I walked across the border to Mexico, but it was as if I had stepped onto another planet. There were no modern buildings in 1976 Tijuana.  I moved through the streets and soon found myself pushed along by a huge crowd making its way to the Plaza de Toros, the bullring. With Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon" on my mind, I decided to join the crowd and watch a live bullfight. It was horrible. The Plaza was definitely not the legendary La Maestranza in Seville. It reflected the Tijuana outside its walls. The Toreros; the matador, his picadores and banderillos, were dressed in shabby and dull uniforms. The people were drunk, bloodthirsty, and out of control. I was convinced that I had just observed a reenactment of the Golden Calf. I would have shattered any available Two Tablets. I ran out, determined to never watch a bullfight again.

Years later I found myself standing outside the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas in Madrid watching huge screens playing videos of famous bullfights. There was pomp and ceremony. People were dressed as if for the opera. It was far more elegant than the horror I saw in Tijuana, but it still ended with the killing of the bull. It was more bearable, more civilized than the Golden Calf, but still not for me.

There is another form of bullfighting in Nîmes, France, the "course camarguaise," a bloodless spectacle (for the bulls) in which the objective is to snatch a rosette from the head of a young bull. Pure artistry and acrobatics. A dance. Nîmes, Madrid, and Tijuana: The same idea expressed in such different ways.

The crowd partying around the Golden Calf got to see their bullfight all the way to its end: Moses came down from Sinai, entered the Plaza as Matador, killed the bull, and then dealt with the crowd.

Were not Sinai, the Mishkan and the Golden Calf three different expressions of the same idea? How did the people devolve from the elegance and majesty of Sinai to the Tijuana spectacle of the Golden Calf? How does worshipping God devolve from the magnificent Yom Kippur Service to the bloodthirsty and wild crowds stoning a woman to death in Iran, just another Tijuana bullfight? How do we travel from the intimacy of prayer to intOléOlérance and insensitivity, from Nîmes to Tijuana, from Sinai to the Golden Calf?

"And the nation saw that Moses had delayed in descending the mountain (Exodus 32:1)," and they were terrified that they were abandoned in middle of the desert. They wanted some sense of control, so they made their own "god." The combination of religion and fear topped with a need to control life led to the violent orgy of the Golden Calf, just as it does to the scenes in Iran and in the hateful intolerance we unfortunately witness, or the cruel insensitivity we too often observe. The people, so frightened, desperate to assert control, soon lost control; "and they got up to revel (Verse 6)." Moses, "saw the calf and the dances (Verse 19)," and "his anger flared. He threw down the Tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain." Moses responded to the wild dancing, the loss of control that accompanied the Golden Calf. The original "bull" fighter did not want the Tablets, i.e. a relationship with God, to have any role in a Tijuana religion. 

Moses feared how easily we can corrupt a relationship with God, "Moses would take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp... whoever sought God would go out to the Tent of Meeting (Verse 7)." Moses changed the rules of engagement. We now had to begin our relationship with God by seeking the connection, outside of our milieu, out of our control. We learned that we had to rise to the occasion, "The entire people would rise (Verse 10)." That great Matador did not shout out "Olé'" but "Oleh," "Rise, reach higher, never lower!" A relationship with God should have dignity and grace, humility and joy, passion artistically expressed.

No wonder the name of this week's portion is "Ki Tisa," "When you raise the people." If we do not rise to the occasion of serving God we may end up with a religious form of a Tijuana bullfight. Our mission begins with "Oleh," and "Ki Tisa," a desire to reach higher, to live with greater dignity, for it is only with such a commitment that we can find the elevated life we seek.

We begin our prayer by taking three steps back, outside of the "camp," pause and reflect on elevating all we do, and then three steps forward, in my mind, three steps up. Religion can be as dangerous as bullfighting. The key is in our commitment to "Ki Tisa," or "Oleh!"

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg
President 

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