Restoring Faith: Ki Tissa
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
February 16, 2022
The most important lessons in life come with a high price. This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa (“When you count,” Exodus 30:11-34:35) offers us one of these lessons.
Things get broken in this portion. It wasn’t enough to witness the genocide perpetrated against the Hebrew slaves in Egypt; it wasn’t enough to watch God intervene and redeem us with wonders and miracles. It wasn’t enough to see the parting of the Reed Sea, nor to hear God’s voice thundering over Mount Sinai. Perhaps, after 400 years of being told what to do, after having our self-confidence and beliefs suppressed, the ancient Hebrews simply had nothing left to give. Whatever the reason, as Moses ascends to the top of the mountain, his people grow restless and fearful. Moses was their sole connection to God. With him gone for so long, who would lead them forward now? Where would they find inspiration and faith?
The story of the Golden Calf comes at an unexpected moment in the story of our liberation. The Israelites are in the midst of constructing the Tent of Meeting. But without Moses there to lead and show the way, they lose faith and clamor instead for a god of gold.
When Moses finally descends from the top of Mount Sinai, he sees the Golden Calf and understands the magnitude of their failure. In anger and frustration, he smashes the two Tablets of the Law containing—inscribed by God’s own hand—the Ten Commandments. Then he proceeds to do the same to the idol the people had constructed.
Faith, once broken, is difficult to rebuild. Yet out of the resulting mayhem, something new emerges: A new faith, a new way of “seeing” God. The gods worshipped by other people may act out of jealousy or sheer willfulness; they may require sacrifices to appease them when they are angry or tired. Other gods may seem to appear in all sorts of images of craft and imagination. Not our God. Unlike all other divine beings that people worshipped in those days, our God is not only moral and just (dayeinu—that would have been enough!). The God that Moses and the Torah teach us about is also compassionate and forgiving.
Ki Tissa is about forgiveness and about second chances. In this portion, the Israelites rediscover something they had forgotten during the years of physical and spiritual slavery: That faith, the ability to trust and believe, is embedded within us. Relationships—even with God—can be restored if we give ourselves and one another a second chance. If, like God, we too show compassion and learn to understand and forgive.
The work of repair might be long and difficult (it takes Moses forty days and nights to re-write the Ten Commandments), but the result is often stronger and more enduring than what was there at first. It is this lesson that enables us to persevere in the ongoing task of building the Tabernacle—a sacred space for God’s Presence in our midst.
© 2022 by Boaz D. Heilman
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