Parashat Ki Tissa: A Golden Opportunity?
Exodus 30:12-34:35
Exodus 30:12-34:35
Sandwiched between the mind numbing details of the instructions to build the sanctuary and its actual construction comes some unexpected drama. On the one hand, an artist had been identified to create in gold (and other precious metals and fabrics) a magnificent home for God to dwell among the people. On the other hand, the people have grown restless in Moses’ absence and seem to be ambivalent at best regarding this new divine relationship, and they “force” Aaron to make a god of gold. One form is sanctioned and sanctified, the other idolatrous and destructive. There is doubt, anger, panic, pleas for mercy, courage, and fear woven through Parshat Ki Tissa, and it could be that the entire Exodus/Sinai “enterprise” hangs in the balance.
The Torah imagines God telling Moses to hurry down from the mountain because the “stiff-necked” people had made themselves a golden calf to worship in their need for ritual and celebration. When Moses heads down the mountain to see what has happened, he is enraged by the sight of idolatrous worship. Moses hurled the tablets just received, ground the shattered fragments to powder and forced the Israelites to drink water filled with the powder.
When he confronted his brother Aaron, Aaron offered the rather lame excuse that “the people are bent on evil” and that the people gave him their gold which, when thrown into the fire, seemed to magically produce the golden calf. No doubt the people needed some reassurance of God’s presence, and we could read the creation of the calf not as an alternative to YHVH, but rather a representation of God, with which the people in their newfound freedom could be in relationship.
In addition, the notion of a golden calf, made from their own gold earrings could stand in as a unifying force against the encroaching unknown of the wilderness. Perhaps they felt that they had no real choice but to build it since they didn’t want to feel so helpless. The people clearly wanted to make manifest their experience of god but didn’t know how to do it any other way.
In an interesting parallel, the first set of tablets is said to have been fashioned by God alone. Upon seeing the golden calf, Moses hurled those to the ground. The second set of tablets were created in a partnership between Moses and God, with Moses making the tablets himself. Here too, in order for Moses to feel closer to the covenant, he had to have a hand in the creation of something tangible to represent the relationship with God. He of course wanted even more, as evidenced by his later request to behold God’s glory. Further, the set of tablets which remained intact were not the ones imagined to be fashioned by God alone, but those fashioned by Moses. And the instructions to build the sanctuary were given by God alone, but the construction itself, is imagined after the golden calf incident, and executed by the people whose hearts moved them.
Further, the text had laid out previously the ideal qualities of the inspired artist Bezalel. He was considered filled up with the spirit of God, with hochmah (wisdom), tevunah (understanding), daat (knowledge), and u’vkhol m’lacha (skills in every craft), lahshov mahashavot (to be able to conceive creative…) designs in various materials.
No one else in the Torah is described with this kind of detail—the attributes and qualities that suggest unique power. And yet, within only a few verses, the people have turned their world upside down. Idolatry represents rebellion, rejection, and is possibly self defeating. The building of the mishkan, however, was meant to focus on the lahshov mahashavot--the thinking of thoughts that aid the creative endeavor, rather than detract from it.
The creation of the Golden Calf as an example of idolatrous art, left the people exactly where they were. It may even have taken them backwards as a people—as we know for us today most forms of idolatry like the gods of money, status, war, prejudice do not advance our civilization.
The description of Bezalel as an artist, a builder challenges us to more fully appreciate the creative capacity that has the potential to reveal transcendent inspiration. To avoid loss of faith, stubborn-ness, and idolatry, we have to work hard to identify and then build the communal structures and norms that keep us from moving beyond the sacred center we seek.
Ultimately, when people feel lost, angry, and disconnected from a vision of the future, they can’t help but fashion something or someone to be their purported saving grace. But when they are connected to a vision of the future that recognizes their inherent worth as human beings, stiff-necked though they may be sometimes, then that is a true expression of freedom.
May each of us find the ways in which we create freely b’tzel-el— in the shadow of the divine, without idolizing anything except the values which bind us together.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yael Ridberg
The Torah imagines God telling Moses to hurry down from the mountain because the “stiff-necked” people had made themselves a golden calf to worship in their need for ritual and celebration. When Moses heads down the mountain to see what has happened, he is enraged by the sight of idolatrous worship. Moses hurled the tablets just received, ground the shattered fragments to powder and forced the Israelites to drink water filled with the powder.
When he confronted his brother Aaron, Aaron offered the rather lame excuse that “the people are bent on evil” and that the people gave him their gold which, when thrown into the fire, seemed to magically produce the golden calf. No doubt the people needed some reassurance of God’s presence, and we could read the creation of the calf not as an alternative to YHVH, but rather a representation of God, with which the people in their newfound freedom could be in relationship.
In addition, the notion of a golden calf, made from their own gold earrings could stand in as a unifying force against the encroaching unknown of the wilderness. Perhaps they felt that they had no real choice but to build it since they didn’t want to feel so helpless. The people clearly wanted to make manifest their experience of god but didn’t know how to do it any other way.
In an interesting parallel, the first set of tablets is said to have been fashioned by God alone. Upon seeing the golden calf, Moses hurled those to the ground. The second set of tablets were created in a partnership between Moses and God, with Moses making the tablets himself. Here too, in order for Moses to feel closer to the covenant, he had to have a hand in the creation of something tangible to represent the relationship with God. He of course wanted even more, as evidenced by his later request to behold God’s glory. Further, the set of tablets which remained intact were not the ones imagined to be fashioned by God alone, but those fashioned by Moses. And the instructions to build the sanctuary were given by God alone, but the construction itself, is imagined after the golden calf incident, and executed by the people whose hearts moved them.
Further, the text had laid out previously the ideal qualities of the inspired artist Bezalel. He was considered filled up with the spirit of God, with hochmah (wisdom), tevunah (understanding), daat (knowledge), and u’vkhol m’lacha (skills in every craft), lahshov mahashavot (to be able to conceive creative…) designs in various materials.
No one else in the Torah is described with this kind of detail—the attributes and qualities that suggest unique power. And yet, within only a few verses, the people have turned their world upside down. Idolatry represents rebellion, rejection, and is possibly self defeating. The building of the mishkan, however, was meant to focus on the lahshov mahashavot--the thinking of thoughts that aid the creative endeavor, rather than detract from it.
The creation of the Golden Calf as an example of idolatrous art, left the people exactly where they were. It may even have taken them backwards as a people—as we know for us today most forms of idolatry like the gods of money, status, war, prejudice do not advance our civilization.
The description of Bezalel as an artist, a builder challenges us to more fully appreciate the creative capacity that has the potential to reveal transcendent inspiration. To avoid loss of faith, stubborn-ness, and idolatry, we have to work hard to identify and then build the communal structures and norms that keep us from moving beyond the sacred center we seek.
Ultimately, when people feel lost, angry, and disconnected from a vision of the future, they can’t help but fashion something or someone to be their purported saving grace. But when they are connected to a vision of the future that recognizes their inherent worth as human beings, stiff-necked though they may be sometimes, then that is a true expression of freedom.
May each of us find the ways in which we create freely b’tzel-el— in the shadow of the divine, without idolizing anything except the values which bind us together.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yael Ridberg