Torah This Week
Welcome to Torah This Week, where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the Torah portion of the week.
PARASHAT KI TISSA
(Exodus 30:11 - 34:35)
The mountain quaked while, from the midst of the fire and lightning on its peak, the people hear God speak: "You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters . . . You shall not bow to them . . ." (Exodus 20:4 - 5). Now, waiting for Moses to return, they grow restless and press Aaron to make them a golden calf around which to sing praises to the God who redeemed them from Egypt. Moses descends from the mountain, with the tablets of God's own writing in his hand, to find his people utterly lost to idolatrous revelry. "Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing. . . and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain" (32:9). What was Moses' intent in shattering the tablets? Was it mere anger? What right did he have to do it? Two dramatic pictures are painted by Rabbi Samuel ben Meir, a medieval Jewish scholar of Provence, and by the Midrash Rabbah of the 8th century.
The Rashbam says Moses in his elation carried the heavy stone tablets as if they were feathers. Then he saw the people, his heart sank, his strength ebbed away, the tablets became heavy and cold. He barely had the strength to push them away lest they fall on his feet.
According to the Midrash Rabbah, Moses broke the tablets in empathetic identity with his people. When he saw that there was no hope for Israel, he threw his lot in with theirs and broke the tablets, and said to the Holy One: They have sinned, but so have I by breaking your tablets. If you forgive them, forgive me, too . . . if not "blot me out of the book which you have written."
(Steven Greenberg)
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