the verses that speak of the enemy’s undoing (דברים ל״ב, מ״ב) and of the day when “He will avenge the blood of His servants and return vengeance upon His foes” (ל״ב, מ״ג). This is the difference. For the sons of Haman and the kings of Canaan the passage is itself a roster of the fallen, and the shape is a verdict on those very names. In Haazinu the verdict of the even columns falls on the enemies named within the song, the foes upon whom Hashem will bring requital, and not on Israel, whose song does not end in a fall at all but in atonement, וְכִפֶּר אַדְמָתוֹ עַמּוֹ. The ר״ן adds a second point that settles the Gemara’s language. Citing מסכת סופרים, he notes that the lines of Haazinu are all long, whereas in שירת הים a long line is followed by a short one; the Gemara’s rule for “כל השירות” therefore speaks only of songs that contain both long and short lines, and among those the sons of Haman and the kings of Canaan are the exceptions, while Haazinu, in his words, “אין אריחין כלל,” has no short lines at all. It is a form of its own: even columns like those of the fallen, but for the sake of Israel’s enemies, and long lines like no other song. Standing before an open scroll, one sees at a glance that Haazinu is not prose. It is a song, set apart on the page, built to be recognized and remembered across the generations.

And memory is the heart of the song. “זְכֹר יְמוֹת עוֹלָם בִּינוּ שְׁנוֹת דּוֹר וָדוֹר, שְׁאַל אָבִיךָ וְיַגֵּדְךָ, זְקֵנֶיךָ וְיֹאמְרוּ לָךְ” (דברים ל״ב, ז׳). Remember the days of old, consider the years of every generation; ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say it to you. Rashi understands “your father” and “your elders” as the prophets and the sages who carry the tradition forward. The song is transmission itself, a chain of telling that reaches from one generation to the next.

That is why the song opens by summoning witnesses that will not pass away: “הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וַאֲדַבֵּרָה, וְתִשְׁמַע הָאָרֶץ אִמְרֵי פִי” (דברים ל״ב, א׳). Rashi explains that Moshe calls heaven and earth to testify precisely because he himself will not endure. “אני בשר ודם, למחר אני מת,” said Moshe; I am flesh and blood, tomorrow I will die, and so he appointed as witnesses “עדים שהם קיימים לעולם,” witnesses that last forever. And the song itself is appointed a witness: “לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה לִּי הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְעֵד בִּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל” (דברים ל״א, י״ט), and again, “וְעָנְתָה הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת לְפָנָיו לְעֵד” (דברים ל״א, כ״א).

Here the parsha speaks directly to the work of this Museum. A Sefer Torah written by a congregation that no longer gathers is exactly such a witness, an object that outlives the hands that wrote it and the voices that once read from it. When a community closes, its members scatter and its memory grows faint, but the scroll remains, and it still testifies: here was a kehillah that loved the Torah enough to commission it, carry it, and read from it. To preserve that scroll and to record the history of the people who held it is, quite literally, the labor of “שְׁאַל אָבִיךָ וְיַגֵּדְךָ, זְקֵנֶיךָ וְיֹאמְרוּ לָךְ.”

Near the close of the song Moshe warns, “כִּי לֹא דָבָר רֵק הוּא מִכֶּם, כִּי הוּא חַיֵּיכֶם” (דברים ל״ב, מ״ז), for it is not an empty thing for you, for it is your life. The Talmud Yerushalmi reads the word מכם pointedly: “כי לא דבר רק הוא, ואם רק הוא, מכם הוא, למה, מפני שאין אתם יגעים בתורה” (ירושלמי פאה פ״א ה״א). If the Torah ever seems empty, the emptiness is not in it but in us. A scroll shut in a closet, unread and unopened, is not a scroll that has lost its life. It is waiting for someone to open it again and find that the life was there all along.

We read this song on Shabbos Shuvah, the Shabbos of return, and the song’s final verse ends in atonement: “וְכִפֶּר אַדְמָתוֹ עַמּוֹ” (דברים ל״ב, מ״ג). Two days before Yom Kippur, as the haftarah calls out “שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל” (הושע י״ד, ב׳), we are reminded that return is always possible, for a person and for a people, and that the words waiting to receive us have never grown empty.

May the scrolls in our care go on bearing witness, and may we be worthy of what they remember.

Good Shabbos and Gmar Chasimah Tovah.

Sources
דברים ל״א, י״ט; ל״א, כ״א; ל״ב, א׳; ל״ב, ז׳; ל״ב, מ״ב; ל״ב, מ״ג; ל״ב, מ״ז
סנהדרין כ״א ע״ב
מגילה ט״ז ע״ב, ורש״י שם
ר״ן על הרי״ף, מגילה פרק א׳ (דף ד׳ ע״ב בדפי הרי״ף), ומסכת סופרים המובאת שם
רמב״ם, ספר המצוות עשה י״ח; הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה פ״ז ה״א, פ״ח ה״ד
ספר החינוך מצוה תרי״ג
שולחן ערוך יו״ד סי׳ ער״ה ס״ה
רש״י דברים ל״ב, א׳; ל״ב, ז׳
ירושלמי פאה פ״א ה״א
הושע י״ד, ב׳

A note on one detail: the Shulchan Aruch (יו״ד סי׳ ער״ה ס״ה) and standard Ashkenazi and Sephardi scrolls write Haazinu in seventy lines, the number given in our printed editions of the Rambam (פ״ח ה״ד). The Aleppo Codex and the older manuscripts of the Rambam, followed by Yemenite scrolls, arrange the song in sixty-seven lines. Both traditions are ancient; our published texts follow seventy.

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Books by Rabbi Binyomin Terebelo | Museum of the Scroll Print House

Clues in the Klaf
Reading the Hidden Histories of the World’s Torah Scrolls
What the letters, the parchment, and the habits of the scribes reveal about the communities that wrote, carried, and read the world’s Torah scrolls.
Available now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/03JzG7Wf

Where Is the Menorah?
The Last Known Whereabouts of the Ark, the Menorah, and the Vessels of the Jerusalem Temple
Tracing where the Ark, the Menorah, and the other vessels of the Temple were last seen, source by source.
Available now on Amazon (search Amazon: Where Is the Menorah, Terebelo)

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