for Ha'Azinu
i
The people of Babel fear they will scatter across the world.
So they build a tower to Heaven.
They build this tower in a valley, extending the valley to the sky: they reshape the earth.
But God disbands them.
ii
Before Moses dies,
God shares His lesson of how, if the people wish to stay on the Land,
they must listen to God.
God opens His lesson
calling Heaven and Earth to bear witness,
speaking like storms upon the vegetation.
God does not speak of a disembodied technological landscape.
He speaks of nature and history and our lives
and the religious lives we build
as all one world.
iii
In technology we hope to save ourselves
from the world we are given,
from the world God gives us.
But technology will not hold our world together.
The responsibility we take
toward God’s world
will hold our world together.
___
Shabbat Shalom,
Abe
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