#Ki Tisa

[whatlieswithintheorchard]

okay, this post might be a bit ramble-y because i haven't sorted out my thoughts completely yet, but i've been thinking a lot about the golden calf. there are quite a few commentaries that link the incident of the golden calf with adam and even in gan eden and eating the fruit.

but there are also plenty of commentaries that expound on how eating from the fruit was a good thing! so a straightforward comparison of the two brings up the question of whether the incident of the golden calf was indeed as tantamount to losing the garden (ie all the other commentaries that explain how if it hadn't been for the golden calf, meshiach would have come, etc.)

i think what i take away learning from the incident is that holding on steadfastly to the traditions of your ancestors is tantamount to sin an idolatry. that our prayers and our traditions MUST change with time to avoid it becoming a calf. if we all were there at sinai, and have inherited this tradition, then why not have fun with it. go out and create trans prayers and rituals, explore what jewish magic is and can be, and how your ideas can help fulfill our communities.

[todaysjewishholiday]

16 Tammuz 5784 (21-22 July)

The sixteenth of Tammuz is the midrashic date for the construction of the golden calf by Aharon (since it’s forty days after Shavuot).

And when the people saw that Moshe was late coming down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together unto Aharon, and said to him: 'Up, make us a god who shall go before us; for as for this Moshe, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him.' And Aharon said unto them: 'Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them to me.' And all the people broke off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them to Aharon. And he received, and smelted and engraved it, and made a golden calf; and they said: 'This is your god, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.'

The people are alone and afraid. They’ve witnessed the mountain covered in smoke and fire. The leader who directed them through the process of conflict with Pharaoh, and who led them out of bondage is missing. They want reassurance. They want something material and recognizable to depend on.

The calf was a symbol of abundance and good fortune in Egyptian polytheism. A golden calf represented the sun and the many gifts that sunlight brings. But in turning to the tangible and familiar, the people implicitly reject the miraculous and deeply unfamiliar Presence that has freed them from slavery. They’re being asked to embark on something new and completely unfamiliar, and they balk and turn back to what they’re used to.

As we enter the three weeks of mourning for the Beit haMikdash, it may be worthwhile to consider the ways that we, like our first predecessors in the covenant, prefer familiarity to freedom, golden calves to the strangeness of HaShem.

Tomorrow, the seventeenth of Tammuz, is a talmudically mandated sunrise to sunset fast because it’s the Hebrew anniversary of the day the Roman legions breached Jerusalem’s walls and began their sack of the city in 3830. If you’re fasting remember to hydrate extensively beforehand.

[girlactionfigure]

Weekly Thought - Ki Tisa

Was Aaron the high priest guilty?

[geostatonary]

tonight in torah study, we discuss the golden calf; g-d and moses grow the closest they've been; and moses develops a beam attack

[nonstandardrepertoire]

Ki Tisa

you don't have to be realistic to make portraits that people recognize. stick a stovepipe hat and a bushy beard on a teddy bear, and people will get that you mean it to be Abraham Lincoln. the right hat and pipe alone can suggest Sherlock Holmes. learning to identify these kinds of symbols can be very helpful in coming to grips with artistic traditions that make heavy use of them

if you spend a lot of time with Medieval Christian art, for example, you'll pretty quickly start to run across a figure of a guy with horns on his head. you might think that this is supposed to be Satan, but in many cases, you'd be wrong: that guy is supposed to be Mosheh

in this week's Torah portion, you see, Mosheh is said to have a face that is קָרַן/qaran after spending so much time conversing with G-d. contemporary translations will say that that means Mosheh's face "glowed", but it's a very rare word, and it looks a lot like the word קֶֽרֶן/qéren, which means "horn", and so the most influential Medieval Latin translation said that Mosheh's face had "horns" instead. (the idea underlying the Hebrew seems to be that rays of light emerge from glowing things in much the same way that horns emerge from the head of a ram or an ox)

seeing this prophet with horns tacked on can be a little unsettling, and the Biblical Israelites were certainly unsettled by Mosheh's glowing face, so much so that they were afraid to even come near Mosheh at first, and Mosheh starts wearing a veil around the camp

the Israelites' fear here has many echoes down thru the ages. in 1867, in the wake of the US Civil War and the California Gold Rush, the city of San Francisco was full of poor people and disabled veterans that the rich of the city found unappealing to look at. like the Biblical Israelites, they accepted their gut emotional reaction to those around them as fact, and came to the conclusion that their neighbors were at fault for causing these untidy emotions

rather than helping their neighbors access housing, medical care, and the necessities of dignified living, the rich of San Francisco passed the first of the so-called "ugly laws", bills that essentially made it a crime to be disabled in public, with predictable disparities in treatment along class and racial lines, de facto if not de jure. in the years that followed, similar laws were passed all around the country by cities that would rather arrest people than see to their needs. the last known arrest under one of these laws would ultimately occur in Oklahoma in 1974. today, many of them are still on the books, even if they are no longer enforced

and enforced or not, the spirit that animated these laws is still very much alive. in the US, we still very much live in a society that judges people based on how they look, a society where the powerful would rather remove some people from view than build community with them, a society where some people are given the very clear message that their presence is emphatically unwanted. those on the receiving end of this message often internalize it and start to pull away — "i won't speak up in that meeting because i don't want to take up space.", "maybe i shouldn't go to that gathering; i don't want to make people uncomfortable.", "i feel like even just quietly existing i am already taking up too much space"

even G-d isn't immune from these feelings. after the business with the golden calf, G-d says, "i'm not going to go with you, in the middle of your camp. maybe i'll be in a little tent off to the side here, but i can't be at the heart of your community anymore.". this might sound like a punishment, but G-d doesn't frame it that way in Shəmot. instead, G-d says "פֶּן אֲכֶלְךָ בַּדָּֽרֶךְ/pen akhelkha badárekh/lest i end you on the way". G-d is afraid of hurting the Israelites, and so tries to withdraw. it's a protective measure, not a punishment

it's also not a solution. haSheim cannot be the Israelites' G-d without actually being there, right there, in the thick of them. the Israelites cannot learn from Mosheh how they are to live without going up and being near him, glowing face and all. we cannot build a society together if we all pull away from one another, afraid of causing messy feelings or harm, or having messy feelings of our own in reaction to each other. we have to reach out. we have to connect

this doesn't mean we will never hurt each other. we will. the relationship between G-d, Mosheh, and the Israelites, too, continues to be full of strife, tumult, and harm. in building the world we want to live in, we will step on each other's toes, we'll butt heads forcefully, we'll commit a thousand sins small and grave. but there is no other way. there is no way to build a community without community, and there is no community without tension, friction, and discomfort, because communities are made of people, and people are too rich and varied and messy and complex to snap together perfectly and seamlessly like frictionless uniform bricks in a physics exercise

we will never be perfect. we will always be fraught. coming together to run a community, shape a society, build a better world will always require compromise and generate bruised feelings. but these efforts only fail entirely if we pull away permanently, if we fully disengage

when Mosheh's face begins to glow, he does put on a veil, but, crucially, not when he is talking to G-d or to the Israelites. to be in community with others, he has to be there as his whole, disquieting self, not a covered, tamed version modulated for others' comfort. we don't read that the Israelites ever really adjusted to this — for all we know, every time the light of Mosheh's face fell on them, they felt the same tremor they felt the first time around — but they come near all the same. we have to do so too

to build a world where we all can live and flourish, we have to show up as our full selves, and be ready for others to show up as their full selves too. this work is hard, it is messy, it is uncomfortable, but it is infinitely, irreplaceably worth doing. it is the work that is before us all

shavu'a tov

[eretzyisrael]

Shabbat Parah 2023 / שַׁבָּת פּרה 5783

Shabbat of the Red Heifer 🕍

Shabbat Parah for Hebrew Year 5783 begins at sundown on Friday, 10 March 2023 and ends at nightfall on Saturday, 11 March 2023. This corresponds to Parashat Ki Tisa.

Shabbat Parah (“Sabbath [of the] red heifer” שבת פרה) takes place on the Shabbat before Shabbat HaChodesh, in preparation for Passover. Numbers 19:1-22 describes the parah adumah (“red heifer”) in the Jewish temple as part of the manner in which the kohanim and the Jewish people purified themselves so that they would be ready (“pure”) to sacrifice the korban Pesach.

[torais-life]

Parashat Ki Tiza-El Pecado del becerro de oro, Clase Completa Rab Natan Menashe en YouTube

[rickpoet]

"If your leader comes down the mountain a day or two later than expected don’t freak out" and other important steps to a successful covenant in this new video for my first poem for this week's text.

[sullenaquarian]

I wish I had enjoyed Between the Temples more. It was nice to see Reform Judaism (I recognize that siddur!) on screen, but the last 20 minutes took the movie in an unnecessary direction: and there were 2 scenes that existed only to be edgy.

Also, I've never been to an event at a synagogue, especially a fundraiser, where people just stand. Where are the tables? And why is attendance so poor?

Lastly, the Torah portion discussed would not be in March. My Bat Mitzvah portion was Ki Tisa, which is in Exodus, on March 1. A simple Google shows the movie's reading, from Leviticus, is about 2.5 months later. Just take something from Exodus!

[fdelopera]

Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" is what this week's parshah, Parashat Ki Tisa, means to me.

The broken pieces are how the light gets in.

The broken tablets are every bit as holy as the tablets that are whole. Because in those moments of brokenness, there is a hidden spark of renewal, of starting again.

"There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Without the brokenness, we wouldn't be able to experience the divine spark that lights us all.

[magnetothemagnificent]

וְאֶל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל תְּדַבֵּ֣ר לֵאמֹ֑ר שֶׁ֠מֶן מִשְׁחַת־קֹ֨דֶשׁ יִהְיֶ֥ה זֶ֛ה לִ֖י לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶֽם׃

"And you shall speak to the people of Israel to say, this oil of holy anointing shall be for Me for all future generations."

-[Exodus, Ki Tisa, 30:31]

A meditation on testosterone being suspended in oil, thus making every injection an anointing.....

[id in alt text]

[rabbisandra]

Earlier this week, we celebrated the holiday of Purim. Purim is fun, lighthearted, and lacks seriousness. Purim is a day of fun, joy, and feasting. A holiday for sending gifts to one another, and our Rabbis have even declared that we are kind of obligated to become somewhat inebriated on this day, where we can't tell the differences between the bad guy Haman and the blessed Mordechai. Behavior that is not tolerated all year long is encouraged on Purim. 

However, this week's Torah Portion Ki Tisa has a different mood, sober and somber themes where the Israelites commit the gravest sin of idolatry.   

It begins with the obligation incumbent upon everyone, rich and poor, to donate a half-shekel for the maintenance of the sanctuary. In today's modern times, we would call this the first-ever building fund.

[girlactionfigure]

Weekly Thought - Ki Tisa

Was Aaron the high priest guilty?

[geostatonary]

i’m not kidding about the beam attack, btw. Ibn Ezra has a callout post about it and everything.

[pargolettasworld]

The continuing adventures of My Very Cool Rabbi.

The RitualWell description of the Aliyah is here.

[eretzyisrael]

SEE FOR YOURSELF

In this week’s Torah portion, God speaks to Moses on Mt. Sinai and gives him two stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. This holy event is followed by a shocking tragedy: God tells Moses that down below, the Israelites are worshipping a calf made of gold.

Moses descends the mountain and when he sees the people dancing around their golden idol, he smashes the tablets in fury. But why doesn't he smash them as soon as he hears what is going on? Moses only gets angry when he personally witnesses the misbehavior. Does he not believe what God tells him? 

The Midrash explains that Moses wanted to teach the Israelites proper behavior. We should not give credence to a negative report about someone. As it is written, “Even if one hears something critical from a trustworthy person, one is not permitted to accept his word and take action on it if he does not see it himself." (Shemos Rabbah 46:1)

Moses modeled giving others the benefit of the doubt. Imagine how different the world would be if we all gave each other the benefit of the doubt!

Like Moses, may we always see the best in others, even when it's difficult!

Image: "The Adoration of the Golden Calf" by Nicolas Poussin, 1634