Who Are You!!
Though last weeks Torah portion explored the pathology of the “Golden — Calf Neuroticism” of our ancestors, it must be read paradigmatically as well. Just as theirs was an exploration of selfhood so is ours as well.
The central question is not really about the Jewish people breaking the “Big Ten” within ten minutes of receiving them. The Ramban suggests that they built the golden calf as a replacement for Moses, not G-d.
Perhaps the narrative, in highlighting the unhealthy “acting out” reaction to the sudden disappearance of Moses, is encouraging us to explore our expectations in our most important relationships, and our own unhealthy “Golden Calf” reactions when we feel abandoned and alone.
The question that needs to be asked is central to the health of them all. What are we looking for in our marriages, our friendships, and our teachers? If we are looking to them to act as our surrogate selves then we are setting ourselves up for a major fall. The story of the Golden Calf presents the perfect boundary measuring paradigm. Where do the lines of ones self end and the lines of an other begin? If they are blurry, then those lines might need to be redrawn. The belief that everyone was put here into the world for a reason means that there is a specific need for the energy and light of each person, even if they share a similar kind of light. Like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike. There is a beautiful Chasidic proverb to this effect, “The day that I was born into this world is the day that G-d decided that the world could not survive without me”. Shining ones own light doesn’t need to come at the expense of the shining of another. When that happens we rob the person of the chance to be G-ds missing puzzle piece in the world.
Furthermore, what happens to us when who we are is bound up in someone else, and then that person vanishes? Though this is hopefully only a theoretical question for most of you, its an important one. Who, or what we be in the aftermath of that kind loss?
I think one of the most important conclusions we can draw from this story is the need to differentiate between a healthy and safe surrender of the self on the one hand, and an utter loss of self on the other. There is often a very fine line between love and abuse. The simple test. Do you surrender willingly, or is it demanded of you. When Moses removed himself, he did it out of love, a rehearsal for when he would indeed no longer be with them. Teacher par excellence that he was, he knew this was never about him. He wanted them to be able to enter Israel unaccompanied, walking on their own two feet. He was also teaching us that the greatest teacher is the one who can deploy students into the world with a full of array of tools to navigate confidently, effectively, and thoughfully through whatever awaits across ones “Jordan River.”
What happens though to a person who has connected to their purpose in life — someone who hasn’t subcontracted their identity to others, and yet somehow has that taken away, or conversely, what happens to a person who is on that path but has yet to figure out exactly what light they are meant to shine into this world?
Honestly, I’m not sure.
I don’t know how a person can live without purpose. But is it not possible that sometimes the purpose itself takes on unhealthy proportions? Can the light that we are meant to shine in this world shine too brightly, like the rain that Choni prayed for that was too strong? Can our obsession with purposefulness itself be an unhealthy Moses figure in our life that obliterates our sense of self?
The beginning of the portion where Moses is told to count everyone, might speak to this, and balance this out a bit. Perhaps the text is meant to lead us as well to an altogether different place of self awareness where we are intrinsically valuable, regardless of our “wealth or poverty” — regardless of what we have gained or lost, our existence itself constitutes our greatest light. The Half Shekel still equals the same “Ten Gayrah”(a currency with a value of ten, paralleling the Kabalistic doctrine of Ten spiritual powers that constitute the crux of each soul) even stripped of our human and spiritual ties, alone and purposeless, we are still valuable to G-d, we still count.
Much Love
Rabbi Yossi