Rest…or Idolatry? A Drash for Parashat Ki Tissa, 6 March 2015

We know we’re supposed to observe Shabbat.  It’s a principle repeated so often in the Torah, that there is absolutely no ambiguity.  Shamor vezachor.  We keep the Sabbath day, and we remember it.  It is a memorial to the act of creation.  And also a memorial to the exodus from Egypt.  It is so central to Judaism, that a Judaism without its observance at the centre would be…in-authentic. 

What if I told you that I conceded there are too many distractions on Friday night and Saturday morning to ever bring more Jews to shule?  Having made that realisation, I was going to discontinue the Friday and Saturday services, and institute one on Sunday morning.  Sound outlandish?

Outlandish or not, it’s been done.  In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, some American Reform congregations did just this.  The rationale was as I stated above, and more.  In many places in the US, we had so-called Blue Laws that limited the ability of businesses to open on Sundays.  If Jews closed their businesses or did not do their marketing and errands on Saturdays, they would have been hard pressed to make a living or function.  In response, some Reform congregations moved their weekly service to Sundays, when Jews were available to truly rest.  To sit in shule, free of distractions.  To worship at the same time as their Christian neighbours, but in their own way.  Since they were at rest, and rest is what Shabbat is all about, the called Sunday…Shabbat.

Did this bring new strength to Judaism?  Only in a very limited sense.  It was novel, but it did not seem authentic.  Thus it faded into disuse.  One more footnote to the history of how Jews coped with the world in which they lived.  One more reason for the traditional to scoff at Reform.

But what if I declared the weekly service on Sunday yet didn’t in-authentically call it ‘Shabbat.’  According to Jewish law, there are three services on every day of the year.  Let’s meet on Sundays for the appropriate weekday prayer.  The same pragmatic goal as above, but dropping the pretense of being able to change the day of the Sabbath.  After all, many traditional congregations host ‘Tefillin clubs’ where members of their community do just that.  

I have a little experience to share in this area.  When I finished my assignment at the US Air Force Academy, an Orthodox rabbi replaced me.  The leadership did not assign him and his family to quarters within walking distance of the Cadet Chapel, so Shabbat became a dilemma for him.  This, in addition to the fact that the cadets are often busy on Friday evenings preparing for inspections on Saturday.  And on Saturday having those inspections as well as parades and mandatory sporting events.  So he decided to start a Sunday morning program at the chapel, including a weekday worship service.

The result was quite interesting.  Some in the community accused him of trying to ‘Christianise’ his program.  Let me be clear:  this was an Orthodox rabbi, and he was doing nothing inauthentic.  He was simply responding to a situation that he could not change, trying to create the best program he could for the Jewish cadets with the hand he’d been dealt.  The pushback was strong.  He threw up his hands in frustration, quit the Air Force, and went to live in Israel.

So, I don’t have to guess the result if I would schedule a morning worship service on Sunday morning and call it the principle gathering of the week.  The community would not respond positively.  We refuse to concede the fact that the Jewish week by necessity revolves around the observance of Shabbat.  But if so, why is it so difficult for so many Jews, to actually do the Sabbath? 

Part of the Shabbat dilemma can be explained by our being out-of-synch with the world around us.  The world for which Saturday is about shopping and errands, and all manner of activities by the groups and clubs to which you belong.  Doing Shabbat by definition, precludes us from participating in what everybody else around us is doing.  But this is definitely not the whole story.

I say this, because in Israel – a country whose rhythms are Jewish rhythms – Shabbat observance is not universal.  In Israel a generation ago, there were few distractions on Shabbat.  Today, there is more shopping and entertainment available.  Once, those working on Shabbat in Israel were mostly in emergency and essential services.  Visit Israel today, and you’ll find far more businesses open, more people working.  So life in exile, where the week does not revolve around Shabbat, does not fully explain the ‘problem’ of Shabbat.

I think that the full story is found in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa.  It is found in the juxtaposition of two important passages.  One is very familiar to us, because it is part of our Friday evening service every week.

Every week we sing with great gusto:  Veshamru venei Yisrael / et Hashabbat / La’asot et Hashabbat / ledorotam berit olam.  The people Israel shall keep the Sabbath, doing the Sabbath for all generations, an everlasting covenant.  We know these words.  They are found in the 31^st chapter of Exodus.

The other juxtaposed passage is in the 32^nd chapter of Exodus.  Its words aren’t as familiar to us, but its content is.  It is the passage of the Golden Calf.

Moses has been long coming down from the Mountain.  The people know that something momentous is going on up there.  They see the smoke and fire.  They hear the rumblings.  They certainly understand that Moses is in Hashem’s presence.  They fear that the one who led them out of Egypt, is being destroyed in his encounter with the Deity.  If so, that would leave Israel leaderless.  Like a rudderless ship, adrift on a stormy sea.  And that’s a frightening prospect.

So they take over.  The collect all the gold they can find, and they construct an idol.  A molten calf.  There in the wilderness, in the shadow of the mountain where Moses is going head-to-head with Hashem, they recreate one of the Egyptian cults and engaged in a ‘holy orgy’ in front of the god they created.

When we reflect on this passage, we don’t tend to see ourselves in it.  After all, we Jews are iconoclasts.  We avoid images and objects in trying to encounter the Holy.  We would not imagine worshipping a golden calf.

 But the golden calf itself is a distraction.  If we’re honest, we can imagine ultimately trusting in other things for our ultimate happiness.  Because we all do it.  Even when we enjoy the forms of Judaism, we have lost the proclivity to trust Hashem to show us the way to personal fulfillment.

So here’s the message I see in the juxtaposition of Shabbat, and the story of the golden calf.  Happiness and security in Hashem requires letting go of our sense of control.  The truth is that we’ve got very little in control of our lives.  All the time, we feel ourselves being carried along in inexorable tides not of our creation or choosing.  And yet we are free to choose, more than we are ready to acknowledge.  We simply don’t want to let go of the fiction of being in control.

So we ignore, or minimise Shabbat.  We tell ourselves that we have no choice.  In reality, we have other things we want to do.  And we often choose those other things.  We would never countenance a Judaism that turns away from Shabbat.  But we can personally choose whether to do it or not.

In all this idolatry, in all this thinking that we’re in control but in reality other forces are controlling us, we are ultimately not happy.  But Shabbat is not going to make us happy.  However, it will give us true rest, refreshment and peace of mind.  Yes, it’s only for a day.  But that day will, if we let it, give us what we need to go about our tasks for the rest of the week.  But that’s not all.

Shabbat is training for a holy life.  We force ourselves to obey Hashem long enough to do Shabbat, something that will bring us pleasure.  And that ‘trains’ us to answer the Divine Voice when it comes to things that are perhaps not pleasurable.  The things in life that we know we should do, even if they’re hard to do.  By keeping Shabbat, by answering Hashem’s imperative to stop the insanity for 24 hours, we are preparing ourselves to answer the imperatives that seem calculated to make our lives more difficult…but are not.

For a long time as a young rabbi, I wondered if we were somehow missing the boat by over-emphasising Shabbat observance and not focusing on the great moral principles the Torah teaches.  I’m not the only rabbi who has pondered this question.  But like most of the others, a lifetime of struggle keeps bringing me back to an irrefutable principle.  It is so well expressed by the author Asher Ginsberg, known by his nom de plume Ahad Ha’am:  “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.”

The sequential juxtaposition of the Sabbath, and idolatrous practice that is found in this week’s Torah portion, is no accident.  As Israel keeps the Sabbath, the Sabbath keeps Israel.  If you feel that Jewish life in general is a struggle, the best advice I can offer is:  first master Shabbat.