When Expectation and Reality Collide: Parshat Ki Tissa and the Possibility of Israel

I was brought up to love Israel. The youth group I belonged to, Bnei Akiva, is affiliated with the national religious Zionist movement in Israel. The summer camp I grew up in, Moshava, part of that lineage, too– the themes of each summer, more often than not, centered around the values of building and protecting a Jewish homeland. I will never forget summer 2005, when the focus of our eight weeks up in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, was the disengagement from Gaza. We wore neon orange ribbons all summer long, to show our support for, stand in solidarity with, and mourn alongside the Jews who were being forced to leave their homes in Gaza. 

After high school, we were all expected to spend a gap year in Israel before heading off to college. Many of my closest childhood friends stayed in Israel, and went on to serve in the Israeli Defence Forces, the IDF. I knew families and friends who always had a bag packed, ready to run, ready to board an El Al flight to Israel, in case things became untenable for Jews in the diaspora. 

And so, I grew up with a feeling that while I lived here, I really belonged there. A feeling not unfamiliar to Jews generally, and reflective of the longing that Spanish poet, philosopher, and physician Judah HaLevi expressed when he wrote, my heart is in the east, and I am on the very edge of the west, in the 12th century. 

I grew up to believe that Israel was uncomplicated. Fundamentally a place of hope, democracy, connection, Jewish pride and sovereignty. I wasn’t aware of Palestinian culture, and didn’t fully appreciate the near-constant negotiation between identities, rights, and heritage that play out in almost every sphere of Israel society. I was encouraged not to ask so many questions about what was happening on the ground– but was told not to wander too far, when we visited my cousin’s in the West Bank city of Efrat. 

I was shielded from so much of the complexity, from so many of the things that make it possible to fully and honestly engage with all that Israel is. 

But as I got older, I began to encounter different stories about this place I loved so much. About this place that was central to who I was as a Jew. In college, I met religious Jews just like me who thought about Israel and Zionism differently. I met Palestinians, people who had grown up in an Israel that I didn’t know existed. Didn’t even know was possible. I started to meet people, to hear and really grapple with multiple truths about this place that for long, was so simple, so beautiful, and so essentially uncomplicated. I started to read more, engage more with the news coming out of Israel, and I learned that it was possible to be a Jew, to be a Zionist, and to be critical, to be concerned. That I could still hope in Israel, while also being serious and open-minded about some of its very real challenges. In college, I learned how to not be so afraid of my questions. And I learned how to fall in love with Israel all over again in a way that was much more honest. 

I have always identified as a Zionist. At first, because that's what my community expected. And now, because I believe that Zionism can be expansive and aspirational. That it can help us articulate a sense of hope and optimism and focus about the Israel that we want to see, an Israel that is worthy of the millenia of longing, and worthy of its own history. An Israel that prioritizes democracy, religious pluralism, the dignity and safety of Israelies and Palestinians. An Israel that values Jewish expression in all forms, that lovingly embraces its LGBTQ citizens. An Israel that is as politically, socially, and religiously diverse, as the Jewish people, and as the many other people who claim a connection to the land. 

For the last several years, I have worked hard to maintain my commitment to, or at the very least my hope that Zionism can be a force for good. But lately, I have struggled to reconcile that identity with the reality of what I see unfolding in Israel. 

The current Israeli government is the most conservative, right-wing, extreme government in the country’s history. We are seeing rising levels of violence, against Jews and Palestinians, a current campaign to overhaul the Israeli Judicial System, and essentially remove the last remaining check on Israeli Government power. 

For the past nine weeks, over 400,000 Israelis have taken to the streets in protest. Calling for change, calling for an end to violence, calling for the kinds of investment in democracy that all of Israel’s citizens and residents deserve. These have been the largest protests in Israeli history. And the most diverse. Former military officials, former soldiers, regular Israeli citizens who were not previously politically active are putting their values to work, wearing them proudly on their sleeves, and calling on the Israeli government to think carefully about its next steps. About this moment of potential existential rupture for Israel and consequently for Jewish people around the world. 

We are past the point of hyperbole. Israel is nearing its breaking point. And we have a responsibility to talk about it. 

In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Ki Tissa, the Israelites commit the sin of the Golden Calf– the most essential betrayal of G-d’s relationship with the people. Moshe is nearing the end of his stay atop the mountain. The people at Sinai’s base are growing restless, fearful, reasonably and understandably anxious about their future. They wonder if Moshe will ever come back down the mountain. Will Moshe return and bring back the fruits of revelation? Where will we go from here?

Exodus chapter 32 begins:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.”

This is one of the most famous stories in the Torah– a text that so many of us are deeply familiar with– and yet, as is the case with so much of our biblical tradition, I noticed something new this time around, that I hadn’t before. 

Our Parsha opens on the top of the mountain. G-d continues to give Moses the instructions for the Mishkan, outlines the sacrificial service, even instructs Moshe to conduct a census. G-d tells Moshe that Betzalel and Ohaliav will help in the construction of the Mishkan, that he will have the help and support he needs to see this building project through to the end. 

We begin our Parsha in yet another moment of intimacy and learning between G-d and Moshe. Isolated and safe at the top of Mount Sinai, not necessarily aware of what is brewing among the people down below. 

And just before the text transitions into the incident of the Golden Calf, G-d says the following:

You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy for you. One who profanes it shall be put to death: whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off from among kin. Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, holy to יהוה; whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days יהוה made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day [God] ceased from work and was refreshed.

And:

Upon finishing speaking with him on Mount Sinai, [God] gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God.

What is Shabbat, if not a dream of the world perfected? A dream of closeness, connection, and trust between G-d and the people? Shabbat is the ultimate expression of belief in the world as it ought to be, it is מעין עולם הבא– a taste of the world to come. 

And so just before these 40 days and 40 nights come to an end, G-d says to Moshe, I want more of this, I want this exact feeling to last. I want to be close to you, to the people. Whether that closeness is made possible by the Mishkan or the observance of Shabbat– before this unique period of attachment between G-d and Moshe comes to an end, G-d gives Moshe a small window into what is possible, what can be. 

And then, Moshe hurries down the mountain, sees the people dancing around and worshiping the golden calf, and what does he do? He throws the tablets down to the ground, shatters the Luchot, shatters the covenant we had just received and created with G-d. 

So much of what is tragic about this story stems from the radical disconnect between expectation and reality. Yes, Moshe smashes the Luchot because he is overcome with rage and disappointment, and real grief. But I think that sense of all-consuming anger is deeper than simply witnessing the people behaving badly– I think Moshe’s anger grows out of the incompatibility of G-d’s vision for the people and the people’s actions. 

When the expectations above, in the Yeshiva shel Maalah, do not match the realities below, in the Yeshiva shel Matah, things go haywire, and the covenant is shattered, ruptured. 

The Jewish world is in a similar moment of rupture vis a vis our relationship to Israel and Zionism. For so long, the expectation, the hope, the dream of Zionism was something to cherish, to delight in. It was a dream that gave Jews around the world something to unify around; it motivated us to work hard, to build something new and our own, to make the desert bloom. 

But now, we are coming up against the same discord, the same incompatibility that Moshe did when he came down the mountain: the hope of an Israel perfected now directly at odds with the positions and direction of the current Israeli government. 

I am not ready to give up on Israel. But I am concerned. I am worried that the dream is fading fast, and that we are already in the midst of an existential crisis. So I offer these thoughts as an invitation: Please, let’s have this difficult conversation together as a community. Let’s process the fear, the anger, the worry, and the hope that I know we are all feeling on some level. We are nearing the point of no return, and we cannot be silent or afraid anymore. 

We need to talk. 

Luckily, the Israelites are given a second chance. Moshe pleads on their behalf, and G-d ensures that the covenant can endure. Moshe goes back up the mountain for another 40 days and 40 nights, and rewrites the story of the Jewish people. 

If we are lucky, we will be given a second chance, to take back that which has been lost, that which has been squandered. If we are lucky, we will be given a second chance to rewrite our story, to right these most basic wrongs, and go forward into a future for Israel that is morally guided, just, and worthy of G-d’s covenant. 

Shabbat Shalom.