Parashat Ki Tissa: The Obstinate Ones

Obstinate – adjective.  Stubborn, intractable.  (The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English.  6^th Edition, 1992).

It’s a simple idea.  Around the country, pianos have been placed on rail concourses and anyone who is able to do so can sit down and play to their heart’s content.  I saw the instrument at King’s Cross a few years ago and couldn’t resist the urge to play it and I can tell you; it was a wonderful experience.

Somebody at Channel 4 had a brainwave.  The idea was that the broadcaster, Claudia Winkleman, would invite members of the public to play a piano without them realising that at the same time, they were being filmed.  Several railway stations were chosen as staging grounds for the talent competition, and these included St Pancras, Leeds and Glasgow.  Watching the proceedings, secreted away in a small room, were one of the world’s greatest classical pianists, Lang Lang, who was joined by Mika, an extremely talented popular musician.  They judged the pianists without their knowledge and at the end of the programme, all the ‘contestants’ were gathered together in a room by Claudia who introduced them to Lang Lang and Mika.  At that point, they described what had been happening and told them that they were all invited to be part of an audience for a concert that would be taking place at the Royal Festival Hall.  They then revealed the person they had chosen to perform at the concert based on the performance they had witnessed.

I was fortunate to start learning to play classical piano when I was six years old and it continues to give me a great deal of pleasure.  When I saw the programme being advertised, I told Stephnie that we ‘had to watch it’ as a result of the affinity I feel for the instrument.

If you have seen the show, you will know how wonderful it is.  People of all ages and backgrounds have entertained us with their talent but one young girl’s story and performance brought both of us to tears.

In Leeds, a city known for its love of the instrument, granted the annual international competition that attracts pianists from around the world, Lucy, aged just 13 took our breath away.  Her mother, Candice, told Claudia how her daughter had been born with cancerous tumours of the eyes which left her blind.  If this weren’t enough of a challenge, she was also diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Chromosome 16 duplication which affects her mental health and is demonstrated through traits of autism.

When she was younger, she was given a tiny keyboard to take to hospital.  She played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ so proficiently that the nurse listening thought that it had been pre-recorded until Candice told her that ‘Lucy was playing it’.

Daniel Bass works in a charity that assists blind musicians and he helped Lucy to develop her skills by placing her fingers over his as he played the piano.  He said that he had never met ‘anybody who has the same depth of understanding of music’.  In the programme, he brought her to the piano and gently placed her hands on the keys.

Lucy then proceeded to play Chopin’s Nocturn in B Flat Minor (Opus 9 Number 1) not only in a note-perfect manner but with the expression of a world-class pianist.

Watching her were Lang Lang and Mika who were literally dumbstruck by what they were witnessing.  Lang Lang, with tears in his eyes, said:

“Unbelievable that she can play this piece.  How did she study?  It’s incredible.  She plays so beautifully.  I have never seen anything like this.  Oh my Gd, Oh my Gd, this is impossible.  I’m speechless, I don’t know what to say.  I really don’t know what to say.”

Mika added:

“Technically speaking, she sang those melodies…turning a tuned percussion instrument into a breathing, breathing, living vocal instrument and it took a 13 year old girl to show us how to do that.  I feel very, very lucky.  If you had told me that I was going to live one of my strongest musical experiences of the past five to ten years sitting in a train station in Leeds, I would have been like completely out of your mind.”

At the end of the performance, I looked at Stephnie and our respective mouths were ajar in tandem with everyone on the concourse who was watching.  Suffice to say that a great number of tears were shed, both on and off the television.

It would be disingenuous of me to reveal what happened at the end of the programme and which ‘contestant’ ended up being chosen because that’s not the point of what I am describing.

Lucy communicates with the world through music.  Her obstinacy is manifested in the manner by which she refuses to let the challenges that she has faced, throughout her young life, silence her.  She talks to us in a different mode but what she says is just as powerful, if not more so, than the spoken word.

In this week’s Parasha of Ki Tissa, we read about the Chet Ha’Egel, the Sin of the Golden Calf, which happened a mere forty days after the giving of the Torah (and one of the events that took place on the 17^th of Tammuz, later to become known as the Fast of Tammuz).

After hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, they witnessed the destruction of the greatest Empire of the Age by Hashem who through Moshe Rebbeinu led them into the inhospitable wilderness.  Protected and cossetted against the elements, what they had seen at Sinai should have been at the forefront of their minds, but inexplicably, it seems to have dissipated in a very short amount of time.

‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’ as the old saying goes (which incidentally originates in Sefer Yirmiyahu – the book of Jeremiah.)

Not physically ‘blind’ in the sense that Lucy has been impacted, but morally blind to the extent that they demonstrate such atrocious behaviour.

Our freedom could have been extremely short lived.  In their many conversations recorded in Ki Tissa, Gd tells Moshe:

I have seen these people…and they are a stiff-necked people.  Now leave Me alone so that My anger will burn against them and that I May destroy them.  Then I will make you into a great nation (Exodus 32.19)

And later on, He adds:

Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey.  But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.  (33:3-5)”

Moral blindness on behalf of some of the people had led Gd to come to this decision.

Moshe’s response to Hashem seems counter intuitive.  He says:

“If I have found favour in Your eyes, my Lord, may my Gd go among us, ‘because’ (the Hebrew word for this  is ‘ki’) it is a stiff-necked people and forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as Your inheritance” (34.8-9)

Moshe wanted Gd to forgive the people for the very same attribute that He wanted to destroy them, namely their ‘stiff-necked’ nature or as I have referred to it above – their obstinate character trait, which is no-doubt a feature that we have been handed down through the ages!

Rabbi Sacks ztl cites a few Rabbinic interpretations of the word ‘Ki – because’.

Rashi understands it to mean ‘if’ so that we could read the verse as:

‘If they are a stiff-necked, then forgive them.’

Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni translate the word as ‘although’ or ‘despite the fact’.

Ibn Ezra suggests that the verse should be interpreted as

‘(I admit that) it is a stiff-necked people, therefore forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance.’

History has indeed demonstrated that whatever challenges are thrown our way, we doggedly refuse to let them defeat us.  The case of Purim is just one example of this.  Fighting against overwhelming odds in the Warsaw Ghetto and battling every enemy, however big or small, in The State of Israel is another.  We just refuse to give in.  Time and time and time again.

I saw a lot of myself as a Jew in Lucy.  In her spirit, her determination, her refusal to accept her situation and her desire to communicate with others in ways that may seem a little odd.  In her pride at what she could achieve, despite her challenges.  Lucy did not need to talk the same language that we do.  We got the message, loud and clear.

Rabbi Sacks concludes his piece with the following paragraph:

‘Forgive them because they are a stiff-necked people’ said Moses, because the time will come when that stubbornness will not be a tragic failing but a noble and defiant loyalty.  And so it came to be.’

(Covenant and Conversation: Exodus, ‘A Stiff-Necked People’ pp 251-258, Rabbi Sacks, OU Press/Maggid 2010)

Lucy’s physical blindness and our ancestors’ moral blindness did not stop them from shining a light onto others at the end of the day and illuminating their lives.  Lucy, through her exceptional musical talent.  She too is stiff-necked in the metaphorical sense (physically, she swung her head side to side in tandem with the music).  She is obstinate because she has had no choice but to be.  She revels in a joy that the rest of us can only marvel at.

As for the Jewish people, we, the stiff-necked descendants of those Israelites, can proudly attest to all the above.  The Torah’s music and spirit lives within us and we continue to shine its light to all who want to listen to its melodies.  In our own way, when you think about it, all of us are different facets of Lucy.

Shavuah Tov.