This week's Torah Portion, Ha'azinu, contains Moses's final oration to the Israelites before his death on Mount Nebo. Unlike his other speeches found throughout the book of Deuteronomy, Ha'azinu is not prose, but poetry.
So... Why at the end of his life, does Moses choose to speak to his community in verse?
At the very end of last week's Torah portion, we read the words:
וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר מֹשֶׁ֗ה בְּאָזְנֵי֙ כָּל־קְהַ֣ל יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־דִּבְרֵ֥י הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את עַ֖ד תֻּמָּֽם׃
Then Moses recited the words of this poem to the very end in
the hearing of the whole congregation of Israel.
(Deuteronomy 31:30)
This immediately made me think of a very similar phrase from much earlier in the Torah:
...אָ֣ז יָשִֽׁיר־מֹשֶׁה֩ וּבְנֵ֨י יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֤ה הַזֹּאת֙ לַֽיהוָ֔ה
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to Adonai...
(Exodus 15:1)
Forty years earlier as the very moment of their liberation a much younger Moses forged his relationship with the people through song as they danced together in ecstatic joy at the shores of the Sea of Reeds. Translated in Deuteronomy as poem and in Exodus as song, the word used in both of these verses is the same: shirah.
We do not often think of Moses as a singer. His sister, Miriam, certainly has the reputation of being quite musical, but Moses does not. He is an arbiter of desert justice, an organizer of multitudes, a prophet who speaks with the Divine face-to-face (panim-el-panim), but a musician? A poet? Certainly not.
Except... maybe when we read Ha'azinu we realize that actually, he is; and perhaps has been all along.
These book-ends of Moses's words in verse - Shirat haYam (the Song of the Sea) and Ha'azinu - paint a picture of a different kind of Moses.
I invite us to take this Moses. Moses the poet, the singer, the one who is unafraid to express himself artistically, into Shabbat with us; and through this Moses, welcome the authentic piece of ourselves (though it may not have many opportunities to come out or be obvious to everyone) and allow it to speak its truth.