I was not well this past Shabbat, so many thanks to Tsofit for jumping in and leading the service so adeptly. I have included her d’var – erudite and accessible – thank you, Tsofit!
Parashat Ki Tissa: The Trouble with Certainty
Parashat Ki Tissa is one of those weeks where the Torah feels like it’s reading us.
It opens with an anticlimax: a census. Everyone gives the same amount, a half-shekel, because somehow the whole thing has to be sustained. And then, very quickly, drama strikes.
The people of Israel and God have just gone through Sinai together. They’ve just started planning their portable home (well, His, but definitely for them!) and already they’re going to need couples therapy.
Moses disappears on the mountain. According to my favorite Midrash, he went to visit Rabbi Akiva’s classroom, sat in the back row, and didn’t understand a word.
Apparently, the whole time-travel thing took a while. And down in the desert, the people wait.
Nothing terrible has happened. No catastrophe, no defeat. Just uncertainty. Too much of it.
So they build the Golden Calf. But as soon as Moses comes down the mountain, nobody seems to care about the calf anymore. No one even tries to stop him from destroying it. So maybe the real problem was the attempt to produce certainty instantly: a complete answer, a finished god. Something visible, something stable, something, quite frankly, more comfortable.
Simplicity feels like relief. When everything becomes simple, our responsibility disappears.
God does not appreciate the attempt. And like the people of Israel, he also reaches for simplicity: “Let Me destroy them,” he tells Moses. “We’ll start over – just you and me”.
And Moses says: no.
You cannot abandon them. You brought them out of Egypt. You made a covenant with them. If you destroy them now, it will say something not only about them – but about you. I’m not going to be your Noah. It’s not the same anymore. You made a promise. And if you wipe them out of history, wipe me out as well.
This may be Moses’ greatest moment.
And then God gives a somewhat bizarre answer:
“Okay. Listen.
Tell them to observe Shabbat. And Pesach. Let’s talk about firstborn animals. And some festivals”.
All these mitzvot all of a sudden – almost as if nothing happened.
But maybe that is exactly the point. After revelation, after failure, after crisis – what sustains a people is not miracles, it’s small repeating rituals: Shabbat, holidays, memory, things that quietly build a home.
And because Moses stood his ground, the covenant itself changes. The first tablets were written entirely by God. Moses smashes them, and then the second tablets are written by Moses. The covenant is no longer only something given from heaven. Human beings now participate.
Protecting the covenant, paradoxically, required breaking the symbol of the covenant.
And maybe that is why, later in the Torah, the Ark carried both: the whole tablets and the broken pieces.
I learned a beautiful example of this idea from my Talmud teacher, Yakov Z. Mayer: when our sages discuss the dates of Purim, the Talmud briefly suggests that Purim might fall even later in the month. The idea is immediately rejected, but in some Hasidic communities there is a custom not to say Tachanun for two days after Purim. Not because those days are actually Purim, but because they once almost were.
Not a holiday. Just the shadow of a holiday.
Judaism sometimes preserves not only what happened, but also what almost happened. The story that worked and the version that failed.
So what do we do when we want certainty, clear justice, a clean ending to the story – and reality refuses to give it?
The Torah answers: people will always be tempted by certainty, even if it means creating a false one. But Judaism allows confusion. It’s okay not to have certainty. We build fragile homes nonetheless.
Because real covenant, real homes, are built exactly this way: the whole tablets and the broken pieces.
Sometimes we imagine covenant as clarity. Sometimes we even turn the text itself into a calf – something fixed, solid, unquestionable.
But Ki Tissa shows something else, it shows a covenant that keeps unfolding. Long enough that, one day, Moses himself will sit in the back row of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom and scratch his head.
A covenant that survives ecstasy, violence (much violence), and moments when everything seems to collapse.
Nothing ever gets completely resolved.
And yet the story continues – because people keep carrying the pieces forward.
Shabbat shalom.
Much love to all, stay well,
Rabbi Lynn
Ki Tisa
March 10, 2026 by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough • From the Rabbi's Desk
I was not well this past Shabbat, so many thanks to Tsofit for jumping in and leading the service so adeptly. I have included her d’var – erudite and accessible – thank you, Tsofit!
Parashat Ki Tissa: The Trouble with Certainty
Parashat Ki Tissa is one of those weeks where the Torah feels like it’s reading us.
It opens with an anticlimax: a census. Everyone gives the same amount, a half-shekel, because somehow the whole thing has to be sustained. And then, very quickly, drama strikes.
The people of Israel and God have just gone through Sinai together. They’ve just started planning their portable home (well, His, but definitely for them!) and already they’re going to need couples therapy.
Moses disappears on the mountain. According to my favorite Midrash, he went to visit Rabbi Akiva’s classroom, sat in the back row, and didn’t understand a word.
Apparently, the whole time-travel thing took a while. And down in the desert, the people wait.
Nothing terrible has happened. No catastrophe, no defeat. Just uncertainty. Too much of it.
So they build the Golden Calf. But as soon as Moses comes down the mountain, nobody seems to care about the calf anymore. No one even tries to stop him from destroying it. So maybe the real problem was the attempt to produce certainty instantly: a complete answer, a finished god. Something visible, something stable, something, quite frankly, more comfortable.
Simplicity feels like relief. When everything becomes simple, our responsibility disappears.
God does not appreciate the attempt. And like the people of Israel, he also reaches for simplicity: “Let Me destroy them,” he tells Moses. “We’ll start over – just you and me”.
And Moses says: no.
You cannot abandon them. You brought them out of Egypt. You made a covenant with them. If you destroy them now, it will say something not only about them – but about you. I’m not going to be your Noah. It’s not the same anymore. You made a promise. And if you wipe them out of history, wipe me out as well.
This may be Moses’ greatest moment.
And then God gives a somewhat bizarre answer:
“Okay. Listen.
Tell them to observe Shabbat. And Pesach. Let’s talk about firstborn animals. And some festivals”.
All these mitzvot all of a sudden – almost as if nothing happened.
But maybe that is exactly the point. After revelation, after failure, after crisis – what sustains a people is not miracles, it’s small repeating rituals: Shabbat, holidays, memory, things that quietly build a home.
And because Moses stood his ground, the covenant itself changes. The first tablets were written entirely by God. Moses smashes them, and then the second tablets are written by Moses. The covenant is no longer only something given from heaven. Human beings now participate.
Protecting the covenant, paradoxically, required breaking the symbol of the covenant.
And maybe that is why, later in the Torah, the Ark carried both: the whole tablets and the broken pieces.
I learned a beautiful example of this idea from my Talmud teacher, Yakov Z. Mayer: when our sages discuss the dates of Purim, the Talmud briefly suggests that Purim might fall even later in the month. The idea is immediately rejected, but in some Hasidic communities there is a custom not to say Tachanun for two days after Purim. Not because those days are actually Purim, but because they once almost were.
Not a holiday. Just the shadow of a holiday.
Judaism sometimes preserves not only what happened, but also what almost happened. The story that worked and the version that failed.
So what do we do when we want certainty, clear justice, a clean ending to the story – and reality refuses to give it?
The Torah answers: people will always be tempted by certainty, even if it means creating a false one. But Judaism allows confusion. It’s okay not to have certainty. We build fragile homes nonetheless.
Because real covenant, real homes, are built exactly this way: the whole tablets and the broken pieces.
Sometimes we imagine covenant as clarity. Sometimes we even turn the text itself into a calf – something fixed, solid, unquestionable.
But Ki Tissa shows something else, it shows a covenant that keeps unfolding. Long enough that, one day, Moses himself will sit in the back row of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom and scratch his head.
A covenant that survives ecstasy, violence (much violence), and moments when everything seems to collapse.
Nothing ever gets completely resolved.
And yet the story continues – because people keep carrying the pieces forward.
Shabbat shalom.
Much love to all, stay well,
Rabbi Lynn