This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is probably most famous for the story of the Golden calf, but after that, there is another scene in Ki Tisa that to me is one of the most poignant and emotionally honest moments in Moses’ life: Moses, in the midst of all that is happening, blurts out:

Hareini-na et k’vodcha Let me behold Your Presence!

For me as a religious person, this cry of desire to see God, to experience the divine, to know God is there is at the heart of all spiritual yearning. I mean, if Moses, who had just spent over a month with God at the Sinai mountain-top Airbnb, still feels a need to see God directly, how much more the rest of us long for direct communion with God!

But there is something that I think connects the Golden Calf and Moses’ outcry to behold God’s glory with his own eyes: the need for certainty in times of upheaval. I think it is very relevant to some of the social turmoil and division we are living with today.

Let’s think about the Golden Calf. Here were a bunch of people who escaped slavery in the middle of the night, only to be chased and attacked in the desert. Now they get to Sinai, and their leader, Moses, who in their view, showed up out of nowhere to fight with Pharaoh disappears on top of the mountain for over a month. Here they are, in the middle of nowhere, and the leader that brought them here has vanished.

They are told it is God who has freed them, but unlike in Egypt, this is a God no one can see or make an image of.  They need something certain, something they can put their trust in that is superhuman.  So, they latch onto the idea of making a golden idol to represent God, so they will have something tangible, concrete, and certain to guide them.

 As a society, we have been through unprecedented changes in the last 100 years, particularly in the last four years. Trust in our leaders and institutions has been lost. People feel they are going through a wilderness of change and upheaval, and what used to guide them is gone. We cling with white knuckles to the hope of clarity, to relieve the anxiety of not knowing. In those situations, people often turn to the desire for a strong leader, for someone to guide them with authority. In short, in times where the future is most uncertain is when people most crave certainty.

 We see this in the ascendance of more and more authoritarian leaders that rally people to unify in the name of the past in order to return to the past.  We also see it in latching onto conspiracy theories that replace the complex, messiness of recent social changes with a clear villain, a definite enemy, and having a clear enemy, whether real or not, seems to unify groups at times of change.

The Israelites were probably experiencing just such amnesia and nostalgia when they thought of making the calf. To me, it shows a longing to return to Egypt where things were clear, structured, and dependable.

Of course, as slaves what was dependable and structured was their oppression, but humans often prefer that to the uncertainties of freedom and the messiness of more decentralized forms of leadership.

People also long for clear, simple beliefs that explain why they are in the situation, who did this to them, and who needs to be gotten rid of in order to return to the way things were. This is the root of much hate in the world, and certainly at the root of the conspiracy theory known as antisemitism.

Moses also shows a need for something certain and tangible. He has dealt with the Golden Calf, talked God down from killing us all, and as God is discussing with him the next steps toward the promised land, Moses is struck by a sudden overwhelming need to just see God directly. Not to trust a voice, or a cloud, or a pillar of fire, but a need to just see God so he knows all that he has done is not just a figment of his imagination, or an outgrowth of his ego.

This was Moses who talked regularly to God, saw the burning bush and was up on Sinai, so if he needed that sort of proof, it is no wonder that so many of us have given up on faith because such a proof is not forthcoming.

We all long for certainty. For knowing what we should do without all the questions and grey area that life requires. But that longing for certainty also poses a great danger, for it leads us to forfeit our deepest values and truth so that we might cling to simple explanations that make our suffering, and the success of others make sense.

Whether we are giving up our critical thinking to latch on to authoritarian leaders, or versions of religion that are similar rigid and dogmatic, the danger is the same. Certainty claims to be able to lead us out of the wilderness when it seems to me, certainty is most dangerous wilderness there is.

There is, however, a crucial contrast between the Golden Calf and Moses’ cry to see God. The Golden Calf is demanded by a mob, of a new insecure leader who gives into the emotional rawness of the people’s demand. It is a public spectacle meant to give the people what they are demanding, no matter how wrong it is.

Moses’ demand is very different. It is intimate and personal. I just want to see you, God.

This is a cry of love, of a need to see the one we love.

This is the cry of one lover to another that we find in the Song of Songs.

This is the yearning in Lecha Dodi, of God to the Sabbath, and of people for the Shechinah. Boi Kalah Boi Kalah - Come O Bride! Come Beloved!

This is also the cry of the heart, the longing that underpins the spiritual lives of religious people, this longing for a moment of communion with the Divine, of filling the God-shaped hole in our hearts. This is a cry for intimacy with God, what Chassidism calls d’vekut, the desire to cleave to God, to experience God’s love directly.