Making sense of the sedra: Ki Tisa

“Israel hacked Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on Khamenei before launching an attack to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader.”

Sometimes you have to read a headline twice to believe it.

As we were in our synagogues last weekend reading Parshat Zachor – the Torah’s uncompromising call to remember evil and to eradicate it – Israel and the United States were doing just that, reportedly launching widespread strikes targeting Iran’s missile infrastructure, military sites and senior leaders.

It sounds like something lifted from Tenach: shadowy threats, existential enemies, and a small nation forced to act in order to survive. Many have said that what we are witnessing feels biblical in proportion.

And at moments like this, where there is individual as well as national anxiety and global uncertainty, we instinctively turn not only to news alerts but to God, looking for meaning as much as for information.

Moses did exactly that. After the catastrophe of the Golden Calf, with the Jewish people spiritually fractured and politically vulnerable, Moses seizes an extraordinary opportunity. He does not ask for strategy or military reassurance but seeks to understand God: “Show me your ways.”

God’s response is as cryptic as it is profound: “No living being can see me… you will see my back, but my face will not be seen.”

What does that mean?

The Ramban and Seforno explain that the limitation is not divine withholding but human capacity. It is not that God refuses to reveal himself; it is that we are not built to comprehend the fullness of his plan while we are inside it. To see the “face” of history – to grasp events in real time with perfect clarity – is beyond the reach of flesh and blood.

Even Moses, who spoke to God “face to face,” could only see the “back” – only understand with hindsight. While events were unfolding, their deeper architecture remained concealed.

That is a humbling thought.

We live in an age of instant footage, satellite images and hacked traffic cameras. We imagine that if we can see everything, we can understand everything. But the Torah reminds us that visibility is not the same as comprehension.

History, especially Jewish history, rarely makes sense from the inside.

We are called on to confront evil, but we are not promised that the confrontation will be simple, painless, or universally applauded. Nor that we will immediately perceive the full moral geometry of the moment.

While we hope and pray for peace and security, for the safety of soldiers and civilians alike, we yearn for a world in which headlines of war are replaced by news of reconciliation.

But in the meantime, we remember Moses’ lesson. We may not see the “face” of what is happening now. We may struggle to interpret the dizzying swirl of politics, strategy and power. Yet faith has always lived in that tension – acting responsibly in the present while trusting that the larger picture will one day come into focus.

At some point in the future, we may be privileged to look “back” and begin to understand. For now, we must look forward and place our trust in God.