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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

March 3, 2021

Reps. Grace Meng and Ted Lieu Join Anti-Semitism Task Force Leadership

Leave a Comment / News, United States, Wires /

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Two Taiwanese-American members of Congress have joined the leadership of its anti-Semitism task force.

Reps. Grace Meng of New York and Ted Lieu of California, both Democrats, were listed among eight-co-chairs of the Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism in a release Monday, the first for the new Congress. The task force has over 100 members from the U.S. House of Representatives.

The newcomers replace two Jewish members, also Democrats, in leadership positions: Nita Lowey of New York, who retired, and Eliot Engel of New York, who lost in a primary election last year. That leaves just one Jewish co-chair, Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat.

Meng and Lieu represent districts with substantial Jewish populations. Meng’s covers part of the New York City borough of Queens and Lieu’s covers much of west Los Angeles County. Each succeeded a Democratic Jewish lawmaker: Lieu followed Henry Waxman, who retired in 2014, and Meng replaced Gary Ackerman, who retired in 2012.

Lieu was born in Taiwan, while Meng’s parents emigrated from there. Both are known for their closeness to the pro-Israel community.

The release said the task force, established in 2015, would encourage the government to “play a role in protecting [the Jewish] community and addressing the rise in antisemitic incidents domestically and globally.”

In the last Congress, the task force was behind the passage of a law elevating the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitor to ambassador, granting the office increased clout.

Reps. Grace Meng and Ted Lieu Join Anti-Semitism Task Force Leadership Read More »

ICC Announces War Crimes Investigation Into Israel

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced on March 3 that they are officially launching a war crimes investigation into Israel over the treatment of Palestinians.

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement that the investigation would focus on June 2014 onward, a month before the beginning of Operation Protective Edge but a day after Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers.

“Our central concern must be for the victims of crimes, both Palestinian and Israeli, arising from the long cycle of violence and insecurity that has caused deep suffering and despair on all sides,” Bensouda said. “The Office is aware of the wider concern, respecting this Situation, for international peace and security. Through the creation of the ICC, States Parties recognised that atrocity crimes are ‘a threat to peace, security and wellbeing of the world,’ and resolved ‘to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice.’”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the decision as “anti-Semitic”; Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also said in a statement, “We will not accept claims against the exercise of our right and our obligation to defend our citizens. The State of Israel is a strong, Jewish and democratic state that knows how to defend itself and to investigate itself when necessary.”

Pro-Israel groups denounced the ICC.

“The only thing more predictable than today’s ICC announcement is the outcome of that investigation. The ICC has already shown its hand,” Christians United for Israel Founder and Chairman Pastor John Hagee said in a statement. “It conferred jurisdiction upon itself and is limiting its investigation to events that took place one day after three Israeli boys were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists. Like the Goldstone report and so many international examinations of events in the region, the ICC will undoubtedly seek to find fault with every Israeli act of defense and seek to forgive every Palestinian act of aggression.”

The Goldstone Report was a report released in 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) documenting alleged war crimes by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas; it asserted that the IDF intentionally targeted civilians in the Gaza Strip, a finding that one of the report’s authors later rejected.

The European Leadership Network (ELNET) similarly said in a statement that the ICC decision “allows the Court to be used as a weapon in an ongoing political conflict and it diverts the Court’s attention from addressing real crimes of the nature and magnitude envisaged by the Rome Statute. ELNET calls on the ICC’s incoming prosecutor to re-examine the question of the ICC’s jurisdiction in this case, based on substantial legal arguments and accepted principles of international law brought forward by numerous state parties and respected legal authorities, and poignantly expressed in the thorough minority opinion in the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber’s Presiding Judge, Kovacs. We are confident that a deep, professional and non-politicized examination of the elements of jurisdiction, gravity, and complementarity as well as the general interest served by the investigation should inevitably lead to the conclusion that this investigation is misguided.”

Prior to Bensouda’s announcement, the U.S. State Department had issued a statement on February 5 saying that they were “seriously concerned” that the ICC had said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was within their jurisdiction.

ICC Announces War Crimes Investigation Into Israel Read More »

Explosive Conversion Verdict Stirs Sleepy Israeli Election Cycle

Leave a Comment / Israel, News, Wires /

(The Media Line) Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday issued a landmark ruling, ordering the government to award citizenship to a handful of residents who converted to Judaism through non-Orthodox institutions while living in Israel.

The case, which made its way through the justice system for more than 15 years, quickly and predictably turned into a hot topic for lawmakers across the political spectrum on Monday evening, and is expected to be featured prominently by both liberal and religious parties in the few weeks remaining until the March 23 elections.

In past rulings, the Supreme Court forced Jerusalem’s government to recognize as citizens those who came to Israel after converting to Judaism through the Reform or Conservative movements abroad.

The court also recently authorized residents living in Israel, who had undergone private Orthodox conversion in the country – as opposed to through the state-supervised process – to receive citizenship.

Monday’s decision, given after a decade and a half of government procrastination, extended this relief to those who converted through non-Orthodox routes in Israel.

Under the nation’s Law of Return, any person who was born to a Jewish mother, who has a Jewish father or grandfather, or themselves converted to Judaism, is entitled to Israeli citizenship. That conversion clause, according to the justices’ interpretation, will now apply to Reform and Conservative converts in Israel as well as Orthodox ones.

“It’s really a trivial step for the court, since it recognized similar precedents in the past,” Dr. Shuki Friedman, director of the Center for Religion, Nation and State at the Israel Democracy Institute, told The Media Line.

“This isn’t groundbreaking, to be honest, it’s more symbolic than anything else. The main point here is the formal recognition of other streams of Judaism. The ultra-Orthodox are waging an all-out war against legitimizing anything that isn’t their form of Judaism,” Friedman said.

The judgment has already become a major point of contention in Israel’s current election campaign and was slammed by religious lawmakers, who vowed to overturn it via a bill in the next parliamentary session.

Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who heads the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, panned the court’s decision and promised to pass a law “immediately following the elections,” cementing the Orthodox institutions as the only legally recognized method of conversion.

His partners in the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party called the verdict a “disaster for the term ‘Jewish State.’ For generations, the Jewish people recognized their faith and religion without forgeries and imitations.”

The justices’ “activism,” the ultra-Orthodox lawmakers warned, “threatens to tear us from within.”

“This isn’t groundbreaking, to be honest, it’s more symbolic than anything else. The main point here is the formal recognition of other streams of Judaism. The ultra-Orthodox are waging an all-out war against legitimizing anything that isn’t their form of Judaism.”

Yet, Chief Justice Esther Hayut in her ruling insisted the court had afforded parliament more than enough time to pass a coherent bill regulating the nation’s conversion process.

“Once it was made clear that the chances of reaching an agreed settlement of the issue were non-existent, and that a legislative process was also not on the horizon, a verdict is inevitable,” Hayut wrote in the decision.

“That certainly does not bar the Knesset from pouring additional or different content into the conversion concept, as it sees fit,” she added.

Kariv welcomed the ruling, saying it “protected Israel’s basic principles as the land of the entire Jewish people, and as a democratic country committed to its citizens’ religious freedoms.”

Kariv’s fellow petitioner, Nicole Maor, who is the director of Israel Religious Action’s Legal Aid Center for Olim (Jewish immigrants), vowed to oppose any legislative attempt by the movement’s political rivals that will endanger Monday’s ruling.

“This is crucial mainly for Israel’s relations with the Jewish Diaspora, it tells them everyone is welcome here,” Maor told The Media Line.

“Cursing us isn’t new, the threats to overturn this accomplishment by overriding bills isn’t new. But the harm that will be done to Israel’s connection with our fellow Jews abroad, if this is changed, will be so significant that I don’t believe any government will go down that road,” she said.

As for the how the Reform or Conservative conversion processes differ from the Orthodox one, Maor explains that they are actually quite similar.

“They both take about a year and include studying Judaism, committing to be a part of an established Jewish community, praying in synagogue, etc. The difference is in the subjects studied,” she said.

“This is crucial mainly for Israel’s relations with the Jewish Diaspora, it tells them everyone is welcome here.”

Instead of following the strict Orthodox method that “doesn’t recognize any advancements in Judaism over the years,” she explained, the Reform movement’s converts learn that the religion is “a living tree, which progresses and includes women, and equality and different views. It’s a pluralistic approach that is the antithesis to Orthodoxy.”

With exactly three weeks left until Israelis go to the polls for the fourth time in two years, Monday’s events may prove decisive in swaying the still many undecided voters.

“It’s clear this will stay on the public agenda,” Friedman said. “The separation of religion and state, as well as the Supreme Court’s perceived activism” which usually riles the conservative, right-wing vote, could now take center stage.

Explosive Conversion Verdict Stirs Sleepy Israeli Election Cycle Read More »

Special Spicy Tuna Spaghetti

Leave a Comment / Food /

When I was a little girl in Casablanca, my parents sent me to L’ecole Jeanne d’arc, a private Catholic school for girls. Every day, I would come home at midday to eat lunch with my family. More often than not, when the weather was fine, we would eat on the balcony of our huge apartment. It was shaded by swaying palm trees and overlooked the park that sat in the middle of La Place Bel Air. My two older brothers and I loved all of Maman’s cooking, but we had a special fondness for her Spicy Tuna Spaghetti.

During Ramadan, we would eat our lunch at school. I loved it when Maman would scramble the leftover tuna spaghetti with egg to make an omelet and put it in a crusty baguette. My kids turned up their noses when I told them, but I promise it’s way better than a peanut butter sandwich!

We had forgotten all about Spicy Tuna Spaghetti. But a few years ago, my brother Moise was in the kitchen and he made it for all of us. It has become a beloved family favorite again!

We shared the recipe because this dish has all the right notes. Spicy red chili flakes, sweet, tart, tangy tomato sauce, briny bites of tuna, salty capers and Kalamata olives, all contrasting with the toothsome texture of al dente spaghetti. And of course, this perfect pantry recipe is a great mid-week dinner and a great way to use up some of your chametz before Passover!

Spicy Tuna Sauce

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 5oz cans of tuna in oil
1 6oz can tomato paste
8 oz of water
3 tablespoons kalamata olives, chopped
1 tablespoon capers, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Red pepper chili flakes, to taste (1 teaspoon)
1 pound spaghetti or angel hair pasta, cooked al dente
Or your favorite pasta, cooked according to package directions

Heat olive oil over medium heat.

Add onions and sauté until they start to become golden.

Add garlic and sauté for a minute or two.

Add the canned tuna with the oil.

Use a wooden spatula and break the tuna into small pieces.

Sauté for a few minutes until tuna liquids start to evaporate.

Add tomato paste and sauté on medium.

Mix for three minutes until tomato paste begins to simmer.

Add water and stir well.

Lower heat to a slow simmer.

Add olives, capers, salt, black pepper and pepper flakes.

Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes.

Serve over pasta and serve immediately.

Rachel Sheff and Sharon Gomperts have been friends since high school. They love cooking and sharing recipes. They have collaborated on Sephardic Educational Center projects and community cooking classes. Follow them on Instagram @sephardicspicegirls and on Facebook at Sephardic Spice SEC Food.

Special Spicy Tuna Spaghetti Read More »

Megillat Esther: A Love Letter in the Book

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

For the last three millennia, society has embraced two primary written methods of communication — the book and the letter. Both convey ideas, thoughts and emotions, but in very different ways:

A book is formal; a letter is personal.

A book is proofread for precision while a letter bears no such pretense.

A book speaks to the unknown reader; a letter addressed to the personal friend.

A book contains generalized language — a letter is private-speak coded nuance.

A book is to be read; a letter may be read, reread and cherished.

Megillat Esther is an epic sefer, a treasured part of our Holy Tanach and written with ruach hakodesh (Megillah 7a). It thus requires, like any book in the Tanach, special etching, ink and parchment.

Megillat Esther is also called a letter (Esther, 9:26). If it is scratched out or missing letters, it is still a kosher megillah (Shulchan Aruch 690:3). It may be read sitting or standing. Before we read the Megillah, Jewish custom is to unfold it as a letter (Shulchan Aruch 690:17).

Apparently, the Megillah can coexist in these two realms. It records past redemption and harbingers of future glory. And yet, the formality of the sefer dares not cloud its strikingly personal message — for it is also a letter to the generations —  a personal call to the one who feels locked in.

It is a letter to the generations —  a personal call to the one who feels locked in.

For when Mordecai speaks to a hesitating Esther [4:14] and coaxes her to petition Achashverosh now — for perhaps this is your moment of greatness and this is why you became the Queen —  he is also speaking l’doros (for generations) not only to Esther but also to Erica and Shloime, Yocheved, Matt, Soheil Brian and Mushky. He is demanding us to tap into something very great, the power of our unique and great neshamos. Only when we believe it can we do it.

Mordecai’s demand offers a stark contrast to his antagonist, Haman. In Midrashic terminology, Haman is karahu the child of  karahu [Esther Rabah, 8:5], the child of cold and/or chance. Haman, descendant of Amalek, lives a hot-and-cold existence — tossed around by the vicissitudes of life. He is intoxicated until he sees a defiant Mordecai, and then he is bitter once again. I know of many people leading Hamanesque lives, not of wickedness but of coldness and disappointment that the plot of their lives has not followed their original script.

But there is a warmer option: Take a friend of mine, blessed with a large and vibrant family, who struggles to financially make the month. There is little wiggle room for extras in his life. He drove a twelve-seater until he woke up to find his car stolen. He is a great Torah scholar, but more than his scholarship is his radiant faith. For him, Torah is not an intellectual pursuit; it is a passionate dialogue with the Master of the Universe. He lives joyously.

My friend’s simple response to his lost car was stunningly beautiful. “Hashem must love me that he spared me from greater pain and relegated me to the frustration of dealing with the insurance.”

My friend is familiar with Rambam, who teaches us that faith is not simple belief in a Creator, but rather that God is the po’el hametzius — everything that happens is part of a bigger picture to be unveiled later [Book of Mitzvos, 2]. He is not merely familiar with Rambam, he views life through the prism of warm faith and basks in its glow. I know of many simple (and great) Jews who live life the same way. They see God in their daily, and thus their daily is vibrant, warm and pregnant with meaning. They live life as a cherished letter.

As we depart from the megilla, let us endeavor to reject a Haman parochialism and embrace  Mordechai’s eternal call — for in this holy eternal letter, we feel valued — ready to respond to its sweet demand for greatness. And like the original recipient of the letter, let us tap into our great strengths with mesirus nefesh to bring the redemption speedily in our days.

Rabbi Asher Brander is the Rov and Founder of the Link Kollel.

Megillat Esther: A Love Letter in the Book Read More »

Carrying Our Brokenness

Leave a Comment / Columnists, Opinion /

My paternal grandfather, Shlomo Sessler, was a Holocaust refugee. I grew up listening to him recount the saga of his miraculous escape from the claws of Nazism time and again.

In contrast to many other survivors, my grandfather found existential catharsis in incessantly retelling the story of his flight from the looming menace of genocide and annihilation.

My grandfather was only seventeen years old when he ran for his life. Yet unlike millions of others, who were by far his superiors in age, intellect and education, my grandfather somehow intuited and discerned that there was no physical future for the Jews of Europe under Nazi sovereignty.

Like everyone else, my grandfather did not envisage gas chambers, for as Hannah Arendt observed in her magisterial “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” “Normal people don’t know that everything is possible.” However, my grandfather did surmise that the Germans would work the Jews of Europe to death. With the exception of one brother, my grandfather was the sole survivor from his entire family. In the words of the Bible, he was a “solitary branch salvaged from the all-consuming fire.”

When I think about what empowered my grandfather to move on with his life, to build a family, start a business and affirm life, a verse from the book of Job comes to mind: “I shall speak, and find comfort.” For it was the constant re-narrating of his wartime saga that enabled my grandfather to come to grips with history’s demons and to transform yesteryear’s open wounds into an enclosed and self-contained scar.

Philosopher Alasdair McIntyre teaches us that humans are “the story-telling animal.” In other words, we construct narratives about our lives and we inhabit and experience the world through the existential lens of these epic mental constructs. The same applied to my grandfather with regard to his wartime experiences: It was by articulating his harrowing story of escape from genocide time and again — and to virtually anyone who would care to listen — that my grandfather was able to carry on and meet life’s interminable material and psychological exigencies with vigor.

We experience the world through the existential lens of our epic mental constructs.

The very same psychological insight about the imperative to carry our past with us through life’s manifold journeys — as painful as that carrying may be — is inherent in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa. Our parshah includes the story of the shattering of the Ten Commandments by Moses after the sordid idolatrous fiasco of the Golden Calf. Later on in the Torah, in the book of Deuteronomy, the two sets of tablets with the Ten Commandments are mentioned again: the first set — which was shattered by Moses — and the second set — which remained integrated and intact.

In the Talmud, the rabbis deliberate as to which of the two sets of tablets is to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. Is it the second, integrated and intact set of tablets, upon which the Ten Commandments were engraved, or is it the first set, which was shattered to pieces by Moses as a spontaneous act of pietistic protestation and righteous indignation?

The sages’ ingenious and poignant insight is “lookhot ve shivram” — that both the shattered set and the intact set of tablets should be placed in the ark. This stunning midrash is both psychologically astute and existentially imperative. It teaches us that we cannot simply bury the wounds and traumas of yesteryear; we are fated to dwell with them forever. We are called upon to carry our brokenness within us throughout our life’s journey and to soulfully transition from a terrain of psychological fragmentation into a promised land of inner integration.

If we covet health, sanity, enduring mental equilibrium and robust soulful relationships with loved ones, we are to carry our brokenness in the ark of human consciousness and integrate it into the tumultuous sagas of our life story.

Carry your brokenness and articulate it, implore the Talmudic sages. For the alternative to integrating your brokenness into your life’s journey is a chronic and pervasive mental injury, a wounded soul.

Rabbi Tal Sessler, Ph.D., is the author of four books in philosophy and contemporary Jewish identity. He is the Senior Rabbi of Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, and the incoming Dean of the Rabbinical School at the Academy for Jewish Religion in California, where he also teaches Jewish philosophy.

Carrying Our Brokenness Read More »

Table for Five: Ki Tisa

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

One verse, five voices. Edited by Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist

When the people saw that Moses was late in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron, and they said to him: “Come! Make us a god that will go before us, because this man Moses, who brought us up from the land of Egypt we do not know what has become of him.” -Exodus 32:1

Miriam Mill-Kreisman
President, Tzaddik Foundation

There is so much confusion in this one verse of the Torah. At the beginning it says “the people saw that Moshe was late.” Rashi states “Satan showed a semblance of darkness, as if indicating that Moshe had surely died.” Yet at the end of the verse, it states the people still “didn’t know what has become of him (Moshe).”

Some became hysterical and killed Hur, Miriam’s son, who was left in charge with Aaron. Some say only the erev rav, the mixed multitude who accompanied the Jews, maybe a few thousand, “gathered against Aaron.” That’s quite an imposing crowd but there were millions at Sinai. Yet as we saw in Washington, it doesn’t take that many people to destroy the peace. And did they ever!

“Make us a god that will go before us.” As if Aaron could make a god. But these people were out of their minds. “Because this man Moshe” – they didn’t want to depend on a mere man but wanted some god to lead them. “Who brought us up from the land of Egypt” – did they not realize G-d was leading them and Moshe only followed G-d’s will?

Maybe receiving the Torah at Sinai was more than some could take. And 40 days was too much time to wait. And they were too dependent on Moshe. All this confusion led to what was to become their worst panic attack. The worship of the Golden Calf. Never again. Patience. God’s anointed one is coming.

Rabbi Chaim Tureff
Pressman Academy and Director of STARS Addiction Recovery

According to Psychology Today, fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger that has been pivotal throughout human evolution. So what were the Israelites fearful of? Not having a leader? Feeling that they were alone or being abandoned?

It’s not so out of the ordinary that they went back to old habits at a time of fear. Although the Ramban and Ibn Ezra go out of their way to point out that the Jews were not interested in worshipping idols, it’s not strange to think that they were. They had just spent hundreds of years in slavery in a place surrounded by idolatry. All of a sudden God saves the Jews, there’s a pinnacle moment at Mt. Sinai and then silence. Working with people in addiction recovery, this is a common thread. People spend their entire lives battling addiction until finally having a Mt. Sinai moment and getting sober, but then something happens which causes an inordinate amount of stress and they go back to their old habits.

Even though the addictive substance is self-destructive and hasn’t shown any success in the past, it is where they go. Ultimately one needs to pick up and continue rather than allow one enormous misstep to define the rest of their life. As Hesse states in Narcissus and Goldmund, “There is no peace … that lives within us constantly and never leaves us. There is only the peace that must be won again and again, each new day of our lives… ”

Rabbi Aryeh Markman
Executive Director, Aish LA

How could the Jews worship an idol after receiving the Torah 40 days before? They turned the means into their end.

Imagine you’re driving alone at 2:00 a.m. on a dark country road. It’s freezing, with blinding sleet pounding your windshield. Your GPS is your lifeline. You have just enough fuel till the gas station up ahead and only 5% battery left on your phone. Suddenly you reach a fork in the road and simultaneously your GPS loses service. You are lost in the wilderness!

So too the Jews. Moses, their guide, is absent, seemingly forever. They feel abandoned and need a substitute intermediary between them and God. In a fit of total groupthink, they succumb to the madness of the crowd and lose sight of their destiny and purpose. They turn their intercessor, the mysterious Golden Calf, into their destination. Created through black magic and subsequently worshiped by the mixed multitude – the converts from Egypt who escaped with them – their new GPS morphed into a god.

It seems ridiculous and appalling until we examine our lives and ask ourselves what has become of the idealistic goals of our youth? Have we replaced them, instead, with what should’ve been the means to accomplish them? Do I control my wealth, status and position or does it control me, arresting the brilliant hope of my youth?

Let us not wonder in disbelief at the Jews panicking in the desert. Rather let us take stock of the direction of our own lives.

Dr. Erica Rothblum
Head of School, Pressman Academy

One of my daughter’s favorite bedtime books is Mo Willems’ Waiting is Not Easy! In this sweet story, Piggie has a surprise for his friend, Gerald, but Gerald will have to wait for it. Gerald gets tired of waiting and wants to give up. He groans and complains. And at the end of the book, the surprise is a star-filled night sky, which Gerald declares as “worth the wait.”

Like Gerald, the Israelites have a hard time waiting. And, like Gerald, when the waiting takes too long, they panic. They tantrum. They beg for relief. And they act irrationally. In applying neuroeducational psychology to this story, the Israelites’ response makes complete sense – when our prefrontal cortex goes offline, we can become dysregulated and move into our limbic brain, full of emotions and irrational thinking. In this case, the Israelites’ prefrontal cortex goes offline and they build a golden calf. But as we know, this wasn’t their best choice, and we are reminded that in those moments of upset, we are obligated to regulate ourselves in order to make thoughtful decisions.

Being resilient is nothing new to the Jewish people, but this past year has certainly tested our resilience. We have each had days, I am guessing, when we wanted to give up on waiting, when we wanted to tantrum, and to accept the easy fix. And the story of the Israelites waiting for Moshe reminds us – sometimes we must pause, regulate and continue to wait for the starry night sky.

Rabbi Scott N. Bolton
Congregation Or Zarua, New York City

There is holy waiting to do, because we become our own worst enemies when we rush. Before our teachers return to finish curricula prepared especially for us, we think we know it all. Without waiting for others to finish their thoughts we speak what’s on our minds despite the fact that two ears battle one mouth.

We have rejected a theology of waiting for the messiah, because we are realists. Our hearts incline toward loving our neighbors, but we become insular and self-absorbed. We burn bridges. Self-righteousness leads to erroneous, idolatrous pursuits.

Our ancestors could wait no longer for Moses. Since they thought they knew what was best they led everyone to anti-godliness. They wouldn’t wait for Moses’ Torah or to hear about how to develop a relationship with the Holy One. What stories Moses would have!

Sure, Hillel said, “if not now, when?” But there is holy waiting, patience to practice, taking the time to have our teachers help make deep clarifications. “Now, make for us a God,” they insisted. How many gods have we made?

The lessons are stark: we suffer from delusions that we control how long history should take, that we know God’s ultimate moral message. We insist that we have an inalienable right to know it all. The reading of Ki Tissa comes at Purim time when we celebrate the circuitous route to redemption ad d’lo yada – until we can’t tell the difference between and among all we thought we knew. Yes, we have holy waiting to do.

Table for Five: Ki Tisa Read More »