When Moses makes his journey down Mount Sinai in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, after his forty-day communion with God, he is confused by the sounds that he hears coming from the Israelite camp. “It is not the sound of the tune of triumph, or the sound of the tune of defeat,” he says in Exodus 32:18, “It is the sound of song that I hear!” Joshua tries to clue him into what is happening, telling Moses, “There is a cry of war in the camp.” As readers, we know the sound they are hearing is neither of war nor merriment, but of rebellion. Below Moses’ and Joshua’s vantage point, the Israelites are singing and dancing around the Golden Calf, openly defying the will of God.
From a distance, large groups of human beings are often difficult to make out. Traveling through Israel on our Buffalo Civics’ Trip a few weeks ago, we saw many signs of people’s unhappiness. On the road up to Jerusalem, crowds gathered in several places. Police cars barricaded the street leading up to the residence of the Prime Minister. And we heard about the hundreds of thousands of Israelis of all segments of society gathering in peaceful protest all over the country. Every individual we met spoke about feelings of being distraught, and fearful for the future ahead. In the weeks since, the “cry of war” has only grown louder, and more painful. It breaks my heart to read about the rampage through a Palestinian village by a group of settlers, and violence and dissension on all sides.
The era of the Golden Calf does not feel so removed from the one we are currently living in. How do we see a way forward for Israelis, for Palestinians, for all inhabitants of this beautiful land? As American Jews, we may feel a great deal of sadness and powerlessness? What can we do to help solve the problems across the ocean? What realistic solutions are there to even begin to make a path forward? The answer, we were told repeatedly on our trip, is that “it’s complicated.”
I leave you with a poem I wrote as we headed out of Jerusalem for the last time. It’s called, “The Protest at the Knesset”: “I tried to describe the throngs of people/ their angry faces/the signs and slogans aloft/the feet stomping/the effigies on fire/hundreds of thousands squished together/No space to even breath/You cannot help but notice the crowds/Exactly like it appeared in the news/But the truth was I not there/I drove by the Knesset that morning on the way up North/The building quiet and calm/It’s windows yawning like every other idle car”.
May we find our way to more peaceful times.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex