Dear TBZ Community,
These are confusing times, scary times, unsettling times.
This past week, the United States and Israel carried out military strikes against Iran. It is a moment of great complexity. People may hold different views about the decision – about its necessity, its justification, and its possible consequences. At the same time, it has raised important questions in our own country about how military action is authorized and the role of Congress in decisions of war. What feels undeniable is that moments like this bring fear and uncertainty: to families in Israel who once again find themselves running to shelters, to people in Iran and across the region who are now in harm’s way, and to many of us watching with concern from afar. Every life affected, every family in danger, reminds us how precious and fragile human life is.
Here at home, many of us also feel a different kind of uncertainty about our politics, our institutions, and our civic life. Sometimes it is hard to even name everything that feels unsettled. Confusion can be exhausting. It can also be frightening.
This week we read Parashat Ki Tisa. In this Torah portion, the people of Israel have just left Egypt. It is a moment of uncertainty and fear. They have escaped slavery, oppression, and bondage. They have crossed the sea. They are following a leader who speaks of a God who hears their cries, who cares for them, and who promises a future.
There is every reason for gratitude. And yet they are also in the desert. They are exposed to the elements. They are vulnerable to enemies. They are far from anything familiar. Freedom has arrived, but it has brought uncertainty with it.
I imagine the emotional complexity of that moment: relief and fear living side by side, hope and anxiety walking together.
In this Torah portion we return to the moment of Moses on the mountain, receiving the Torah. Moses goes up the mountain, but he does not return when the people expect him to.
The Torah tells us:
וַיַּרְא הָעָם כִּי־בֹשֵׁשׁ מֹשֶׁה לָרֶדֶת מִן־הָהָר
When the people saw that Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain… (Exodus 32:1)
The word בֹשֵׁשׁ (bosheish – delayed) signals more than waiting. Rashi, the medieval commentator, explains that the people were confused about how to count the time of Moses’s absence:
“For when Moses ascended the mountain he said to them: ‘At the end of forty days I shall return during the first six hours of the day.’ They thought that the day on which he ascended the mountain was to be included in the number. In fact, however, he had said ‘after forty days,’ meaning complete days—forty days, each day together with its night… It follows therefore that the fortieth day really fell on the seventeenth of Tammuz and not, as the people had believed, on the sixteenth” (Rashi on Exodus 32:1).
Confusion quickly becomes fear. And fear becomes panic. The people gather around Aaron and say:
קוּם עֲשֵׂה־לָנוּ אֱלֹהִים
Come, make us a god who shall go before us (Exodus 32:1).
And Aaron agrees. The Midrash Tanchuma (Ki Tisa 19) imagines that before approaching Aaron, the people approached Hur, an aide and supporter of Moses and Aaron, who rebuked them for this dangerous request. The people then killed Hur. Aaron, perhaps fearing for his own life or hoping to slow the people down, agrees to help. The golden calf is then built, from a place of fear, violence, and confusion.
When we panic, we can act in ways that hurt ourselves and others. Fear can cloud our judgment and make it hard to stay true to our values. This is part of being human. We want to act with wisdom, compassion, and courage, but when the world feels unstable, when danger is near, or when hope feels far away, we sometimes make choices we later regret. Fear can have consequences we never expected, and it reminds us how fragile life is.
Our experiences of fear, confusion, and unexpected consequences are not new. Jewish life itself moves between moments of uncertainty and moments of order. The calendar reminds us of this rhythm. Just days ago we celebrated Purim, a holiday defined by reversal and unpredictability:
וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא
Everything was turned upside down (Esther 9:1).
Purim embraces the messiness of life: masks, disguises, hidden identities, and sudden reversals. And now we begin turning toward Passover, almost its opposite. Passover revolves around the seder meal – seder meaning order, sequence, structure, careful arrangement. On the night of the seder, we tell the story of liberation in a deliberate order, creating a container to hold memory and meaning.
Perhaps the movement of the calendar teaches us something. Life contains both Purim’s na’hafoch hu and Passover’s seder: moments when the world feels upside down, and moments when we rebuild meaning and structure.
So what do we do when we find ourselves in the desert between these moments? When the world is confusing? When Moses has not yet come down the mountain?
Perhaps the Torah’s quiet invitation is this: resist panic. Remember who we are. Refuse the temptation of easy idols. Resist simplistic answers, absolute certainty, or illusions of control. We may not be able to solve the big picture of what is happening in the world. We may not have all the answers. But we are able to act with care, thoughtfulness, and moral clarity in the ways that we can.
As Moses comes down the mountain and sees the golden calf, he smashes the tablets:
וַיִּחַר־אַף מֹשֶׁה וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ מִיָּדָו אֶת־הַלֻּחֹת וַיְשַׁבֵּר אֹתָם תַּחַת הָהָר
And he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:19).
Later, Moses writes them again, this time in partnership with God. The first tablets, carried with the people, remain alongside the second, perhaps as a sign that as humans we carry confusion and uncertainty with us even as we move forward toward clarity and repair.
May we carry honesty about our fears and the courage to act with care, discerning how to respond when the world feels confusing.
May we find patience when clarity is slow to come, and the wisdom to choose paths that reflect our values and integrity.
I offer a prayer for peace (from our prayerbook, Siddur Lev Shalem):
May we see the day when war and bloodshed cease,
When a great peace will embrace the whole world.
Then nation will not threaten nation,
And the human family will no longer know war.
For all who live on earth shall realize
We have not come into being to hate or to destroy.
We have come into being to praise, to labor, and to love.
Compassionate God, bless the leaders of all nations
With the power of care and understanding.
May they act with wisdom, restraint, and courage,
And may the Holy One bring comfort to those who mourn
And protection to all who are in danger.
Fulfill the promise conveyed in Scripture:
I will bring peace to the land,
And you shall lie down and no one shall terrify you.
I will rid the land of vicious beasts,
And it shall not be ravaged by war.
Let justice and righteousness flow like a mighty stream.
Let God’s peace fill the earth as the waters fill the sea.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia