The Right To Rise Up Again--Ki Tissa

The Right To Rise Up Again

D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Tissa

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa, contains one of the most important lessons of the Torah.  It is the story of the Golden Calf, of how Moses shatters the two Tablets of the Law written by God’s own hand and then has to fast for 40 days and 40 nights while rewriting the whole thing in his own hand.

In this portion is the moment of our greatest downfall as the startup nation that we were.  Barely a year out of Egypt, having committed ourselves to God, bound by a sworn covenant, we turned to worshipping a golden calf.  Ironically, we did this at exactly the same moment that Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments from the hands of God up on top of Mt. Sinai.

There have been many attempts to understand this fall.  It wasn’t a new God we were seeking, only an image we could rely on, whose presence would rally us just by being there. Moses, the conduit by which God’s voice could be heard and understood, disappeared in the smoky crevices of that awesome mountain.   With him gone, a vacuum appeared where God’s presence should have been.

There is more rage expressed in this incident than anywhere else in the Torah.  God is furious with Israel.  Moses is furious with Israel.  He is frustrated by their failure to see God’s presence the way he could—face to face.  He blames his own frailties, but he also realizes that God must give in a little. 

It takes all the powers of persuasion Moses has to dissuade God from destroying Israel. 

It is in our nature to fail, Moses reminds God.  Yet it is also our gift and therefore our right to be given a second chance.  Without that, there can be no uplift, no redemption, no continuation of the work God expects us to do, the work of Tikkun Olam—the Repair of the World.  Completing—or at the very least, carrying on—the work of Creation is the task God entrusts to humanity.  Forbearance, patience and the ability to give another chance is what Moses requires of God in return.  With it, we can rise and rise again to the challenge.   Knowing we might fail shouldn’t deter us as long as we know that we can learn from the mistake and move on from there.     

God agrees to the terms established by Moses.

But the people are still without a leader, without the presence of the Almighty within them. 

Moreover, Moses had smashed the Tablets of the Law written by God’s hand—the ultimate physical and material proof of God’s presence.

Israel will need a sign of the Covenant, of the treaty and promise that God and the people make to one another.

Then they will need further guidance.

The sign of the Covenant we receive at this point is as un-material as the first set of Ten Commandments had been set in stone.  It is Shabbat.

Shabbat isn’t merely another day.  Infused with God’s spirit, when we observe Shabbat we bring God into our daily—weekly—life.  It is the spirit of the day that makes it Holy, which is not of any physical material, yet surrounds us as completely as air or water. 

Shabbat holiness is the glow which the candles spread, the light that gleams from the soup before us, the love that flows between us.  The words of “V’shamru,” the Shabbat song we love, come from this portion:  V’shamru v’nei Yisrael et Hashabbat… l’dorotam b’rit ‘olam (“The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant,” Ex. 31:16). 

As long as we observe Shabbat, God dwells within us.

And the guidance for the future?  For when we fail, which we are bound to do again and again?

For that we are given another second chance—a second set of the Ten Commandments, this one written by Moses, not God.  This is a human version, one to match our abilities as well as our frailties, one that commands us, but that also graciously accepts our attempts to understand it, to follow its words.

The Torah’s laws are meant for humans.  Many of them are for the proper observance of the holy days, but even more are for those days when we don’t surround ourselves with Torah and prayer.  These laws are meant for those long hours and days when we tread along the paths that life takes us.   They remind us of home and tradition, but they also remind us to behave in a kindly manner in any surrounding. 

The epitome of these laws is found in Ex. 34:26:  “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.”  This pillar of the dietary Kashrut laws, which we understand as forbidding the consumption of meat and milk products cooked or served together, serves two functions.  First, it reminds us of our identity as a people.  You are what you eat.  But this law also reminds us of the ability within us to be compassionate. 

We pray that God might be compassionate toward us, despite our many failings.  That’s the very least we should expect from ourselves too—to feel the pain of another living creature, to be compassionate.

Compassion is the opposite of arrogance.  In a universe described as uncaring, Moses enabled us to perceive a far greater power—a power that can forgive, a power that can give a second chance, that can grant us the ability to rise again.

©2013 by Boaz D. Heilman