This week’s Torah portion is Ha’azinu. It is essentially a series of scoldings, where Moses reprimands the people for all the ways they have gone astray. It’s one criticism after the next, explaining that they deserved the punishments God gave.
It’s not uncommon for the text to explore concepts of blessings and curses, rewards and punishments. Many Torah portions, and much of the book of Deuteronomy, gets into these themes, first listing the ways the people will be rewarded for following God and then listing the ways they will be punished for disobeying God. What makes this portion unique is the imbalance. There is very little mention of reward… and an overwhelming amount of time spent reminding them of everything they’ve done wrong and telling them they are not worthy of God’s blessings. It’s a depressing and bleak way for Moses to close out his final speech to the Jewish people. It’s sad that after all these years of both hardship and blessing, the focus is on everything that went wrong.
The tone reminded me of an adult scolding a child and made me wonder how it might have felt for the Israelites to hear all of this. Like a child getting scolded by an adult, the Israelites must have felt chastised by their leader, by both Moses and by God. I wonder how this could have in any way been an effective teachable moment. It does, however, explain how and why history developed as it did… with leaders, and parents, who have continuously defaulted to this style of leadership. It’s no wonder we are where we are today and it makes me wonder how the world might be different if we would have seen a different approach here in Moses’ final farewell.
What gives me hope is that times are changing. It is less socially acceptable to parent, teach, or lead with fear, criticism, and threat. We still have a long way to go, but I believe that we are seeing improvement, especially as more women step into leadership positions in the workplace and men realize they can’t get away with behavior that was completely acceptable even 10, 20 years ago. Slowly, we are seeing that it is far more effective to lift people up than to tear them down.
