Show Notes
This parsha is chock full of important laws. The laws often include significant information about how we should treat others. For example, we learn:
We are responsible to help rehabilitate the Hebrew servant, even though he stole. We need to treat him with dignity and respect.
We are responsible to help heal someone we hurt, and to pay money to accomplish this.
We are responsible to be kind to the convert, the orphan and the widow, all people who might feel especially lonely in our community.
We are responsible to give back a poor person’s shirt if we loaned them money and this was their collateral. This is so that they have clothes to wear each day.
We are responsible to help return a wandering or lost animal to our enemy.
Learning about these responsibilities can help us develop into better people. In each situation, God is helping us to be more sensitive to others around us and making sure we treat them with kindness.
More from Parsha for Kids
In the last parsha of the Torah, V'Zot HaBracha, Moshe dies. But what matters is not that he died- rather, the way he died. Moshe approached God alone. There were no adoring crowds. No family surrounding him. It was just the man and his Maker. And this is something that will happen to us all. We will all, ultimately, approach God. The question to be answered is simply this: have we lived a life that we are proud to show to God?
This week's parsha, Haazinu, is actually a song! Moshe wanted to make sure that the core ideas of Judaism would be accessible to everyone, whether or not they were able to read. In this song, we focus on some important ideas. These include: