Adina Roth – Director of Jewish Life

Ki Tisa, call us by our name

After all the noise and bluster that came with the Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf, we come to a quietly profound moment in Parshat Ki Tisa – where Moshe asks God to see the Divine Presence. Coming from a tradition where God has no form, it is worth wondering what Moshe hopes to see. As I understand it, Moshe is asking to know something of the essence at the heart of our tradition. In response to Moshe’s request, God allows him to sit in the cleft of a rock and to see God’s back as God passes by. This haunting image of Moses sitting on a mountain, gazing out to see a whisp of the interminable presence has always moved me. As God passes by the rock, God speaks. These words have become inscribed in our tradition in the heart of the Vidui service on Yom Kippur, “God, a God of compassion and graciousness, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness…” This to me is a declaration of essence, not just of who God is, but of our deepest aspirations, to kindness, goodness, graciousness.

These days, we may not always feel so connected to our essence. Since Saturday 7 October, I know that I have sometimes felt a feeling of profound displacement. Antisemitism can do that. When words are lobbed at Jewish people like weapons it can cause us to lose our footing. It becomes tiring to define ourselves fighting constantly in a position of defence. We are not this. We are not that.

This week, Rabbi Angela Buchdhal of Central Synagogue interviewed the great historian Deborah Lipstadt. The interview is well worth watching. My father in South Africa sent me the link with a quote, “Don’t fight antisemitism. Simply take on being Jewish without defiance”. This was enough to convince me to watch the video. Deborah tells the story of a young child who had just seen an antisemitic protest and turned to her parent and asked: “Why do they hate us so much?”.  Deborah responded to this child: “Give her a strong sense of her own identity, a strong sense of who she is not in opposition to antisemitism but in positive…”. She added that at the end of the day we need to be able to say, “I know who I am…I know what I come from and I revel in it and I am happy to be a Jew, I won the prize”.

How do we help our children and ourselves to remember that in being Jewish…”we won the prize”. When Moshe asks to see God’s face, he is asking a similar question, “Let me know who you are, who we are, when people aren’t shouting at us and defining who we are, let me know Judaism from within”. When I think about the prize of Judaism, I think about Shabbat, I think about song and joy, I think about family and community, I think about tzedakah, I think about showing up courage, and kindness, I think about prayer and I think about activism, I think about Jewish learning, I think about rites of passage. I am sure you have your own list with similarities and differences.

Deborah Lipstadt and Rabbi Buchdhal ended this magnificent interview by singing Hinei mah tov uh mah naim, shevet achim gam yachad. How good and how sweet it is, brothers and sisters sitting together. I feel so hopeful about the song we are about to launch as a school community, Shevet Achimm ve’achayot. It draws on the prayer about our people sitting together. From our parsha this week, to our prayers, our songs and our conversations, we need to remember and celebrate who we are and what we are. We are not defined by the hate. We are defined internally by something far greater, that at its core is about compassion, graciousness and the aspiration to bring goodness into this world.   

Shabbat Shalom