Parashat Ha'azinu - Third Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
The satiety that breeds a kick
The aliyah continues the description of the kindness and abundance given to Israel. The people is raised to a high place and enjoys the produce of the land: honey, oil, cattle, sheep, wheat and wine. The picture is one of very broad abundance, from almost every possible direction.
But precisely out of satiety comes the turn. Jeshurun grows fat and kicks, that is, the abundance does not lead to gratitude but to distancing. The people forsakes God who made it and treats the Rock of its salvation with contempt.
From there the song describes a turn to idolatry. The people turns to strangers, to abominations and to gods it did not know before. They are described as new powers that the fathers did not know and did not fear.
The aliyah ends with a sharp accusation of forgetting. The people forgets the Rock that bore it and the God who brought it forth. In this way the song presents the heart of the problem not only as idolatry, but as the loss of memory of the source from which life, rescue and abundance came.
Insights from the aliyah
Abundance can be a greater trial than want
As long as people lack, it is easy for them to remember that they depend on help and kindness. Precisely when they are sated and strong, a feeling may arise that they no longer need anything. On the level of the idea, success demands gratitude no less than hardship does.
Satiety can lead to a kick
The picture here is sharp: not only a quiet forgetting, but a reaction of distancing after receiving abundance. This teaches that the problem is not in the abundance itself, but in the way a person interprets it.
Forgetting the source changes the whole identity
When people forget who made them, brought them forth and established them, they begin to see themselves as standing alone. On the level of the idea, the loss of memory is the stage that allows all the rest of the distancing to enter.
New is not necessarily deep
The song stresses that the people was drawn after new gods that the fathers did not know. On the level of the idea, novelty itself can be attractive, but newness is no proof of truth or of value.
There is a difference between enjoying the blessing and attributing it to yourself
The land, the oil, the honey, the sheep and the wheat create a sense of success. The aliyah warns of the moment when a person stops seeing them as a gift and begins to see them as a wholly personal achievement.
The spiritual problem begins with a change of attitude
Before actual idolatry is described, there is an abandoning of the bond and contempt for the Rock of salvation. On the level of the idea, an outward act is very often the result of a deeper change in attitude, in appreciation and in memory.
The aliyah turns abundance into a test of loyalty
All the good described at its start is not only a gift, but also a test. Does the abundance strengthen the bond or weaken it. The song warns that success without memory may become precisely the point of falling.
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