“Magical Thinking in Uncertain Times,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

March 14, 2025 | 14 Adar 5785

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can listen to it as a podcast here.

We are in a time of uncertainty, perhaps moreso than ever before. The way we might know this is to look back, way back — to this week’s Torah portion.

The Israelites have escaped slavery. Both the escape and the years of slavery brought great anxiety and fear for their lives upon them. They arrived at the other side of the sea and worried whether they had made a dreadful error because their thirst and hunger clouded their ability to comprehend freedom. Standing then at the foot of Mt. Sinai with thunder and lightning overwhelming their senses, they shook like the earth beneath.

And this week, again, the uncertainty overtakes them with Moses out of sight wrapped in a cloud of divinity at the top of Mt. Sinai. Isolated and alone, the community feared for their lives and their future. Were they to die there? Some took the matter into their own hands and fashioned a god, a golden calf, they believed could protect them. Gods of stone, gold, or even flesh and blood are just idols projected upon as something made much more powerful by magical thinking. “He/she/they/it can save us from our turmoil; can create the stability we long for,” the magical thinkers wish as they accept behaviors that are the very cause of the turbulent lives they are living.

For the Israelite, the creation of a god, a very specific violation of one of the commandments — You shall have no other gods besides Me. You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image… — they had just recently heard and vowed to uphold — Na’aseh V’nishmah! We will do and we will obey, turned their situation into a tragedy. Moses came down the mountain to see them and their idol and immediately broke the tablets. Much punishment ensued. The incident of the Golden Calf would be remembered and cited as a moment of great transgression despite the uncertainty that had caused it.

And here we are today, five years since Covid sent us into quarantine. We quivered at the insecurity of the safety of our health and lives. We made it through yet not without difficulty and our own magical thinking — “we will be together for the High Holidays!” we wistfully wished in May 2020 only to realize the reality that we definitely would not be in the sanctuary by the time September arrived! Despite the vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of that experience, we found stability in community. Our leaders called our entire congregation (sorry if we missed you) to check to see how we were doing. We continued to celebrate life’s joyous moments and mourned and found comfort during the dark moments. We didn’t stop being a congregation. We did what we did differently, finding and discovering new ways to stabilize and move forward.

So here we are today in another moment in time when the earth shakes, when the future feels “like it is falling down in mid flight,” when there are those around us with a safety net full of holes and with some leaders regarded as indefatigable idols guided by magical thinking.

And again, we will hold on to one another as a community, guided by the values and morals of our tradition to love the stranger, to lift up the fallen, to heal the sick, to free the captive, and to keep faith in the possibility that together we can feel the stability by what we are able to do together.

Please know that your clergy is here for you. We want to be able to help one another and feel secure in being part of a larger whole that is our synagogue.

May you find peace of mind and soul on this Shabbat.

שבת שלום Shabbat Shalom

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and impressions. Share with me what you think here. Your email goes directly to me!

Rabbi Elaine Zecher

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