“I’m so sorry…”  These words have come my way twice in the last two weeks — from Americans I met at a family bar mitzvah in West Virginia, and from American relatives on an international family Zoom call last Sunday.

They weren’t “being Canadian” with their apologies. Rather, they knew we were Canadian and were dismayed about how America was affecting the world around them and me in particular in ways completely contrary to their personal values.

I’m reminded by the Torah that we always have two paths as a nation. The Israelites, right at the foot of Mount Sinai where Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments, had no problem pivoting quickly in a moment of frustration to build the golden calf.

This is a universal story. It is within every one of us to choose to live by values informed by the brilliant but invisible sense of spirituality represented by Sinai … or to grab instead at the base, short-term me-me-me material gains—the bright shiny things that are visible right in front of us, the golden calf.

Nations, like individuals, always have both paths available to them. Our Torah tells us that we will wobble back and forth, often from one extreme to the other. But we do somehow find our way back, even as Moses so often described us, in dismay and frustration, as a “stiff necked people.”

I’m grateful to those who reached out with their words. It tells me there is hope.

 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Allan