Rabbis Message: Ki Tisa and Purim and Uncertainty

This week in the Torah, Moses has ascended the mountain. The people have witnessed revelation unlike anything in human history. And then: silence. For forty days. No update. No reassurance. No visible leader descending the mountain with clarity. The Torah notes: “The people saw that Moses was delayed…” (Exodus 32:1). The Hebrew word in this verse, boshesh, means to tarry or to wait, but it also carries shades of shame and disorientation. The people do not simply grow impatient. They grew unregulated. Their faith, their nervous systems begin to unravel. And so they do something deeply human. They attempted to build certainty during an uncertain time. They gathered gold. They convinced Aaron to do something that they knew was wrong. They declare: “This is your god.” and created the Golden Calf. However, in this instance, I would argue that the Golden Calf is not idolatry. It is anxiety management in the face of trauma and profound uncertainty.

Modern psychology has a term for what the Israelites experience: intolerance of uncertainty. Research consistently shows that it is not necessarily negative outcomes that distress us most — it is the “not knowing”. When our world seems scary, when the future is unclear, the brain’s alarm system activates. We scan for threat. We seek closure. We grasp for something, anything that could be solid. Studies on anxiety disorders have found that people often prefer even a bad answer to no answer at all, because ambiguity keeps the stress response activated.

Silence stretches. The body floods. We reach for relief.

In that light, the Golden Calf becomes tragically recognizable in our modern world. How often, when timelines shift or leaders are absent or outcomes are unclear, do we rush to build our own calves? We doomscroll; we make premature decisions; we fill silence with speculation; we cling to conspiracy or anything that resembles clarity.

The Torah’s ancient wilderness this week, the deep uncertainty that the Israelites felt, suddenly seems contemporary.

Ki Tisa sits in the middle of the wilderness journey. Egypt is behind them. The Promised Land is not yet in view. The beginning of revelation has happened, but the relationship is still forming. It is a profoundly liminal moment. And if we widen the lens from the Torah portion to the holiday we are celebrating this week (and join us for Shabbat ShaPurim and Purim in the Powder!), we see that the Book of Esther is also a story of liminality. God’s name never appears in Esther. The divine presence is hidden. The people live under decree and uncertainty. And yet Mordechai says to Esther, “Mi yodea — Who knows?” (Esther 4:14). Not: “This is the plan.”  Not: “Everything will work out.” But simply: “Who knows?”

In both Ki Tisa and the Book of Esther, the people are asked to live without visible reassurance. The question is not whether uncertainty will come. The question is what we will build in response.

When we feel powerless, we crave control. When we feel afraid, we crave something tangible or something that helps us detatch from the challenging liminality of this moment, moving our minds back to something familiar. In moments of communal anxiety — political instability, collective grief, health fears, or war — our bodies crave what feels immediate and solid. The emotional equivalent of that Golden Calf glitters. Psychologically, building a metaphorical calf often gives short-term relief but long-term damage. False certainty may calm the nervous system briefly, but it fractures trust, weakens resilience, and distances us from deeper sources of strength. In place of this choice, our Torah portion of the week Ki Tisa asks us to pause and ask: What calves am I tempted to build right now?

Psychologists who study resilience and anxiety consistently point to a key capacity: the ability to tolerate uncertainty. This does not mean liking it. It means remaining steady enough to avoid impulsive reaction. Fortunately, in moments like this, Judaism has been training us in this for millennia.

Shabbat teaches us to stop producing and solving, even when the world is incomplete. The Omer – the spiritual season between Passover and Shavuot – teaches us to count patiently toward revelation, day by day.  The wilderness that we read about in the Torah during this season teaches us to live on manna, even if we are only able to collect enough for just today. Building this spiritual endurance in the face of uncertainty is a skill we can acquire. 

So, what else do we do in order to cultivate this spiritual endurance in the face of uncertainty? 

Purim adds something essential to this conversation: joy. Not as denial. Not as a distraction. But intentional joy as resistance to fear. Research in positive psychology suggests that positive emotions broaden our thinking and increase cognitive flexibility. Joy does not eliminate uncertainty, but it increases our capacity to hold it. Purim asks us to engage in all of the ways that we can bring joy into our lives: Feast. Give gifts. Care for the poor. Wear costumes. Laugh.

It is as if this season in Jewish practice is reminding us that when destruction and uncertainty hang in the air, strengthen your nervous system with connection and delight. Joy is not frivolous. It is psychologically protective; it is the mitzvah of the moment to support our own spirits.

I hope to see you at our Purim celebrations soon.