from the heart of jerusalem

Forgiving ourselves, starting fresh

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Corona. Isolation. Quarantine. Closed schools and synagogues. Flights cancelled and travel limited. No large public gatherings. What is going on?

In 1988, during the first Intifada, one of our patrols got into serious trouble near Jebalya, a nasty piece of real estate in the Gaza strip, home to approximately 120,000 Arab “refugees.” An urgent radio call came in from a neighboring patrol that suggested they were stuck in an alleyway, surrounded by hundreds of rioters with rocks and Molotov cocktails, and had no route of retreat and not enough ammunition.

I couldn’t understand where this huge riot had sprung up from, as I had just finished a patrol in the same area, but there was no time to think about it. Standard operating procedure in such situations was to muster up as many vehicles as possible as quickly as possible and offer the rioters both a second “front” (or contact point) with which to contend, as well as an easy and avenue of retreat. A few well-thrown tear gas grenades (basically harmless in the long term) would usually suffice to cause an entire riot to begin dispersing in the direction of the avenue of retreat that had been left open to them.

But when we got to the specified location, there was no riot — and no Israeli patrol.

It took us over half an hour to finally figure out where this patrol actually was. And it transpired that this entire mess occurred because aa new officer had at one point taken a left turn instead of a right one, and was in a completely different area from where he thought he was. In fact, he had led his patrol into an area we were not even supposed to be venturing into, as it was a hot spot far enough away from the main road that it wasn’t part of our mission (which was to keep the road open to civilian traffic).

By the time we finally arrived, the rioters took one look at all the vehicles roaring down the streets, and dispersed entirely before we even reached the alleyway.

I still remember our battalion commander, Rami, who understood the value of an officer learning from his mistakes rather than being broken by them, taking the young second lieutenant aside for a quick de-briefing.

The young officer was obviously pretty shaken; he and any number of his men could have been injured or worse and an entire brigade had just spent the better part of an hour diverting valuable manpower and equipment all because he had made a wrong turn. All I caught were the first words Rami said as he walked him off to the side: “Well, we needed a good exercise for the men, so I’m glad you found an original way to set one in motion.”

That sentence carried more lessons in commanding men, and for that matter counseling life, than entire books I have read on the subject.

One of week’s portion, Va’Yakhel, begins with a moment of pure potential: “Va’Yakhel Moshe Et Kol Adat B’nei Yisrael, Va’Yomer Aleihem:” (“And Moshe gathered together the entire congregation of Israel and said to them:”) (Shemot 35:1).

Rashi points out that this was the day after Yom Kippur, when Moshe came down with the second tablets, the Luchot Ha’Brit, signifying that the Jewish people had been forgiven (or at least their sentence had been commuted) following the transgression of the golden calf.

Moshe had first gone up onto Mount Sinai on the seventh day of Sivan, returning 40 days later on the 17th of Tammuz to discover his people dancing with the golden calf. He went up again, for an additional 40 days, coming down on Rosh Chodesh Elul, having achieved forgiveness. But that just meant they had gotten back to where they had been before the experience of Sinai. Now they had to recommit to receiving the Torah all over again, this time with tablets fashioned by man, and not by G-d (ibid. 34:4). So Moshe went up yet a third time, again for 40 days, finally returning to the people on Yom Kippur with the two new tablets (Luchot) of stone (containing the Ten Commandments) signifying Hashem’s forgiveness of the Jewish people and allowing them to start over again.

Moshe however was a very wise leader; just because G-d had forgiven the Jewish people did not necessarily mean they had forgiven themselves. What were the Jews thinking the morning after Yom Kippur?  They had barely seen Moshe in the three months, and it was entirely their fault. G-d had basically decreed that the consequences of the sin of the golden calf would be suffered by the Jewish people for thousands of years (32:34), and one wonders how the Jews must have felt, now that the immediate danger of annihilation was past and the enormity of their mistake had begun to sink in.

Moshe rises to the challenge of the moment, which was this: Now that the Jewish people had realized the error of their ways, and the guilty had suffered the necessary consequences, what words would offer the Jewish people the sense of comfort and hope that would inspire them to move forward.

Which makes the message Moshe actually shared with the Jewish people so puzzling. We might have expected him to tell the people that they were on their way to the land of Israel, or even, as he begins to do subsequently (35:4), to review the mitzvoth concerning their mission to build the Mishkan, meant to be a resting place for the Divine presence which, according to Rashi, represented some level of atonement for the debacle of the golden calf.

Instead, Moshe shares with them a most unlikely mitzvah: Shabbat.

“These are the words Hashem has commanded to do: Six days shall you labor, and the seventh day shall be holy for you, a day of complete rest for G-d. … You shall not kindle fire in all your dwellings on the Sabbath day.” (35:1-3)

What does Shabbat have to do with Moshe’s desire to comfort the Jewish people after their terrible error in building a golden calf? And what does the prohibition against fire (and labor in general) have to do with all this?

To understand this we need to take a closer look both at the sin of the golden calf and the concept of sin in general, as well as the true purpose of Shabbat.

What was the golden calf all about? The Jewish people, at the foot of Mount Sinai, not six weeks after hearing the Ten Commandments which include a specific injunction not to worship idols, forget the words they heard from G-d Himself and believe that a calf of molten gold is their true god. The people come to Aaron, struggling with what they perceive to be a new reality: Moshe, who “brought them up out of Egypt” (32:1) is gone, and they are looking for a substitute.

So Aaron throws their gold into the fire and fashions it into a golden calf, and they say: “This is your god O’Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt.” (32:4)

It is hard to imagine the Jewish people believing that a calf of gold they have just seen fashioned in fire is the One who brought them out of Egypt — after all, they witnessed the ten plagues and the splitting of the sea! It is worth noting that this phrase corresponds directly to their description of Moshe (in verse 1) who also is described as having brought them out of Egypt, even though Moshe is clearly known to be a messenger of G-d.

So what the people were looking for was not to replace G-d, but rather find a substitute vehicle in relating to G-d.

Indeed, when G-d speaks directly to the people in the first two commandments, the people are overwhelmed, and beg Moshe that he instead speak the word of G-d (20:16).  The problem the people have is not that they forgot G-d exists; rather, they are so aware of G-d’s existence, they aren’t sure what to do with it. How do you maintain a relationship with something as intangible as G-d?

Essentially, the Jewish people are struggling to find a way of bringing G-d into the physical world, and that’s good, but they chose a path that is not Hashem’s will, fashioning a calf on their own instead of waiting to see how Hashem will instruct them to proceed.

How often do we have goals that are so noble and so pure and yet get lost along the way and can’t quite figure out how something that started so right, became so wrong. And we realize it is wrong, because we have somehow strayed off the path that Hashem (G-d) really wanted us on; we have substituted, on some level, His will for ours.

So how do we tap into the reality of everything as the will of Hashem, and let go of the illusion that what I do is what is real in this world?

That, finally, is the secret of Shabbat. On Shabbat, I get a taste of the world to come, because after six days of work I take a day to consider what that is all about. On Shabbat we try to access what Hashem really wants of us, and why we were put here in the first place, and we get back in touch with the reality that it’s all good, and that whatever happens is ultimately all part of Hashem’s plan.

Which is why on Shabbat we don’t light fires, which are representative (along with all the categories of labor we desist from on Shabbat) of what we do in this world. According to the Midrash, fire was the first thing we created, and it thus represents our creative abilities and our partnership with G-d in creating the world. I let go of that on Shabbat, because on Shabbat I realize that everything I am creating is really G-d’s will, I am just a tool, and my only challenge is to make myself a willing tool.

Shabbat is all about learning to live in the moment. We are often so busy trying to get somewhere, we don’t realize where we already are. And the ability to see things as they are, and let go of where we think things should be going, is also what Shabbat is about.

In these trying times, when so many people are being forced to take a step back — spending even two weeks alone, sequestered, quarantined — perhaps we are all being given a chance to do a little “reset” and consider what we are all doing here in the first place.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.