At some point during my teenage years in the 1980s, a fancy hotel in São Paulo began organising gastronomic festivals, inviting chefs from renowned international restaurants. In one of these events, in 1986, they hosted a dinner inspired by the restaurant in Rome where the famous Fettuccine Alfredo was born. My brother, a fan of the dish and eager to taste it in its original form, convinced my parents to take him. My mother, then, made me an offer: since the dinner was expensive and I was not particularly interested in the famous fettuccine, she would give me another gift of the same value. At fifteen years old, already certain of the career path I wanted to pursue, I accepted the deal and chose a book on computer graphics.
Computer graphics, which are now an integral part of our daily lives, were not as widespread back then. Beauty and the Beast, featuring a ballroom scene partially developed with computer graphics, was only released in 1991. Toy Story, the first full-length film created entirely using computer graphics, came out in 1996. At the time, I was fascinated by the short, creative TV videos created by Hans Donner, a Swiss designer who had established home in Brazil and become a reference in the field.
What captivated me about the book I received instead of the dinner were its beautiful images, but behind those incredibly realistic computer-generated models lay complex mathematical formulas. Computer Graphics is the field of Computer Science that transforms numbers, formulas, and algorithms into images that, over time, have become almost indistinguishable from reality.
How is it possible that numbers can describe physical reality? Max Tegmark, a Swedish physicist and author of Our Mathematical Universe, argues that the physical world is a “gigantic mathematical object.” [1] Similarly, Galileo stated that “Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe.”[2]
Mark Schaefer, author of The Certainty of Uncertainty, points out that one of the advantages of mathematics as a language is that it is far less ambiguous than other fields of knowledge. “There are not competing traditions of mathematicians who argue whether 2+2=4, nor are there dissenting mathematicians who maintain that 2+2=5 and consider the rest to be hopelessly misguided heretics.”[3] Thus, mathematics could be seen as a system in which certainty exists. However, Rabbi David Curiel argues that the certainty that every mathematical problem has a solution disappears when we delve into Advanced Mathematics.[4] In the same vein, illustrating how advanced mathematical studies differ from our everyday experience of certainty, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger stated that a completely satisfactory model of quantum reality was “not just practically inaccessible but even unthinkable.” He added: “To be precise, of course, we can think of it, but it is wrong.”[5]
In preparing this week’s sermon, I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on our certainties and doubts, on the space we allow for ambiguity, and on the times when we demand definitive answers.
This week’s parashah recounts that, after the liberation from Mitsrayim, the parting of the sea, and the encounter with the Divine at Mount Sinai, Moshe delayed his return with the Tablets for forty days. In his absence, the people constructed a golden calf and began worshipping it. Despite having experienced direct interactions with the Divine — encounters that our generation can only dream of — they still needed something more tangible, a more absolute certainty, which they found in the form of a golden statue.
In many passages of our tradition, the construction of the golden calf is associated with the pursuit of unquestionable, absolute certainties. This person is good, and that one is bad; one culture values life, while another worships death; this ideology is unquestionably superior to that one. In exchange for these absolute truths, we often forgo our critical thinking and our ability to question with sincerity. The Chassidic master Mordechai Yosef Leiner, better known as the Ishbitzer and author of Mei HaShiloach, wrote: “People’s anxiety stems from their immense fear of stepping into the realm of doubt, and for this reason, some have claimed that it would have been more comfortable had humankind never been created.”[6] According to Rabbi Leiner, God planted אילנא דספיקא, ilna desfeica, “the tree of doubt,” in this world, and this is the source of our anxiety.
In a way, Moshe descended from Mount Sinai carrying a different kind of certainty—the Tablets of the Covenant, a tangible representation of the abstract relationship between God and the people of Israel. Confronted with the worship of the Golden Calf, he threw the Tablets to the ground, shattering them. Those Tablets represented absolute certainty, sculpted and inscribed by God. With that act, Moshe extinguished any expectation that our tradition would be built on absolute answers.
Anyone who knows me knows that I relish playing the devil’s advocate, questioning almost everything, turning our certainties upside down until we are left with no golden calves to cling to. That is why the idea of worshipping our own certainties unsettles me deeply.
And yet, we live in strange times… Some people argue that vaccines contain microchips to control us; others claim the Earth is flat; some deny the science of climate change. Sowing doubt to reap conflict has become a profitable business, making some of the world’s biggest corporations immense fortunes. Instead of being used to embrace and understand, doubt is being weaponised to exclude; instead of saving lives, it is serving those who seek to put them at risk.
I wish I could offer a mathematical formula to distinguish between constructive doubts — those that help us refine our answers — and destructive doubts, which only generate discord without improving anything. Unfortunately, I let go long ago of the certainty I once had that my future lay in computer graphics, along with the belief in automated solutions to complex problems. There is no magic answer; each of us must rely on our discernment and critical thinking.
Towards the end of the parashah, God instructs Moshe to carve a new set of Tablets. This time, they would not be exclusively Divine but the product of a partnership between God and humanity. By design, doubt was embedded in this second set of Tablets.[7] The tablets were to be shaped by human effort, while the inscriptions would be Divine.
Moreover, Rashi tells us that the fragments of the broken Tablets were placed in the Ark alongside the new set. This way, we would be constantly reminded of the dangers of absolute certainty—represented both by the fragments and by the Golden Calf.
As if we needed more reminders, this week’s parashah offers yet another moment that challenges absolute rules. Moshe asks to see God’s face, and God replies: "I will make all My goodness pass before you and proclaim before you the name ה׳ and the grace that I bestow and the compassion I show, but you cannot see My face, for no human being can see My face and live." Yet, just nine verses earlier, the Torah states: "וְדִבֶּר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה פָּנִים אֶל־פָּנִים כַּאֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר אִישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵהוּ", "And God spoke to Moshe face to face, as one speaks to a friend."[8]
There are moments when we are almost certain we have encountered the ultimate truth, that we have seen truth itself face to face. Yet, even as the Torah recounts moments when this seemed to happen between Moshe and God, it simultaneously acknowledges that such an experience is impossible. The closest we can come is to see the Divine, truth, and certainty from behind, with a hint of doubt—just as God offered Moshe.
May all doubt always serve to advance, to embrace, to improve, to refine. In a time when we are increasingly prone to retreat into our own truths, may we remain open—to listen, to see, to consider, to question, to engage in dialogue. And in doing so, as a community, supporting one another, may we navigate the anxiety of living in a world of uncertainties.
Shabbat Shalom.
[1] Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe, p. 246, as quoted in The Certainty of Uncertainty, p. 108.
[2] Mark Schaefer, The Certainty of Uncertainty, p. 107.
[3] Ibid., p. 107.
[4] "Ki Tisa: Releasing the Golden Calf of Certainty", Asiyah: Jewish Community of Greater Boston, 5 March 2021. Available at: https://www.asiyah.org/news-1/2021/3/5/ki-tisa-releasing-the-golden-calf-of-certainty
[5] Martland, Religion as Art, p. 166, as cited in The Certainty of Uncertainty, p. 112.
[6] Mei HaShiloach Anthology, commentary on Talmud, Eruvin 13b:1.
[7] Rashi, commentary on Deuteronomy 10:2.
[8] Exodus 33:11.
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