Haazinu

Haazinu, Ha'azinu, or Ha'Azinu (—Hebrew for "listen" when directed to more than one person, the first word in the parashah) is the 53rd weekly Torah portion (, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the 10th in the Book of Deuteronomy. It constitutes Deuteronomy 32:1–52. The parashah sets out the Song of Moses—an indictment of the Israelites' sins, a prophecy of their punishment, and a promise of God's ultimate redemption of them. The parashah is made up of 2,326 Hebrew letters, 614 Hebrew words, 52 verses, and 92 lines in a Torah Scroll (, Sefer Torah). Jews read it on a Sabbath between the holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, generally in September or October. The bulk of the parashah, the song of Deuteronomy 32:1–43, appears in the Torah scroll in a distinctive two-column format, reflecting the poetic structure of the text, where in each line, an opening colon is matched by a second, parallel thought unit. In traditional Sabbath Torah reading, the parashah is divided into seven readings, or , aliyot. In the Masoretic Text of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Parashat Haazinu has two "open portion" (, petuchah) divisions (roughly equivalent to paragraphs, often abbreviated with the Hebrew letter (peh)). The first open portion spans nearly the entire parashah, except for the concluding maftir () reading. The second open portion is coincident with the maftir () reading. Parashat Haazinu has no "closed portion" (, setumah) subdivisions (abbreviated with the Hebrew letter (samekh)). In the first reading, Moses called on heaven and earth to hear his words, and asked that his speech be like rain and dew for the grass. Moses proclaimed that God was perfect in deed, just, faithful, true, and upright. God's children were unworthy, a crooked generation that played God false, ill requiting the Creator. The first reading ends here. In the second reading, Moses exhorted the Israelites to remember that in ages past, God assigned the nations their homes and their due, but chose the Israelites as God's own people.