Ki Tisa: A Retrospective

This week's Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is dear to the hearts of my family since both of my boys (twins) had it as their Torah portion. Plus, I once gave the following d'var Torah at Friday night services at our shul:

The centerpiece of this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa, is the well-known Golden Calf story, in which the Israelites awaiting Moses’ return from the mountain fashioned what appeared to be a visible god for themselves, a direct violation of the Second Commandment’s prohibition against idol worship, or so it seems. This parsha has engendered widespread commentary over the ages and I was initially very excited to have an opportunity to discuss it. But this week as I began to work on my D’var Torah, it became clear to me that I was going to have problem. To be honest, I just froze. None of my usual research sources – the Plaut commentary, its conservative counterpart – Etz Chaim, nothing, prompted any workable ideas. So in a near panic ... Let me put it this way, there are these two old guys, Ben and Moe, whom I’ve consulted from time to time in matters of the Torah. And it occurred to me that if I could get together with them for an hour or two, something might click. The problem is that even though they’ve known each other for years, Ben and Moe can barely stand to be in the same room together. It doesn’t help that Moe is a retired doctor and tends to take on airs around Ben, who had a less glamorous career making glasses at Pearl Vision or one of those optical chains.

Anyway, I made the necessary calls and this afternoon the three of us got together for lunch. This was a feat in itself since Moe initially insisted on The Second Avenue Deli, while Ben demanded Bernstein’s On Essex until I reminded him that Bernstein’s went down with Shmulke Bernstein about 15 years ago. We finally settled on Katz’s, where it quickly became clear to me that my best bet was just to let them talk and get as much of it down on paper as I could. So in the absence of a better idea, I’m going to read this lunchtime debate between Moe and Ben that I eavesdropped and I hope that nobody is offended by what these two opinionated, old coots had to say.

Moe: Frankly, Ben, I think too big a fuss has been made about the Golden Calf incident. In the first place, I’m not convinced that it really amounted to idol worship at all, just a little confusion on the part of the Israelites. Moses had acted as an intermediary between the Israelites and Hashem, but when Moses disappeared up the mountain and stayed there for so long, the Israelites panicked and created the Golden Calf as a substitute intermediary. The calf was an attempt to replace Moses, not the Holy One, may his name be exalted, so there really was no idol worship at all. Second, it is clear that, if anyone engaged in idol worship, it was the Egyptian rabble that tagged along with the Israelites and what do you expect from them?

Ben: Not suprisingly, Moe, I have a few problems with your very interesting theory. The business about the Egyptian rabble is offensive and I don’t want to hear any more about it. But beyond that, the argument that the Israelites were merely trying to replace Moses and not the Holy One – may his name be a pronoun – is so typical of you. Anything to keep to the party line, right Moe? I guess your interpretation is necessary to protect Aaron, since he was personally responsible for the actual construction of the calf.

However, I do agree with one thing you said. Confusion undoubtedly played a large role in the incident, but confusion caused by God. Despite the Second Commandment’s prohibition on idolatry, the religion that God imposed on the Israelites had a pronounced physicality about it. Read through Exodus; in fact, read through the entire Torah. How many parshot are concerned with technical rules, rites, ceremonies and tributes to an almost tangible God. Take a look at the Torah portions leading up to Ki Tisa. Terumah is a virtual manual for the building of a shrine. Tetzeveh: fashion week with the priestly class – breast plates 101. This type of worship is laden with phsyical images. So when the Israelites fashioned a physical God for themselves in the form of the Golden Calf, they were only following a suggestion that Hashem, however inadvertently, had given them.

Moe: Let me get this straight, Ben. You’re saying that the Golden Calf incident involved idolatry, but you’re blaming the Holy One, may his name be ...

Ben: Moe, can you give that Holy One business a rest, please?

Moe: Tough. You’re blaming the whole thing on the Holy One? I guess the Second Commandment is clearer to me than it is to you. Anyway, there’s a problem with your Biblical analysis. The Israelites had no way of knowing about your so-called rituals and ceremonies from Terumah and Tetzeveh, because it was only after God finished speaking to Moses half way through Ki Tisa – in other words, after Terumah and Tetzeveh – that Moses descended from the mountain the second time. Therefore, at the time the Israelites fashioned the Golden Calf – namely, prior to Moses’ descent – the information in Terumah and Tetzeveh had not yet been conveyed to them as a group. In fact, the only Israelite who knew about the rituals and ceremonies was Moses himself!

Ben: Fair enough Moe. But don’t forget about Mishpatim, which preceded Terumah and Tetzveh. At the end of Mishpatim, with his feet still squarely at sea level, Moses led his people in the ritual slaughter of a bull, culminating with his splashing of sacrificial bull blood on the assembled “faithful.” Is praying to a golden trinket in the form of a calf so different from worship based on the slaughter of a live one? That’s what I mean when I say that God was sending the Israelites mixed signals about what He wanted from them.

Moe: Leave it to you, Ben, to rescue the profane from the sacred. You just mentioned the parsha Mishpatim. Do you know what Mishpatim means, Ben? It means judgements. It is a Torah portion about the law: the law, that most Jewish of subjects. Civil law, Criminal law, ethics. If you think Mishpatim is about cultic sacrifice, then you have completely missed the point.

Ben: Well, you know Moe, I agree that the Torah is about law, but probably not in the same way that you mean. As far as I am concerned, there is really only one religious principle in the Torah and that is not to do to your neighbors what you wouldn’t have them do to you.

Moe: I know Ben, and all the rest is commentary, right?

Ben: Not quite Moe. All the rest, or at least most of it, has very little to do with religion in the sense that I mean. For me, religion is a very simple proposition. It’s about a few basic civilizing ethical concepts which, if followed, serve the greater good. Beyond that, as far as I am concerned, the Torah is the detritus of a rather verbose national code laid down at God’s insistence by Israel’s first national leader Moses, a dictatorial figure who, given the primitive nature of his childish flock, probably had no choice but to rule with a firm hand based on a slavish adherence to rules.

Moe: Moses was a dictator, Ben?

Ben: Yes, Moe, a dictator, a tyrant in fact. Remember what Moses did when he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites cavorting with the Golden Calf?

Moe: Yes, Ben, he smashed the tablets. A fairly measured response, I’d say, given what was going on?

Ben: Except Moe, he didn’t stop there. Perhaps you recall the little matter of Moses leading the Levites on a rampage that resulted in the deaths of 3000 of his countrymen. In another context, we might call that a pogrom.

Moe: The rabble, Ben.

Ben: I thought I asked you to lay off that rabble business, Moe. And besides, even if they were the rabble, even the lowest of the low, can we please give them a break? For God’s sake, they had just emerged from an absolutely wretched condition in Egypt. We’re talking about simple people lacking in the theological sophistication that you purport to bring to the table. They had no way of knowing better. So how can you possibly justify Moses’ reaction?

Moe: Typical bleeding heart stuff from you Ben. As you just admitted, they had already emerged from Egypt. They had their freedom. The yoke had been lifted. Slavery was simply not an excuse at the time of the Golden Calf.

Ben: Excuse me Moe, but don’t we say the following prayer every week: “Assembled at a Mountain, our people, still bent from oppression ... and so on?

Moe: To tell you the truth, Ben, we don’t go for that one at the shul where I daven.

Ben: What a shock, Moe. You pray for the return of the ritual sacrifice, but you scoff at an expression of compassion for a band of former slaves making their way in the desert.

Moe: And the way you think, Ben, you may as well join a Protestant Church. Why don’t you just say what you really mean. Idolatry is just fine with you, isn’t it?

Ben: To tell you the truth Moe, I don’t believe that anything is inherently base or inherently sacred. A Temple can be a place of blessed worship or base capitulation to evil. It all depends on who or what is being worshiped and to what end. So, if it were to be demonstrated that the worship of an idol brought a particular person or people peace and prosperity, I’d have to consider it. But, no, I don’t really favor idolatry. Above all else, I favor the accumulation of knowledge as the best way of coming close to God. And you, with your elitist attitudes and insistence on finding immutable truth in every Biblical passage seem to believe just the opposite.

Moe: Thank you Ben. I rest my case. The heretic Spinoza couldn’t have said it better himself.

Ben: I’ll take that as a complement, Moe, but tell me. If you’re such a great authority on everything Jewish, why are you putting mayonaise on your pastrami sandwich? A regular Maimonides, aren’t you?

****************************
At this point, it really began to get ugly between Ben Spinoza and Moe Maimonides. Spinoza said something about Maimonides being a pompous egomaniac, whose strained interpretations of the Bible required a doctorate in comparative religion to understand. Maimonides responded that he didn’t have to take that from a mere lense grinder, that Ben’s nickname should be “Shonder for the Goyim,” and that he should be excommunicated. I was about to jump between them, when suddenly they stopped screaming at each other, seemed to share a smile, and looked like they were about to turn on me. With my physical safety at risk, I made a quick exit from Katz’s, concerned that if a police officer saw two old Jewish guys running down Houston Street after me, it might look like something else. “I swear officer, I didn’t steal anything, just a Torah study session gone bad.” I fled to the subway, jumped on the F train, and arrived back in Brooklyn just in time for a little text-editing before sundown. I don’t expect to have lunch with Ben and Moe very soon, but they seem to have saved me from a bad case of writer’s block, and for that I am eternally grateful to them.