A Terrible Fall

A Terrible Fall
D’var Torah for Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11—34:35)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (“when you count”), is crucial to the understanding of the relationship between God and Israel. The storyline itself is dramatic enough, but the lessons of the parasha are overarching, reaching across the ages, defining how we may and can make God’s presence appear in our own daily lives.

Ki Tisa begins with Moses being told to take a census of the people, not by counting heads but rather by collecting a half-shekel from each male 20 years and older (the ancient shekel comprised 20 gerahs, the smallest monetary unit of the time; therefore a half-shekel was 10 gerahs, a minimal amount affordable to rich and poor alike). This was the enrollment fee that assured the Israelites of their place among the People of Israel, as well as of the permanent nature of their relationship with God.

This permanence, however, is immediately tested and almost severed. With Moses gone—he has been spending 40 days and nights up on the top of Mount Sinai, where he was called by God to receive the Torah—the people lose sight not only of their leader, but also of God and their ultimate goal. Bewildered and terrified, they demand that Aaron make a physical representation of the Divine, something they could look at and remember that all is not chaos and disorder.

Aaron gives in to the demands of the people and, drawing from Near-Eastern popular imagery of divine beings, creates a golden calf.

Simultaneously, just as the Israelites receive this profane image, Moses receives a totally different representation of the Divine: The Ten Commandments written in stone by God’s own hand.

Seeing the terrible fall of the people, God is incensed and threatens to destroy the Israelites; God promises Moses to make of him the father of a new nation. Moses, however, argues with God, demanding not only justice, but also mercy. He reminds God of the promise God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the promise to redeem the Israelites from slavery and to bring them safely to the Promised Land. What would the Egyptians say if they saw this promise broken? Moses continues by providing the only conceivable answer: the Egyptians would claim that God simply could not do what He had promised and therefore destroyed the people, that it was nothing but a half-baked experiment gone terribly awry. The truth would be hidden forever; the knowledge of God as Redeemer and Savior would be lost forever.

Mollified, God relents and sends Moses down to the people to repair the damage.

When Moses descends from Mount Sinai, he sees the people engaged in wanton revelry around the false idol. He does the unthinkable, hurling the two tablets of the Law, God’s own handwriting and all, against the mountainside. The tablets smash to smithereens. One can only imagine the smoldering bits of God’s energy lying among the gravel and dust; the ultimate proof of God’s existence is gone forever.

Urged by Moses, the Israelites repent. Their repentance is accepted, but the question of how to regain God’s trust remains. When relationships break down, faith and trust are the most difficult to rebuild. In this case, too, both God and the Israelites have to begin from scratch, taking the broken pieces and trying to reconstruct them once again into one whole.

It seems an impossible task. For centuries afterwards, anti-Semites would be using this passage in the Torah as proof that the damage was indeed permanent, that the relationship between God and the Israelites could not be reconstructed, necessitating a new covenant through yet another prophet and another people.

Yet what really happens is that Moses negotiates new terms, a new covenant (Exodus 34:6-7). God would agree to remain in the midst of the Israelites despite their sins, despite their failings, but not without consideration of their deeds and ensuing consequences. Justice however would be tempered by mercy and compassion. Whereas the penalty for even a major sin would be limited, lasting no more than one lifetime (alas, affecting four generations), the consequences of a good deed would last for thousands of generations.

In the words of behaviorist educators: one cannot eliminate bad behavior; it’s part of being human. However, a good teacher can maximize the chances of good behavior and minimize the opportunities for bad behavior. Understanding that consequences must follow, that every action will carry requisite rewards or penalties, is crucial to successful classroom management. But then, so is the deep awareness of what constitutes proper behavior and what does not (both for teacher and for student).

These are the guidelines proposed by Moshe Rabeinu, Moses our Teacher.

And God, magnanimous Principal that God is, agrees to these terms.

Moses writes a new set of Ten Commandments—God’s words, in Moses’s hand. This too, is crucial to our new relationship. Given in the form of words, God’s message can now be transmitted from generation to generation. In scrolls, printed books, even through the Internet—it’s the word and its contents that become holy, not the physical representation of God’s handwriting. We can write it for ourselves, interpret it for our time, teach it to our children, translate it into any language so that others may understand it. Language itself becomes the link that binds God and us through the eons.

In the end, all is well again. A shaky truce is established; rules for holidays, regulations for showing mercy and justice in our own ways—the same qualities we expect of God — are given and the Israelites accept them.

It is only now, having experienced the worst fall of all, that we can begin to rise again. From here on, it will be up to us to maintain our relationship with God. No more golden calves. It will be through the celebration of holidays and Shabbat, through our partnership with our people and community, through the deeds of our hands, that from here on we may and can make God’s presence known and apparent in our midst.

Finally, with a deeper understanding of human nature, God and the Israelites can move on. Much work yet lies before us before we reach the Promised Land. There is a Tabernacle¬¬—modeled after God’s creation of the universe—to be erected, a microcosm of God’s dwelling among us to be constructed.

But first, Shabbat. It’s the least we can do.

©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman