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Drash
for Shabbat Ki Tisa Weeks before our parasha begins Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt. In Egypt the Israelites endure centuries of slavery. Our people know only to live by taskmasters; they follow instruction; where, how, and when to eat, drink, sleep, and work. Slavery becomes the norm. Denial of freedom keeps our people stuck, as they know no other way to think, to live, or to worship. The Israelites dream to worship freely in the land of Canaan. With this in mind, we turn to this week’s Torah portion where we find the Israelites feeling abandoned by their leaders God and Moses. Redemption, as the freedom to worship God has not truly set in as a reality for the Israelites. Because of this, they revert to what is familiar; idolatry. They build a fire, cast in all their gold to be made into a golden calf, and dance around their idol. To us today this is blasphemous, incomprehensible, and a great sin. To them it was familiar when nothing else was. Do the Israelites sin, or do they simply stumble on the road to change? God is angry with the Israelites. God wants to end this experiment right away. Moses, a human being, recognizes the human quality of faltering on the path to change. Ultimately, God reconciles with Moses the human notion of faltering. Sadly, the first generation of the Exodus is not ready to make such a drastic transformation from slavery to freedom. Subsequently the Israelites wander in the wilderness of the Sinai desert for forty years awaiting the rise of future generations who inherently bind themselves to God and not to idols. This generational comparison in our Torah portion demonstrates just how hard it is to change. My prayer for Robby is that he accepts his mistakes in the midst of uncertainty. As Moses teaches us it is human to stumble. My prayer for Robby is for him to have faith in himself to believe that he is still on track in the long run, and that bumps on the road to adulthood provide him greater determination to reach his dreams. Shabbat Shalom.
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