Ki Thissa

Ki thissa

A word on the welcome

I have throughout my life always looked forward to the time when I would deliver a D’var Torah and I said to myself, I will research and prepare a full on, hand clapping, fist pounding sermon to inspire and move. As good as if James Brown or Mary Robinson had been a Rabbi here with nodding heads aplenty and maybe a tear of joy.

But if there is one thing I have learnt in the welcome by this community it is not what it said about how to live our lives or interpret Torah but the simple fact of companionship that makes it special.

What I find welcoming about NLPJC is that everyone is clear about their beliefs and that – and here’s the best bit – accepting of others’, even thought there maybe a difference of opinion. And do we have differences?

In the Parashah, the Eternal one reveals himself to Moses in a cloud and proclaims his attributes.

However we individually perceive Moses’ experience on the mount, I often think of the attributes of God and wonder at their meaning.

But first Moses has to make his own tablets to replace the ones he smashed during the incident of the golden calf.

In smashing the first tablets that contained the Ten Commandments (Charlton Heston moment) is there a bit of act consequentialism at play here? Was Moses morally right to behave in that way to benefit others?

Moses then is asked to make his own tablets. Hew stones like unto the first…

Like free riding, how much of an effect will Moses single action have? Compare to say climate change, will my own single actions push the planet over the edge? The piddling few grams of carbon if I leave that light on.

Maybe there is a message here of how moral or ethical is it to free ride? We need to accept maybe that our actions however small do impact on everything.

The tablets smashed and made again were not something small, their impact has resounded throughout history.

This brings me to think about morals and ethics and the next verses when Moses climbs and G-d speaks from inside the cloud.

“G-d passed by before and proclaimed, ‘Adonai, Adonai, compassionate, Omnipotent, merciful and kind, slow to anger, with tremendous resources of love and truth.”

According to Maimonides, the 12^th century philosopher, these attributes are not to be taken literally, but understood as attributes of the Eternal which inform us not ‘who’ G-d is but how G-d acts.

And I think this is probably what is meant in the Torah, Genesis 1:27 when it explains that humanity is created in G-d’s image.

God acts in this way, so should we.

Compassion and kindness, mercy justice and truth.

We have the capacity within us to emulate and live these attributes ourselves, which is probably for me a key thing learnt from the Torah.

It’s about ethics.

As Jews we can argue that all of our actions should be guided by what can be called ethics.

Ethics can be defined as a code of morals or more simply, right or wrong behaviour.

Going back to what I said at the beginning, the ethics or codes of behaviour in this community, especially the compassion and kindness, the understanding of each other’s differences is what shines and those values should be cherished.

Don’t let them go.

Shabbat shalom