I’m so excited for this coming Shabbat. While we’re calling this weekend a rabbinic installation, it’s about so much more than that. It’s a chance to celebrate everything that makes Chevrei Tzedek the gem of a community that we are, to show off a little bit, and to publicly acknowledge the relationship that we’re developing together with me as your rabbi.
That relationship is a sacred one and so we look to our sacred texts for the values and ideals that form its foundation. Parashat Ki Tisa might not seem the most obvious place to look for those values and ideals, given that much of the narrative is concerned with the sin of the Golden Calf and its devastating aftermath. But within and around that difficult part of our story, we find a number of important components for creating and sustaining a sacred relationship. In describing Moshe’s convenings with God in the Tent of Meeting, the text relates: “God would speak to Moses face to face, as one person speaks to another.” (Exodus 33:11) This relationship is close, intimate, personal. When you speak to someone face to face, you give them your attention. You see them as they are, without pretense or prejudice. In his elucidation of this verse, the medieval commentator Ḥizkuni notes another important feature of this relationship - its parity. To speak face to face, as one person speaks to another, both parties must be on the same level. Ḥizkuni comments that, in their moments together in the Tent of Meeting, either God came down to Moshe’s level, or Moshe ascended to God’s level, allowing each of them to take full and equal part in their conversations. Sacred relationships are honest. They are deep. They are about making room for the other, not asserting power. Face to face, however, does not mean all-access. We read later in this same section of the Parashah that Moshe beseeches God, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!” (33:18) The Hebrew for Your Presence, כְּבֹדֶךָ, is translated and interpreted in a number of ways - God’s unfettered self, God’s heavenly glory, God’s fundamental operating principle. What links each of these translations and interpretations is the idea that Moshe is asking to see God’s most personal side, “the man behind the curtain,” as it were. And God says no, explaining that no person may see that part of God. Instead, God tenderly promises to show Moshe all of God’s goodness, and places Moshe in a rocky cleft when passing by, so that Moshe can see and feel these parts of God’s presence from a place of protection. Sacred relationships respect people’s boundaries. Asserting and honoring those boundaries, as we see with God and Moshe, is an act of kindness and love. Moshe spends a lot of time in conversation with God in the Parashah: 40 days of carving new tablets, reestablishing the covenant, teasing out the parameters of how the people would relate to God and how God would relate to the people. When Moshe finally returns to the people, “the skin of his face [is] radiant, since he had spoken with God.” (Exodus 34:29) He is permanently changed by his encounter with the Divine. God’s presence is described in a number of different places in the Torah as fire and light. It’s almost as though Moshe’s glowing face is the result of a little bit of God’s fire rubbing off on him. Sacred relationships change us. We leave pieces of ourselves on each other, and when we do it well, our light grows. As we prepare to celebrate together this weekend, I am inspired by the sacredness we have already discovered in each other and am looking forward to continuing to grow and deepen our relationship. May we continue to bring out the light in one another. Shabbat shalom.
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Shabbat MessageA message from Rabbi Jacobs to the Congregation each Shabbat. Archives
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