Of Bomb Shelters and Empathy | Parshas Ki Sisa

After the חטא העגל, Moshe went back up הר סיני for forty days and forty nights, just like the first time. But wait, he'd already received the entire Torah during that first ascent. He'd already mastered it all - so why did he need another forty days?!

The חידושי הרים explains that Moshe Rabeinu had to learn the Torah all over again, because he was now on a different level. He was in the category of a ba'al teshuva.

But Moshe Rabeinu didn't sin with the חטא העגל. He was up on the mountain the whole time. How could he be a ba'al teshuva for something he didn't do?

The Sfas Emes explains:

Moshe had such deep empathy for Klal Yisroel, who had sinned and done teshuva, that their journey became his journey. Their fall, their return, their transformation: he carried it with them. And so the Torah he'd already received had to be received anew. Because he was new. Because he couldn't stay the same when his people had changed.

There's a version of caring where you feel bad for someone. You see their pain, you acknowledge it, and then you go about your day.

It's sympathy.

It's nice.

It's limited.

And then there's a version of caring where you feel bad with someone. Where their struggle actually changes you. Where you can't just observe from the outside because somehow you've ended up on the inside, carrying part of it too.

Moshe Rabbeinu could have stayed away, spiritually pristine, and looked down at the mess below with disappointment. He could have received the second set of luchos as the same person who received the first set: unchanged, unaffected, and above it all.

But that's not who Moshe Rabeinu was.

He was so connected to his people that their downfall became his downfall. Their transformation transformed him. And so he needed a whole new Torah, because he was different. Because real connection changes you.

After חטא העגל, Moshe stood at the gate of the camp and called out: "מי לה׳ אלי" And the entire Sheivet Levi gathered.

Just Levi. Out of all twelve Shevatim.

The Chofetz Chaim, quoting the Medrash, explains what Moshe was really asking. Not "who believes in Hashem" - of course, everyone would claim that. But rather: "Who didn't play any role in this? Who didn't donate even a single golden ring?"

And outside of Levi, there was no one.

How can that be? No one else?
Here's the thing: Some people actively worshipped the עגל. Some just celebrated it. Some only gave gold, and some, and this is the part that gets me, some just stayed silent.

The Brisker Rov tells a story to explain the weight of that silence.

When פרעה consulted his advisors about enslaving the Yidden, three men were present: Yisro, Bilam, and Iyov. Yisro objected, and he merited joining the Jewish people. Bilam agreed, and he was eventually killed. Iyov was silent, he abstained, and he was therefore afflicted with suffering.

But why was Iyov punished? He probably thought protesting was pointless. פרעה had already made up his mind. What would speaking up accomplish?

The Brisker Rov's explained: When people are being hurt, badly hurt, you don't get to stay silent. Even if you can't change anything. Even if no one will listen. Even if your voice will be drowned out completely.

Because silence isn't neutral, it's a message. It says: I don't care enough to speak.

Even if all you can offer is a sigh, a sign that you see the suffering, that it matters to you, that you're not okay with it, that sigh is required. Because total insensitivity to another person's pain is itself a failure.

Here we have the two complete opposites: Moshe Rabeinu, who carried the Yidden's עבירה as his own. And Iyov, who stayed quiet when he should have spoken.

The reason Iyov stayed silent is that the enslavement of the Yidden wasn't his pain.

It was their problem, not his.

He thought he could observe it from a distance, assess the political realities, and decide that speaking up wasn't worth it. So Hashem gave him a different kind of education. What he got was pain so severe that he couldn't hold it in. Cries poured out of him, even though they accomplished nothing. And maybe, somewhere in that agony, Iyov finally understood: when you're truly suffering, silence isn't an option. It never was.

I notice this in myself, honestly. The things I stay silent about versus the things I can't stay silent about. It's a map of what I've let in and what I've kept at arm's length.

The friend who's struggling, do I really feel it with her, or am I just checking in because I should?

The neighbor who's going through something hard, am I carrying any of it, or am I just observing from a safe distance?

The news about people suffering somewhere far away, does it land, or does it slide off?

I'm not saying we can carry everything. We can't because we'd break. But I think this Parsha is asking us to notice: What have we let in?

What have we actually connected to?

And what are we staying conveniently silent about because we haven't let it touch us?

There's a pasuk in Mishlei that the Sfas Emes quotes in this context: "כמים פנים אל פנים כן לב האדם - As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected back to him by another."

It's about reciprocity. About how connection is a mirror.

But it's also about how we become like what we connect to. When you look into water, you see yourself reflected. And when you truly connect to another person - their pain, their growth, their teshuva - something of them gets reflected into you, and you change.

That's what happened to Moshe Rabeinu. He looked at his people, and instead of seeing them from above, he saw himself in them. Their journey became visible in his own face, and he had to receive the Torah again, because the person receiving it wasn't the same person anymore.

But here's where it gets tricky. Because there's another kind of empathy- the kind that looks like connection but actually misses the person entirely.

I saw something this week that I can't stop thinking about.

A mother in Eretz Yisroel, one of so many spending their days in shelters with little kids while missiles fall, posted something interesting.

She said, "It's very kind that people keep sending free coloring pages and kids' yoga videos. But what we actually need is someone to send us food. After a long day of sirens and fear and keeping small children calm in a bomb shelter, we just want to feed our kids without having to figure out how."

I sat with this for a while, to be honest.

Because here's what I think happens: We hear about mothers in shelters, and we feel something.

Real empathy. Real caring.

And then we think, what would help? And we imagine ourselves in that situation - cooped up with bored kids, needing activities, needing distraction - and we send coloring pages. We send yoga videos. We send what we think we would want.

But that's not what they actually need.

There's a version of empathy that's actually projection: we feel someone's pain, and then we filter it through our own experience, our own needs, and our own ideas about what would help. And we then end up responding to the person we imagined instead of the person who's actually there.

Real empathy, the Moshe Rabeinu kind, requires something harder than that.

It requires asking and listening and letting go of our assumptions long enough to actually see what the other person needs, even when it's different from what we would need.

It's the difference between "I feel your pain" and "I see your pain." One centers us, and the other centers them.

This happens with others in our lives, too. The friend who is going through a hard time - am I offering what she needs, or what I would need in her situation? The child who's struggling - am I seeing him, or am I seeing the version of him that makes sense to me?

It's so easy to get it wrong and to show up with coloring pages when someone needs dinner. To give advice when someone needs silence. To talk when someone needs us to just sit there.

Empathy is the beginning. But empathy that actually helps requires the next step: setting down our own reflection long enough to see theirs.

With the war going on in Eretz Yisroel, for some of us, it's tempting to let it stay far away, to read the news and feel a pang, and then move on with our day.

But if we're going to connect, really connect, the way Moshe Rabeinu connected, we have to let it in. And then we have to ask: what do they actually need? Not what makes us feel helpful. Not what's easy to give. What do they need?

Sometimes it's tefillah. Sometimes it's money. Sometimes it's dinner.

And sometimes it's just knowing that someone across the ocean hasn't moved on. That their pain is being carried, even from far away.

Ki Sisa is the parsha of breaking and rebuilding. Of downfalls and second chances. Of Moshe pleading for his people and Hashem revealing His שלוש עשרה מדות של רחמים.

But it's also this: a question about how deeply we're willing to be connected. Whether we'll stay safely on the outside, observing, judging, staying silent, or whether we'll let other people's journeys become our own.

Moshe Rabeinu chose connection even if it cost him forty more days.

But it also meant he could bring the Torah down to a people who had fallen and gotten back up. Because he'd fallen and gotten back up with them.