Shabbat Greetings

Our Torah portion for this Shabbat, Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52) begins with a dramatic proclamation: “Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; let the earth hear the words I utter!”( 32:1)

Moses, at the end of his life, calls upon heaven and earth as witnesses to the covenant between God and Israel. Medieval commentator, Rashi, asks why he chose heaven and earth, which can neither see nor testify in the human sense. His answer is striking: human witnesses will one day die, but heaven and earth endure forever. The truth of the covenant must rest upon witnesses that cannot be silenced or manipulated.

This lesson feels urgently relevant in our own day, when misinformation and conspiracy theories spread faster than ever. Many of us have tried to reason with those who insist the Earth is flat, or worse, those who deny the Holocaust. These falsehoods persist despite overwhelming evidence—mathematics, photographs from space, millions of eyewitness accounts, and the Nazis’ own meticulous records. No amount of facts seems to matter to someone who has chosen to live in denial. So what are we to do when truth itself feels under attack?

Moses gives us an answer. He says: anchor truth in that which is eternal. The heavens and the earth, by their very existence, proclaim reality. The rising sun, the turning of the seasons, the vastness of creation—these stand as permanent testimony. In other words, truth is not fragile. It may be suppressed, mocked, or denied, but it cannot be destroyed.

That doesn’t mean lies are harmless. Falsehoods cause immense damage: they confuse, they divide, and in the case of Holocaust denial, they desecrate memory and endanger the future. Yet ultimately, truth has a kind of divine gravity. As Shakespeare put it, “the truth will out.”

Our responsibility is not to despair when we encounter denial and conspiracy. Rather, like Moses, we must continue to speak truth with clarity and conviction, grounding our words in enduring witnesses—the facts of history, the evidence of creation, the values of Torah. We may not convince everyone. But we preserve truth for the generations that follow.

Just as heaven and earth remain steadfast, so too must we. In a world drowning in misinformation, our task is to be living witnesses—to remember, to testify, and to proclaim that truth endures.

SHABBAT SHALOM