And I Asked for Rags: Ki Tissa

My older daughter is in Mexico this week with her fiancé for a friend’s wedding. She texted me and asked if I had any special requests.

Special requests? As in “things to buy.”

I hadn’t thought about it, but then I remembered the floor-cleaning rags I brought home with me when I lived there back in the 80’s. I still have one, a hearty, cotton weave, and it’s starting to fall apart. You can’t get those anywhere in the U.S., at least not in New York. Who knows if they still even make them? Maybe they get everything from China these days like we do?

I know you’re probably laughing. Of all the things I could ask for, I want some rags!

But it wasn’t for lack of imagination. I could think of beautiful hand-blown glasses. Or some hand-painted Mexican scenes, or woven hangings. You know: indigenous handicrafts.

But, honestly, I not only have everything I need and more; I still have the gorgeous things I brought back from Mexico over thirty years ago.

This week in Torah, the people get nervous waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain. He’s been up there way too long talking to God.

In their anxiety, they gang up on Aaron, Moses’ brother, and tell him to make for them a god. Aaron commands them to give him their gold and he makes a molten calf.

God tells Moses to hurry down from the mountain, and he finds this mayhem.

In his fury, he takes the two tablets he has carved with God’s words on them and smashes them to the ground.

After some 3,000 die at the hands of their own people, brothers slaying brothers and other kin, neighbors slaying neighbors, Moses tells God to forgive the people their terrible sin.

Moses almost threatens, if you won’t, “please erase me from your Book of Life.”

So much about this story is disturbing. Does Moses regret having lost his temper?

Moses claims that God has commanded brother to slay brother. Does he now regret not having challenged God earlier? Otherwise, why speak up now, after the fact?

It is obvious that the Israelites lack the imagination to fathom the greatness of God; they can’t understand how God could be more than a carved image.

But Moses also lacks the imagination to understand the people’s fear and anxiety as they learn about this new “God” thing, or to find other ways of solving the problems among the people besides killing.

And Aaron lacks the imagination to figure out how to put the people off a little longer. Maybe he tries, but the story doesn’t tell us that.

But we can understand that, right? Because we also jump to do before thinking. We also lack imagination. We can’t fathom God either.

Not only that; we are so limited in our thinking that we can’t imagine solutions to the problems we have on Earth at this moment—the many, serious problems—beyond what we already know. We are living in such trying times, yet we each of us so limited in our thinking, that we only draw on our previous experiences.

In the parsha, after all has calmed down, Moses tells God to let God’s way be known to him; Moses really wants to wants know God. Perhaps this is a sign that he is trying to know how to do things differently next time—because his imagination does not allow him to know.

Sort of in response, God tells Moses to go carve out two new tablets to replace the ones Moses shattered.

By the end of the parsha, Moses’ face is glowing with God’s glory after being in conversation with God. This glow is frightening to the people, and Moses learns to cover his face so as not to freak the people out.

We, also, would like to really know God—and perhaps not be frightened by the glow of the Divine. We, also, would like God to show us the way forward.

Unfortunately, all we can do is keep trying to open our minds to a way forward that we can’t even imagine, so when we see the glow, we can be open to it and not turn our faces away.

Maybe then we can carve new tablets as well: tablets that have hewn on them the way for recreating the world in ways we can’t even imagine.

Going “back to normal” shouldn’t even be in our vocabulary.

Because as we know, often things have to be broken in order to build something new. Without them being broken, we often even lack the imagination to know that something needed fixing in the first place.

And the rags? Well, maybe they’re there to help clean up the mess, making a clean slate for the new tablets we will carve out for our future.