Shabbat Shalom.
This week feels heavy.
Just days ago we were celebrating Purim ; costumes, laughter, Megillah, joy. And almost immediately aftter, we find ourselves watching the news about war with Iran, missiles, threats, escalation.
The emotional whiplash is real.
And then we open the Torah to Parashat Ki Tissa, and it’s not light reading.
The Golden Calf.
A people panicking.
A leader absent.
Fear filling the silence.
The Israelites don’t build the calf because they are evil. They build it because they are afraid. Moshe is gone. The future feels uncertain. They cannot tolerate not knowing what comes next.And if I’m honest, that feels familiar.
This week I’ve felt that tension as your rabbi. People asking: What does this mean? Is this going to spread? Is Israel safe? What happens next?
And the truest answer is: we don’t fully know.
Ki Tissa teaches us what fear can do. Fear can make us reactive. It can make us grab for certainty. It can fracture trust, with leaders, with each other, even with God.
But Ki Tissa also teaches something else.
After the breaking comes rebuilding.
After the first tablets shatter, there is a second set.
The covenant does not disappear because the people faltered.
And this Shabbat is also Shabbat Parah.
We read about the red heifer, the mysterious ritual of purification before Pesach. The Torah acknowledges something profound: contact with death, with loss, with fear, changes us. It leaves a residue.
Shabbat Parah does not pretend that everything is fine. It doesn’t rush us to redemption. Before Pesach, before freedom, we have to name what we are carrying.
Right now, many of us are carrying anxiety. Some of us have family in Israel. Some of us feel the old historical vulnerability rising in our chest. Some of us are just exhausted by a world that feels perpetually on edge. The Torah doesn’t say, “Don’t feel that.”
It says: There is a path through it.
I also can’t ignore the timing.
Purim is the story of Persia: what we now call Iran. The ancient threat of annihilation. The vulnerability of Jews in exile. And now, thousands of years later, we are watching headlines about conflict with that same region. History doesn’t repeat itself in simple ways. But it echoes.
And here’s what I take from all of this: In the Purim story, the Jewish people don’t survive because fear disappears. They survive because they gather. They fast. They pray. They act. They refuse to give up on each other. In Ki Tissa, Moshe doesn’t walk away from the people in disgust. He stands in the breach for them.
In Shabbat Parah, we are reminded that even when we feel spiritually “impure”, shaken, unsettled — we are still part of the covenant.
As your rabbi, I feel this deeply. Part of my role is not to predict geopolitics. It’s to help us remain a covenantal community when the world feels unstable. To make sure fear does not become our Golden Calf. To make sure anxiety does not replace our values. We can be worried and faithful at the same time. We can pray for Israel’s safety and pray for peace for all innocent people. We can feel shaken and still choose to stand together.
That is the work of this Shabbat.
Before Pesach, before redemption, we acknowledge the fear and we refuse to let it define us.
May this Shabbat steady us.
May it protect those in danger.
May it soften hardened hearts.
And may we merit days when Purim joy doesn’t give way to war headlines.
Shabbat Shalom.
