Ki Tisa, “When You Take”, on Disability Day of Mourning
This dvar was originally written for a Disability Justice Torah Circle Shabbat dinner gathering in recognition of Disability Day of Mourning 2024, in memory of the 1,900 disabled people recorded as murdered by a parent or caregiver since 1980, and all those unacknowledged, and thus unknown to us, beyond numbering, since the beginning. May their memories be for a revolution.
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I struggled with the tone for this dvar, with balancing the grief and anger of Disability Day of Mourning, and the joy of welcoming Shabbat. I struggled with which parts of this parsha, the longest in the book of Exodus, to include. And I struggled, as I always do, to bridge the chasm between the G‽d of liberation I believe in, and the abusive G‽d I read too much of in our text. Yet, I landed on something surprisingly optimistic, for both the day and the contents of the parsha.
But if you’ve read it, you know, and if you’re planning to read it with today’s themes in mind, you should be warned, there are several moments where G‽d, often portrayed as the parent, threatens to kill the Israelites, G‽d’s children. In the context of this day of mourning for our murdered dead, these sections are particularly painful to wrestle with. I didn’t want to deny that this is present in our text, but I have not found a way to grapple with it myself.
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Instead, I want to begin here: Moshe is up the mountain, learning the whole Torah with HaShem, when the people feel he is late in returning. They ask Aaron to make a god for them, and he makes an idol: ha’egel hazahav, the golden calf. The people say this idol is the G‽d that liberated them from Mitzrayim, the narrow place! Aaron declares tomorrow a feast day of HaShem, and first thing the next morning, the people proceed in bowing to the idol, making offerings to it, and reveling.
This is some textbook idolatry, worship of idols — the big sin in Judaism — defined in the first three of the Aseret HaDevarim, the Ten Commandments, or perhaps more accurately, Pronouncements:
- Have no other gods before G‽d;
- Do not make, bow to, or serve a graven image; and,
- Do not swear falsely by HaShem’s name.
We have clear transgressions of all three pronouncements here: the people have taken another god; made, bowed to, and sacrificed to its idol; and profaned HaShem’s name by using it to refer to this false god!
But let’s consider these pronouncements beyond their most literal sense. My concept of idolatry has been clarified by Jewish Unitarian Universalist minister Ana Levy-Lyons’ book “No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments”, which describes them as practices of liberation. I personally understand them now not only as negative pronouncements—mitzvot lo ta’aseh — which describe forbidden acts, but as positive ones — mitzvot aseh — which prescribe right action. What to do, as well as what not to do, to be in b’rit — in covenant, or perhaps, right relationship, with G‽d.
Not to have any other gods before G‽d means to dethrone the false gods of oppression in all their forms. Not to make graven images means to actively seek instead the authentic reality of G‽d. Not to swear falsely by The Name means to speak the truth about G‽d.
And what do I mean by G‽d? I mean everything—all that exists, which, by its fundamental nature, seeks liberation.
This is what I believe, even though it is hard to believe it in a world plagued by oppressions like ableism — a world where parents and caregivers murder disabled children and dependent adults, simply because of their ableist beliefs.
We know what ableism is, but I wanted to bring in at least a portion of abolitionist community lawyer Talila A. Lewis’ working definition:
“A system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism.”
I understand this oppression as a form of idolatry. The cult of ableism worships the neurotypical, able-bodied ideal: the normative body-mind living independently is its central myth. Its rites of worship include both individual acts of aggression and systemic violence. We see the thread between these when a parent murders their own disabled child and the commentary — from the media and from individuals alike — casts the murderer as sympathetic and the victim as a “burden”.
The false promise of ableism is that if you believe and you worship, you will not get sick, you will not get hurt, you will not get old. Like all forms of idolatry, ableism turns its adherents away from reality.
One particularly pernicious graven image that ableism makes is the myth that a person’s “true self” is abled, that if only they could be cured they would be “freed”. Taken to its worst extreme, there are those who convince themselves that death will “release” their family member from their disability.
The cure narrative is often applied to Moshe by Torah commentators who claim he was miraculously healed by contact with Torah, as called out by Rabbi Julia Watts Belser in her book “Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole”.
Like Rabbi Watts Belser, I know Moshe is disabled. Not only does our text make his communication disability explicit, but the constant presence of his staff suggests a mobility aid, and the way in which he turns to see the burning bush suggests central vision loss. The Moshe I know is multiply disabled, and — after forty days and forty nights studying the entire Torah in khevrutah, in partnership, with G‽d—he returns to the base of the mountain as his whole disabled self.
And the scene that greets him is this: the people bowing and sacrificing to an idol, his brother calling this idol by HaShem’s name! Overcome with rage, he throws the two lukhot, the tablets of the law, to the ground and shatters them.
I can’t help but think Moshe’s anger is informed by the alienation he has experienced from his people on account of his communication disability. I feel Moshe’s anger here is justified, like our anger about ableism. Aren’t these the same people who said “We will do, and we will hear?” How easily they’ve turned back to the ways they learned from their oppressors. And, isn’t it fitting, when the people have broken the covenant so completely, that the material representation of the covenant should also be completely broken?
Some claim that G‽d approves of Moshe’s reaction. Later in the parsha, G‽d will tell Moshe to fashion replacements for the tablets which he shattered. Often, the phrasing “which you-shattered” is read as accusatory, disapproving. But, the sages Reish Lakish and Rashi both teach that when G‽d said “which you-shattered”, “asher shibarta”, the word “asher”, “which”, should actually be read as “yasher koakh”. So: “Congratulations on your-shattering!” I read into this midrash G‽d’s approval of disabled anger against the cult of ableism, G‽d’s encouragement of acting against ableism even if it breaks something valuable.
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Even on our Day of Mourning, I don’t want to focus solely on the systems which cause our suffering, because the murder of disabled people has often been moralized as a means to reduce suffering. I want us to remember now that the disabled experience also holds unique joys.
Disability justice writer, educator, and organizer Mia Mingus first described one of those joys in her essay “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link”. Very briefly:
“Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else ‘gets’ your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.”
I recognize hints of access intimacy in the interactions we are shown between Moshe and G‽d. One does not need to be disabled to experience access intimacy, and HaShem’s ability status certainly transcends categories, but, both Rabbi Watts Belser and my friend, Gittel Wallen, have taught me to read G‽d through a disability lens: recognizing the way G‽d needs aides to act upon our world, the way people talk to G‽d’s aides instead of to G‽d, as disabled experiences.
Moshe’s relationship with HaShem is revealed through the descriptions of most of their encounters at the Ohel Mo’ed, the Tent of Meeting, and a truly singular encounter on the mountain.
First, we are told how Moshe would speak to G‽d “face to face, as one speaks to a neighbor”. Then later, Moshe begs to see G‽d’s face, only to learn that no one can see G‽d’s face and live. I believe this apparent contradiction actually speaks to the intimacy and normalcy of interacting through protective barriers, such as masks. “Face to face” — intimacy, “as to a neighbor” — normalcy.
Moshe pleads again; G‽d relents, and imagines accessibility. Moshe can safely connect with G‽d the way he craves, without risking death from the sight of G‽d’s face: Moshe will go up the mountain alone, hide himself in a cleft in the rock, and G‽d will pass by, shielding Moshe with the palm of G‽d’s hand. As G‽d passes, G‽d chants the thirteen attributes of mercy:
“HaShem! HaShem! A G‽d compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin!”
What are we to make of this seemingly bizarre scene?
I’ve come to understand the thirteen attributes as G‽d’s physical — or perhaps, metaphysical — description. These lines which enrich our High Holy Days liturgy every year, are born of the access which G‽d and Moshe lovingly co-created.
I imagine that when Moshe immediately bows and prostrates himself upon experiencing G‽d in this way, he is overflowing with disabled joy. I imagine that joy — our joy — is as powerful a force for change as our anger and our grief. I imagine we will smash this idol, and its worship will not be found in our world, speedily, and in our days.
I invite you to fight against filicide and help bring on Olam HaBa, The World That Is Coming. You can learn more from Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s Anti-Filicide Toolkit. You can take action by finding out if your state’s hate crime laws include disability, and if they don’t, contacting your representatives about changing that.
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Thank you so much to my friends char, Sharyn, Ari, and Seraphina, for making this dvar possible.
There is a Sefaria sheet for exploring this dvar available here.
