Parshat Ki Tisa-The Crisis of Jacob

Parshat Ki Tisa-The Crisis of Jacob 5772

Before WWII, the bulk of Orthodox Jewry lived in Europe. The Yeshivot and other educational institutions prided themselves on the ancient oral law that did not remain irrelevant, but rather was very much alive and thriving. The rabbis who survived the war spent more time thinking than mourning. Could the Jewish people lose these valuable teaching methods? Is this the end of Halahkic Judaism? After the Nazi animals attempted to destroy us, we proclaim, “Never again will we remain stupefied to the glory that the Edomites have created in false hood. Never again will Torah Judaism fall!” Shattered and traumatized, we - the collective national - freaked out. Our standards were increased and our mission was affirmed - never will we let ourselves lose the power of a national identity. Only this identity was destructive, involving a group of “stiff-necked” individuals, the Jews. Consequently, on the one hand shtetel ideologies joined the sailors to the Land of the Free, but on the other hand, many abandoned their Hasidic customs and names, causing a major dispute which still has not been answered - which school of thought would determine how to bring our youth into a living Torah future?

The Torah portion begins with a counting. The vehicle to determine numbers was by the currency of the half-shekel: “The rich should give no more, and the poor should give no less” [i]. The half-shekel served as the financial means to create and maintain the Sanctuary of G-d: Mishkan. Every Jew gave a security deposit, in fact, that is the reason for the verse which states: “It will be a reminder for the children of Israel before G-d, to atone for your souls” [ii].

A new standard for the masses - we do not wait for the contributions of the rich and wise to build the national Jewish identity after the war, we all possess the responsibility equally to maintain the Mishkan (Sanctuary of G-d). The Torah continues to command us to create “oil for Holy anointment”[iii]. This oil was used to consecrate anything that it touched. “You should anoint the Tent of Meeting, and the Ark of the Testimony and the table and all its utensils, and the menorah and the utensils used for the incense altar.” The sanctified (Kadosh) must be separated (Kadesh). Who blames a nation that became lost and orphaned without an ally to act on their behalf? Would we, fresh adolescents, react more fittingly after such a churban (destruction)? Our teachers deemed it necessary to create communities with uni-logical beliefs and higher standards of ritual application- anointing holiness in the synagogue, the home and the class room [iv].

Our Orthodox brothers and sisters (they still are our brothers and sisters!) saw no other way to go. Orthodoxy’s standards were so high for the Torah observant Jew, that the creation of the Super-Jew, A.K.A the Tzaddik was the cause of great inspiration and unfortunately, great degradation for the Jewish people during the recovery from Nazi fascism and evil [v]. The Torah’s standards were petrifying in the eyes of the Jewish people. Pasting on one’s forehead “Holy to God” was a commitment that many could not live up to [vi]. Creating separations between the sacred and the sinners troubled those who were shaken by their belief system. Under such pressure we said, “It’s all or nothing” and we locked away the towel, and some, to great dismay, threw it away.

This famous opening never seemed more depressing… “And the Lord said to Moshe…”

“Go down, for your people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt have become corrupt. They have rapidly abandoned the way which I commanded them. They made themselves a molten calf, they bowed down to it, slaughtered sacrifices to it and said: ‘these are your gods, Israel! Who have brought you up from the land of Egypt!”[vii]

I beg the question, now what? Our proud and thriving religious institutions, observing Torah and its commandments, has taken an unfamiliar and alien-like form. The half-shekel is not equally accepted by all, the Jew closest to him/her is the Jew farthest away. We are so confused! We hold dear to our beliefs (consciously and sub-consciously) that money, sex and glory are our masters. “These are your gods, (‘Israel,’ my fellow brothers and sisters), who have brought you up from the land of Egypt!”…??

We have reached a crisis in history. Our wounds have not healed; our blood is being thinned slowly, killing our depraved bodies: “From the sole of his foot to the head; nothing in him is whole; only injury, bruise, and festering wound: they have not been treated and they have not been bandaged, and the wound has not been softened with oil”[viii]. Our wounds will not heal without the help of one another. Our standards cannot be met without a mentor and friend to guide us along the way. We ask G-d, like Moshe, “Look! You say to me ‘bring this people up’ but You have not informed me who You will send with me, and yet You said ‘I have distinguished you by name and you have also found favor in My eyes?’”[ix]Chevra, do you hear me? The most unsettling fact about the Holocaust is that many Jews were unaware of the crisis taking place before their eyes. When they heard about a stabbing or Jews being killed, many thought they were “isolated experiences,” not a larger problem slowly taking form. Hungary was the last country to be liquidated by the cow-dung Nazis, and yet, we sat in our yeshivot, we sat in our synagogue and we said, “What crisis?”

After the sin of the Golden Calf, the war, we felt helpless; no greater tragedy can befall the Jewish people. All the work of our ancestors burned and gassed – “And he threw the Tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain”[x]. Today we see the calamities occurring world-wide: uranium enrichment, Muslim Brotherhood rejecting its government that maintained a peace treaty with us, and a vulnerable Jewish State seem to be the greatest problems, but in reality, our problems are more complex, the standards of man-kind are likened to that of animals! We need sex, we need food, and we need a community. Where we decided to find those communities is subjective but essential to our uniqueness as mammals!

My fellow Jewish brothers and sisters, our standards have been destroyed, and no one knows what to do. Our leadership for all denominations does not exist, there is no Rebbe, there is no Rav, and there are no dayanim (judges) for Israel. Who will be our leaders? Someone who screams out to the Jewish people “Whoever is for God come with me!”[xi] Someone who struggles with the saddened realities that dwell amongst us and our ancestors before us and still says to God “Show me, please, Your glory!”[xii]In a world where God seems hidden, and His face is masked in destruction and hatred, what type of people does God want to hold His Torah. Is it not a people whose main priority is to bring the Torah into the world? “Carve for yourself two stone Tablets like the first ones, and I will write upon the Tablets the word that were on the first Tablets, which you (we) broke”[xiii].

“For we are not so brazen and stiff-necked to say before you HaShem, our God and the God of our forefathers that we are righteous and have not sinned, for indeed, we and our forefathers have sinned”[xiv]. Let us not be like Hungary, let us see that a crisis is developing in our midst, and unlike the Holocaust, this crisis is stealthy and unseen, slowly reversing the progress that we have made over the last 63 years. After so much pain and destruction, it will be our building and our active participation – nationally - of carving tablets, that saves us.

A friend asked me (thanks friend): “Despite the fact that we know that Ahavat Yisroel (Love of all Israel) will bring redemption, many of us are unaware how to instill Ahavat Yisroel?” [xv] How do we carve the tablets for our future generation? The verses below are not only amongst the most important verses in all of Scripture, but also offer a way to bring true love to the world for all peoples:

“God passed before him (Moshe) and called out: HaShem, HaShem God Who is Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to Anger, Abundant in Loving Kindness and True, preserving Kindness to the thousands, Forgiving of intentional sin and rebellion, and unintentional sin…”[xvi]We have made it this far, but our future existence is uncertain. Before we rebuild, we must remember that our own standards, and our own tests, are ours. Our own failings and our own ambitions are ours! We cannot wait for geulah (redemption), we must realize that with our unity we will be successful, but instituting higher standards and then degrading those who do not keep to those standards will only take us further away.

The famous civil rights activist Malik Shabaz, commonly known as Malcom X, said many things that I disagree with, but one thing is for certain: "Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your -- your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action." How do we fortify a structure that is starting to lose bricks? You tell the bricks they are doing a great job where they are, and that even if I am higher than you or lower than you, even if my standards are higher than your standards, the structure is only a structure because we are all bricks! Friends, do you hear me?!!?!?

This week I will try to: When Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks was asked, “What are three things that may prevent the breakdown of Modern Orthodoxy? Rabbi Sacks did not say “education,” he did not say “more Torah study,” or “the intensification of prayer,” he said “One, Ahavat Yisroel, two, Ahavat Yisroel, and three… “Ahavat Yisroel [xvii].”

We, my brothers are sisters, are the future leaders who will secure the future of the Jewish nation. Let us fortify ourselves before the structure comes crashing down. Reach out and reach in.

It’s your move…

Shabbat Shalom!

[i] 30:15
[ii] 30:16
[iii] 30:25
[iv] 30:26
[v] The righteous person, culturally seen as a saintly individual clean of sin.
[vi] 28:36
[vii] 32:7
[viii] Isaiah 1:6
[ix] 33:12
[x] 32:19
[xi] 32:26
[xii] 33:18
[xiii] 34:1
[xiv] Psalms-55:2
[xv]True brotherhood and sisterhood. Baseless love, because every person is G-d creation, and to Love G-d we must love each other. See Tanya Ch.32.
[xvi] The Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy (see Sefer Tomar Dvorah for a good breakdown of each and their individual significance and purpose.) 34:15

[xvii] Rabbi Sacks said this during a question-answer panel at Yeshivat Gush Etzion.