Ki Tissa
Reflection by Ronen Gradwohl
How can we let uncertainty in?
Eleh (these) are thy gods, O Israel (Exodus 32:4)
“In our parsha we read about Moses going up to Mount Sinai to receive the tablets of the covenant. He took some time to come back, and the Israelites, who grew anxious, created a golden calf to worship. They exclaimed, `These are your gods, O Israel.` What happened?
The Zohar has an amazing interpretation of this sin of the calf. It describes the secret upon which life and the world are built as a combination of two levels of reality: MI (who?), and ELeH (these). MI is about the mystery, the unknowable, the undefinable, and ELeH is about the manifest, the expressed, the defined. These two aspects, combined, make up the name of God, ELoHIM. When the Israelites exclaimed `These (ELeH) are your gods, O Israel,` they expressed their desire for certainty, definition, and comprehension, fearing the undefinable, unknowable, and uncertain.
After the past week I imagine you too feel or can relate to that.
But narrowing in on only the defined, without the mysterious and unknowable, misses the infinite, all-encompassing, undefinable MI, intrinsic element of divine reality, challenging yes - yes - and also endlessly rich in possibility. ELeH without MI is not ELoHIM, and is not the foundation of life and the world.
In our practice we place our attention on a meditation object—a sensation, sound, feeling—in the here and now. But what is it, this object of attention that is here, now? Can we see deeply into it, beyond our thoughts and definitions of it? Can we notice its amorphous, ambiguous, changing nature? Perhaps, when our mind is still enough, we can get a glimpse of its undefinable nature. Perhaps we can get a glimpse of the mysterious.
Shabbat shalom.”