Torah Thoughts
Ki Tissa: Exodus 30:11 – 34: 35
March 14, 2009 18 Adar 5769
This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, is all about the concept of “awe”, wonder. We read this week about two attempts to see G!d, to respond to some of the awesomeness of G!d. The people are in a major crisis. They have left everything they know, and their leader, Moses has disappeared. They have experienced incredible miracles and wonders in the desert, and really can’t figure the whole picture out. In the first attempt to see G!d, the people demand that Aaron fashion a golden calf for them, a physical form of the appearance of G!d, for them. Cows were holy in Egypt. That’s what they knew and were used to. These weren’t incredibly sophisticated people; we weren’t known for our smarts in those days. In the absence of the leader of the people for more time than they could handle, the people demanded a return to their old explanations of the world. They wanted a G!d they could see and an answer to their questions they could touch. They channeled their fears and their amazement at the wonder of the world into a tangible G!d they could relate to. Aaron even said regarding this golden calf: “this is your G!d who brought you out of the land of Egypt”. Well, obviously, they knew better, since it couldn’t have been the G!d that brought them out of Egypt, yet they were desperate, feeling abandoned, hopeless.
Many of us can identify with acting irrationally because of desperation and abandonment. These former slaves were looking for help to come to them miraculously, in the depth of their abandonment. They find G!d in a fantasy, something that made them feel good for the moment, much the same way we might find ours – in addiction, craving and collecting stuff.
The second time there is a struggle with G!d’s image is when Moses asks G!d to allow him to “behold G!d’s presence”. It’s an odd request from a guy who has been sitting on a mountain for 40 days taking dictation from that very G!d. How can Moses ask such a thing?
What possible motivation could he have had, after spending all that time since the burning bush in G!d’s Presence to ask to “behold G!d’s Presence”? Of all people, Moses?! He saw G!d at the burning bush, worked with G!d through all of the plagues and negotiation with Pharaoh, relied on G!d at the Red Sea, and has just spent 40 days with G!d on Mount Sinai. And it’s Moses who asks for such a thing? You have to look at this request and go “huh?” I understand completely why the former slaves made the same demand. I even understand them creating an image to fill in for their lack of image – in that Moses must have symbolized for them the Presence of G!d. For Moses to ask roughly the same thing in the same Torah portion is more than coincidence.
G!d’s answer is even stranger: Moses can see G!d’s Presence, but only the back of G!d, whatever that might be. G!d puts Moses into a hollow place on a cliff, covers Moses’ eyes with G!d’s hand, passes before Moses and then lifts G!d’s hand off Moses’ eyes, and Moses sees G!d’s back.
On the one hand, I’m impressed with the incredible intimacy of this experience. G!d in physical contact, somehow, with Moses. Moses seeing, somehow, that which none of us get to see. What does G!d’s back look like? How can a being with no body or corporeal image have a back? Perhaps Moses is shown that even at the amazing moment of having been in contact with the Holy One for so long, he cannot see G!d directly. He can only see G!d’s Presence in the past tense, where G!d has been. At that moment of seeing where G!d had been, he was as close as he ever could be to G!d.
So, too, with us. G!d’s Presence touched us personally and has touched the world. When we are filled with awe and wonder, when we find the places where G!d has been, we are as close as we can be to G!d. We see G!d in the past tense, most of the time.
Elijah the prophet told of how he experienced the Presence of G!d: The Holy One passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rock by the power of G!d; but the Holy One was not in the wind. After the wind – an earthquake; but The Holy One was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, fire; but the Holy One was not in the fire. And after the fire, a thin voice of silence.
G!d is not in the big deals, the high places, the “special effects”, but rather is present in the voices of silence, touching hearts, shaping souls. According to Rabbi David Wolpe, “G!d does not reach down to remove tumors. But G!d grants courage, helps us to hope, strengthens our souls, and stiffens our spine. G!d helps community cohere. In the stillness and isolation of illness, we can hear G!d’s voice of silence speak to us, and through us.”
We do G!d’s work with our own hands. We are the vehicles through which G!d’s Presence is experienced on earth, even if it’s in a still small voice, even if it’s just from the back, just in hindsight. We do that work not only as individuals, but also as a community. Not just one at a time, but together. We came out of Egypt as a community; we struggled through the desert as a community, we built a golden calf as a community, and we learn as a community to stand together to do G!d’s work, with our own hands.
G!d moments abound, but we’re most aware of them in the past tense. May we learn to experience the Holy One’s Presence in our own lives, to see that Presence both in our personal and communal past, but also right here, right now.
