By Nic Levy

Parshat Ki Tissa (or as our Ashkenazi forebears would say, Ki Sisa) is a LOADED chunk of Torah. There’s some death, some revelation, some anger, and of course some reiteration of that covenant that we’re all Bound 2 today…. Which is awkward cause the permanent sign of that covenant, repeated countless times throughout our Torah, is the sanctity of Shabbat. Since I forgot about this until the last minute, I now find myself reading and typing on my computer (oh my!) on the Shabbos Kodesh. It’s okay I’m going to Hillel later…

Anyways, Ki Tissa starts off with some interesting commandments regarding the construction of the Tabernacle and the holy thingies inside (seriously, what’s new) and the proper way to conduct a census. It is explicitly stated that the population-determining tax of a half-shekel shall “not increase for the wealthy and the destitute shall not decrease from half a shekel.” I guess God supported Reaganomics.

Now the good part starts with People of Israel whining to Aaron that they fear Moses has left them (he’s been on Mount Sinai for forty days), so he needs to make a new god (<-- god or gods? The Hebrew is still ‘elohim’ here so was Bnei Israel looking for ‘plural God’ or ‘god, plural?’) for them. When everyone starts chanting something like “Ha’am. doresh. elohim chadashim!” then Aaron’s nephew/brother-in-law Hur jumps in and tries to stop it but they kill him (this is Rashi’s interpretation), and this scares Aaron into appeasing them and creating the golden calf.

God tells Moses what is going on ‘down there’ and that He is going to annihilate them, and make Moses his own “nation.” To this Moses pleads and prays until God reconsiders (he’s so good no wonder there are so many Jewish lawyers). When Moses sees the calf and the reveling going on, he throws down the tablets that God had made and destroys the calf.

After this little incident a lot of people die, the Levites are confirmed as God’s chosen tribe (hollaaaa), and NOTHING IS EVER THE SAME.

Here are a few effects of our infidelity to God (it’s collective responsibility yo):

God doesn’t reveal Himself to the people directly. In the desert, a Tent of Meeting is built away from the camp, where Moses goes to receive commandments. Also from then on angels take the place of God in most interactions with the People.

The Jewish people are forever in debt to God for sparing them. In the future whenever Israel sins, they would receive a bit of the back-punishment from the golden calf incident. As Avram Infeld might say, the sin is not part of our history; it’s part of our memory.

As Israel falls from piousness in the eyes of God, Moses tries his best to restore our image. This is an argument for our eventual destruction and exile.

After all the repenting and stuff, Moses is told to carve two stone slabs himself and bring them up the mountain for another forty day session with God. While on the mountain, that really really really important covenant is renewed. God tells Moses to “Write these words for yourself, for according to these words have I sealed a covenant with you and Israel.”

When Moses comes down from the mountain with his two handmade tablets the People were shocked to see that his face was “radiant.” Moses was literally beaming, having recently become enlightened with the Oral Torah from God.

“Beaming” Moses: here.

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