Cindy Barnard, March 12, 2004

Ki Tisa has a tremendous amount going on - for instance, the Golden Calf and the 13 attributes of God, Moses' radiance and veil - but I hope we'll talk about those tomorrow morning. Tonight I want to focus on one particular part of the parasha, and that is - Shabbat.

Exodus / Shemot 31:15-17 - Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest (shabbat shabbaton), holy to the Lord…(16) The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time. (17) It shall be a sign for all time between me and the people of Israel. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and was refreshed.

Does this sound familiar….? Of course - it's the text of the V'shamru, which we just sang a few minutes ago. But look more closely at the language in verse 15 -shabbat shabbaton. What is the significance of this grammatic emphasis?

There are two key items I want to link together tonight. One is the language of the parasha, this shabbat shabbaton. And the other is our place in the calendar - that moveable feast which keeps us connected to the foundation of Judaism. Even and especially over the millenia in which we did not have a geographic home, we have always had the calendar, wherever we go.

So, here we are in the weeks leading up to Pesach, in the midst of the "four parashiyot," the four special Torah readings which are added to the usual portion for each week. A few weeks ago it was Shabbat Shekalim, the census; then it was Shabbat Zachor, the shabbat before Purim, reminding us of Amalek (and, by implication, preparing us for Haman)… and now it's Shabbat Parah. This shabbat, we add the section from Numbers which discusses the strange ritual of the ashes of the perfect red heifer which are used to purify after contact with death.

I don't want to dwell on this ritual tonight, but only to focus on the idea that this special parasha is about separation and purification, leaving behind one identity and becoming new, different - separating what we have been from what we will be. Now what does THAT remind us of… Shabbat and Havdalah, right?

Which brings us back to "shabbat shabbaton." What is this interesting construction and what does it signify?

First, notice where it appears in the parasha. God gives Moses incredibly detailed instructions for the building of the Tabernacle - even a bit tedious, really, to read. And guess what, the instructions are structured in seven sections (what is THAT reminiscent of?). And the seventh one begins, "HOWEVER" and then the commandment regarding the "shabbat shabbaton."

…However? In other words, build this Tabernacle; however, interrupt your building when Shabbat arrives.

So we have instructions to build the Tabernacle - and the first six sections are all about construction - and the seventh is to interrupt even this extraordinarily important construction to observe Shabbat!

In other words, Shabbat is the 7th portion – the completion – of the instructions for the tabernacle. And this reminds us of what? Creation - God created the world in six days & completed creation on the 7th. .

Shabbat is not just an absence of doing, it is a creative process all its own - more on that in a moment.

So, we learn from this "however" that time - Shabbat - is more important than space - the tabernacle - and God wants our time more than our material “stuff” - even the building of a temple to be God's place in our midst.

In fact, in a wonderful resonant twist, one of God’s names is MAKOM, the place – in other words, the physical places are really ephemeral, illusions, God is the REAL “place” - and wherever you go, that Place is with you.

So what do we have so far?

We have a special shabbat of separation and purification. We have the mitzvah of "shabbat shabbaton," which is so important it must interrupt even the building of the tabernacle. Now, this term - shabbat shabbaton.

The Lubavitcher rebbe says "shabbat" means to stop our normal work, and "shabbaton" means to begin our special Shabbat activity. Rashi, our 11th century endless source of insight into Torah, says "shabbat shabbaton" is not a "casual" rest. It's not "I'm tired, I'll rest." Even if we are not tired on Friday night, we still observer Shabbat! No, this is a rest which is profoundly creative, and in fact transformative.

Shabbat doesn't mean simply that we stop doing certain things. It also means that we do certain other things. It's not a day to recover from fatigue in the ordinary sense. It's a day in which to examine ourselves, spend the day on God's work rather than what the employer needs or the house needs or even the self thinks it needs. It's a day to work on being better as a person in God's eyes and to start the next week transformed.

If we are going to talk about Shabbat we have to see what Heschel has to say. If you have not read "The Sabbath" lately or at all, I must recommend it to your attention. Heschel points out most wonderfully that the first time in Genesis we encounter the word kadosh, holy, it is not about a thing - not about light, or earth, or man, or animals - but about - yes - Shabbat. "And God blessed the seventh day and made it kadosh, holy" - no OBJECT is so sanctified.

So, this is a special shabbat parah, or shabbat of purification and rededication. And today we are given the commandment to observe shabbat shabbaton, a shabbat of very special and complete rest and transformation.

It’s a day to devote to God’s work instead of our everyday work – not “casual” rest when we do nothing, but transformative rest when we undertake very specific activities which are not “work” but which teach us, change us. This is the special kind of "rest" which actually completes us and our work - just as it completed God's work of creation, and the Israelites' work on the tabernacle.

What a gift – not to be wasted - and the most precious evidence of Israel's chosenness. We could just stand here & read Heschel all evening - but here is one more wonderful thought he offers. If Shabbat is a time when God completed creation - not just a day of non-activity - then what was created on this day? Heschel tells us, "What was created on the seventh day? Tranquility, serenity, peace and repose…This then is the answer to the problem of civilization: not to flee from the realm of space [and material goods]; to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity. Things are our tools; eternity, the Sabbath, is our mate."

With this, then we can truly understand the words of Ahad Ha-am, the 19th century Zionist, who wrote, "More than Israel has kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept Israel."

Shabbat can transform us, if we will allow God the time to do so.

D'var Torah: Parsha Ki Tisa
February 21, 2003 by Morris Seeskin

During my childhood, there were two Biblical stories that puzzled me more than any others. One, of course, was the binding of Isaac and the other from today's parsha was the golden calf. I didn't understand why the Israelites standing at Sinai, waiting to receive the Law of The Almighty, would turn to such a base form of idolatry. As I have matured, both stories have remained puzzlements. To help make some sense out of the story of the golden calf I offer this midrash.

By our tradition when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Sea, and into the desert and later when he brought God's Law down from Sinai, all the Jewish people were there. Not just those we might think of as being present, but all those who would come. Your grandparents were there, so were you, and so were your as yet unborn childrens' childrens' children. Remember from the Passover Seder the story of the parent telling the wicked child, "It is because of what the Almighty did for me, when he led me out of Egypt."

Thirty two hundred years ago the Jewish people stood at Sinai to receive the word of Adonai, and by tradition each of us here tonight was present when Moses descended. Moses led YOU and ME out of Egypt and came down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments while YOU and I watched. By tradition we all were there, not just in spirit, but actually there.

Remember now what happened in those long ago days. Our ancestors had been slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt for 400 years. During that time the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel had become a distant memory. Then one day Moses arrived from the Land of Midian. He said that he was an Israelite, but there were rumors that in fact he was an Egyptian, possibly of the royal house or maybe a priest. He claimed to have spoken with the almost forgotten God of our ancestors. Aided by Aaron, who he said was his brother, he demanded that Pharaoh release us from slavery. Some of us took him at face value, but many of us had doubts, doubts about Moses, doubts about his motives, doubts about his authority, and, yes, surely doubts about his invisible God.

Moses and Aaron said that unless Pharaoh let us go, their God would afflict the Egyptians with plagues. Pharaoh's heart hardened and he resisted. Ten plagues followed. Some said that the plagues were natural events and others said that they were evidence of a test of powers between Moses and Pharaoh's court magicians. Some said that Moses won a battle of wills with Pharaoh, that he wore Pharaoh down. Others said that he was lucky. Still others said that he was just a better magician. Of course, some said that Moses prevailed because he was doing God's will.

Whatever really happened, after the slaying of the first born of the Egyptians, Pharaoh finally relented and said that we could leave. Moses said it was due to the power of his invisible God, but many, maybe most, thought that Moses had been lucky, had outwitted Pharaoh, or possessed more powerful magic.

Moses led us out of Egypt in the middle of the night. By the time we reached the Sea, Pharaoh had changed his mind and sent his forces after us. The Sea parted and we crossed, but Pharaoh's pursuing forces drowned. Again Moses said it was due to the power of his invisible God. Moses and Miriam led us in songs of praise and thanksgiving. Many again said it was magic. Some thought it was natural, having to do with tides, winds, and the weight of people on foot as opposed to warriors on horseback and in chariots. Many of us weren't sure about the cause, but were not inclined to challenge Moses.

Moses goaded us into the desert. He said that God in the form of a pillar of smoke during the day and a pillar of fire at night would lead us. Not everybody believed him, but the pillars he promised did appear. They hardly seemed natural, but those who leaned toward magical explanations were sure that they knew what was going on. We all followed Moses and the pillars nonetheless. We wandered for months, finally arriving at the base of a mountain called Sinai.

One day Moses called us all together. He said that this mountain was holy to Adonai, who had summoned Moses to the summit to receive God's Law. Moses told us to wait in our camp at the base of the mountain for him to return with the Law. On pain of death we were not to touch yet alone ascend the mountain.

After months wandering in the desert, everybody, particularly the elderly, the infirm, and parents with young children, appreciated the opportunity to rest. We settled into daily routines and waited for Moses to return from the mountain. We mended torn clothing and tents. We repaired broken equipment, utensils, and tools. Injured and sick people and animals healed. Friends gathered around campfires to share memories and to tell stories. Children played.

Days passed and we waited. People began to wonder. How long would Moses be gone? What if he were hurt? What if he were dead? How would we know? A few wanted to climb the mountain themselves, but Aaron forbade it and no one was willing to oppose him.

Days turned into weeks and still we waited. We saw lightening at the summit, we heard thunder, and we were fearful. Some talked about returning to Egypt. No one said that directly to Aaron, but he knew. At least in Egypt there was real food to eat. Back to Egypt? Who among us knew the way? How would we recross the Sea? What if Moses returned to find us all gone? Wouldn't Pharaoh pour out his wrath on any who returned, particularly if Moses wasn't with us? We waited. In fear we waited.

One week ran into another. Real fear, a sense of dread, resided in our camp. At times even Aaron seemed to waver. During the days small groups of men gathered and talked in hushed tones, always looking to be sure that no one else overheard. At night husbands and wives whispered their fears to one another. The hearty stopped looking at the old ones, as if their mere looks would kill. The children seemed to understand that they might have no future at all. The boys became much more aggressive in their play; the girls turned inward, hiding in their tents.

After a month, ... after a month, life, if we can call it that, was filled with outright terror. Still there was no sign from the mountain. Moses had led us into the desert and abandoned us. Aaron stayed in his tent, afraid to face the community. Miriam, too, was unseen. Even Joshua, the fearless one, showed doubt in his face. People openly cursed the day when they had listened to Moses, following him out of Egypt and into the desert. What kind of God led people out of slavery and into the hostile desert to sit, to sit and wait, to sit and wait and die?

Do you now remember how it was? As we neared forty days in that hellish desert, someone recalled the almost forgotten story of Noah and the rain that killed everyone not in the ark. God had promised no more such floods, but had said nothing of the arid desert heat. Fear became terror, terror became anger, and anger became rage. The whispers were now spoken aloud. The spoken word became uncontrollable sobbing and screaming. Do you remember those days? All pretense of supporting one another disappeared. Moses was surely dead and soon we all would follow.

I was there to hear the first mention of the calf. I was ready to grasp at any hope and I was not alone. Do you remember? We gave our jewelry to make the calf. Aaron understood our need. We danced and we sang and we revelled. Lovers embraced. New lovers were found. After forty days of fear, hope returned and we welcomed it with wild abandon. We forgot about Moses and his invisible God.

And then, ... there he was..., Moses, with a radiant face and two stone tablets in his arms. There he stood and the rage that had so recently been in us rose in him. Ah ... the rest you know.

Until I started writing this D'var Torah, the meaning of the golden calf episode had escaped me. Think of it. The message we were to hear was the word of Adonai, our God. The messenger was Moses. We turned away, unwilling to accept the message and unwilling to listen to its holy messenger. Instead we chose to be with our ignorance, our fear, and our anger.

That was three thousand two hundred years ago when you and I were at Sinai. Today ... well today, the message of God's Law is the same. The messenger, though is different. Moses died before crossing into the Promised Land. Today the messengers are rabbis, teachers, and friends in Torah Study groups. Still today we often turn away from God's Law. We turn away in ignorance, fear, and anger.

And yet, we are only human and incapable of strictly following God's Law. God understands this, even if we do not always. What is more important than our strict compliance is that we strive to comply with Adonai's Law. It is the striving to comply rather than strict compliance that truly matters. Notwithstanding the golden calf, Aaron became the High Priest and the Israelites became a kingdom of priests, a holy people.

Despite our many faults, weaknesses, and set-backs, may we be counted among those who strive to comply with God's law.

Amen.

D'Var Torah Ki Tisa
20 Adar 5760 25 February 2000 
Mark Burger Sh'mot Exodus 30:11 - 34:35 Chant 33:12-23 

One of the signs of our changing world is selecting different providers of telephone, electricity and natural gas services, which used to be regulated monopolies. These changes have resulted in price savings, confusion and a lot of dinner interrupting phone calls.

Companies selling us new service use the telephone, television, direct and electronic mail. With a lot of these transactions, we're asked to give a verbal yes to switching, often to a computerized recorder.

What happens a lot is that people revoke their decisions, claiming they changed their mind, they misunderstood or were possibly misled. Sometimes these disputes require a legal solution. Often the solution proposed is to have the customer agree to a switch in writing. This is called in the industry a "wet" signature, implying ink that dries. A "dry" signature is the oral agreement that's taped or done by e-mail.

The premise is that a "wet" signature signifies more thorough understanding. The industry doesn't like it because using paper copies drives up costs. It is also not clear whether a "wet" signature in itself results in a clearer understanding of what customers are getting. But many marketers also believe that getting a "wet" signature results in better buy-in by the customer, leading to a longer lasting, and more profitable, relationship.

Ki Tisa is about the ultimate relationship, God and Israel. The first giving of the covenant apparently did not work. It was apparently a "dry" signature. The subsequent breakdown required a closer interaction in the relationship. The closer interaction was Moses himself inscribing the new relationship - a form of a "wet" signature. It also occurred after blood was shed after the Molten Calf - a more pronounced "wet" signature.

But the covenant between God and Israel has been cast since. Was the "wet" signature better than the "dry" one? Do we understand better? Maybe not. But the relationship has been long lasting.

Amen.

Roberta Baruch, February 28, 1997

"The rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating." Anne Lamott

I'm going to tell you two stories tonight. One is the parsha for the week we have just read, Ki Tisa, and the other is a story of my vacation a couple of months ago in Florida.

First the parsha. You may have seen the Hollywood version of this, but I think the text from Torah just as it is written contains many story lines and enough drama for a thousand Star War trilogies. I'd have to do a d'var on this section every year for the next 50 to do it justice. It is complex, has a great deal of overlap, numerous stories retold a little differently or a lot differently, perhaps by different authors, and several exciting climaxes as well as a few disappointing anticlimaxes. It has song and poetry and prayer and rules for the Shabbat. It has prescription and description. It has elements of familiar folk tales and forms the basis of legal statutes we observe today. It has narrative and dialogue. God describes Himself to Moses, so we have a sense of the God that the Children of Israel knew in the Exodus. And in it is one of the most bizarre incidents we have ever tried to comprehend, the story of the golden calf, that traverses from the supernatural to the most human of scales, from the sublime to the depths, the fears of the vulnerable, very human Children of Israel who remain ignorant of Moses' theophany, his face-to-face encounters with God. We have a story of transformations, of creations, of choices, and finally, of a nation preserved.

As you recall, the Children of Israel have accepted the covenant, they will do as God asks them without actually knowing what the covenant they've agreed to consists of. When this parsha begins, God is telling Moses that the Children of Israel must pay, whether rich or poor, a half-shekel for a census (the gap between rich and poor not being as wide then as it is today). God gives Moses instructions for building a washstand, a prescription for mixing a potion to anoint not only the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Pact, but also Aaron and his sons. God is architect, designer, engineer, contractor, pharmacist, and talent scout. God tells Moses to remind the Children of Israel to observe the Shabbat using the words we now sing as "Veshamru."



No sooner has God written the words on the tablets of stone with His own finger than He warns Moses to hurry down the mountain, because your people, as God calls them, have built a molten calf and have bowed down to worship it. God threatens to destroy the Children of Israel (that is, the children of the transformed Jacob) and offers to make of Moses and his descendants a great people. But Moses pleads with God to spare the people, Moses soothes the face of God, and asks God to remember his covenant as He has with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And also, by the way, to remember what the Egyptians might think of the God of Israel if He now kills those He brought out of Mitzraim. God agrees to let these people live.

Moses descends the mountain with the stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God. Joshua collars Moses along the way and says he hears sounds of war in the camp. Moses replies in poetry:

Not the sound of the song of prevailing/Not the sound of the song of failing/The noise of them that sing do I hear.

Moses strides into camp, sees the Children of Israel dancing around the golden calf, takes in the mounds of sacrifices the people have offered to the calf god, and then throws the tablets from his hand, and smashes them beneath the mountain, and takes the calf that they had made and burns it with fire, grinds it up until it is thin powder, strews it on the surface of the water, and makes the Children of Israel drink it.

When Moses asks Aaron how the people could have gotten so out of control, Aaron placates Moses: Let not my lord's anger flare up (what might Moses do now, he has already smashed the tablets, and made the people drink the powdered gold). Aaron defends himself further: You yourself know this people, how set on evil it is. They said to me: Make us a god who will go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him! So I said to them: Who has gold? Didn't they all have gold? They had stripped Egypt, going to their neighbors and requesting permission to borrow their finery, an offer the Egyptians could not refuse. Aaron continues his explanation to Moses, probably backing away bowing: They broke it off and gave it to me.



And here is what I think is one of the most human of verses in Torah. Aaron whines: I threw it on the fire, and out came this calf!



So picture this. Moses knows his people have angered God, have been afraid, have built themselves a golden calf to worship, but Moses has the tablets of stone, Moses must descend the mountain, Moses has promised the people. God has made Moses quite an offer, one we might have trouble refusing, knowing as we do the story of Passover, how the Children of Israel are a stiff-necked people, how they are never satisfied, how they came from slavery and complained all the way, "all we have is manna, it was better back in Egypt," and "Did you bring us here because there were not enough graves in Egypt?" Might Moses not have been tempted when God offered to annihilate the Children of Israel and offer a new covenant and a new beginning starting with Moses' own heirs? But Moses does not succumb, he is a noncompromiser, an intercessor, free to argue with God for the Children of Israel, for those who are already there. Moses does not hesitate to refuse God despite the tempting offer, one we might have fantasized about ourselves, to start a new nation, to forget about our pasts, to never have to deal with our forbears, we, ourselves at the head of a brand new family.

I can see Moses trudging down the mountain, meeting his henchman Joshua along the way, listening to Joshua's painful rationalization of the Children of Israel's behavior, that they are celebrating a war victory, "What does Joshua think," Moses might say, "that I would confuse the triumphant victory song of the sea with Carnivale?" and wearily Moses re-acknowledges the humanness of his people whom he already knows too well, who never stop their whining, their rationalizations, their idols, their wicked revelry. Moses continues to plod down Mt. Sinai, ruminating over Joshua's feeble attempt at justification, despairing of his own brother's weakness and perfidy in responding so readily to the Children of Israel's remonstrations against Moses. Moses has a mission, now it is his to do himself. God has guided Moses all the way to this point, but the golden calf episode has seemingly exhausted God's store of patience - God wished to wash His hands of the Children of Israel and to start again, a new creation, as He had done before, as He did with Noah and the flood, as He tried to do with Abraham, a new creation with his servant Moses as the new Adam. But Moses does not accept the offer, he girds himself to confront the people, summoning up all his strength, striding into the camp, shocked again at what he already knows is there, taking in this grievous transgression on the part of his people, growing incensed, hurling the sacred tablets to the ground where they break into a million pieces, and intimidating younger brother Aaron such that Aaron gives a child's wheedling answer to a an adult's harsh question - this calf just appeared, thinking a child's thoughts, does my brother Moses have eyes in the back of his head?

Moses has had some time to think of a punishment for his people as he slogged down the mountain trail gathering energy to do what he must, destroy the tablets, and he comes up with a brilliant solution, make the Children of Israel drink the golden calf so that it will forever be a part of the Jews. Perhaps this punishment, the drinking of the powdered golden calf - Moses has strewn it on the water and thus, he himself has to drink it too - as much as Moses' taking on the burden of the future of his people, perhaps these actions are what has made us and kept us a nation. We too at the site of three most dramatic and powerful religious experiences, the covenant with God, the descent into degradation, and Moses' plea to God forgo another creation, perhaps we too have ingested along with this bitter water, this powdered calf, the reality of our fearfulness, the reality of our desire for concreteness in our beliefs, the difficulty we have, especially in times of uncertainty, of relating to an unseen, unknowable God. A midrash says that all that has happened to the Jews since is in part traceable to the golden calf. Maybe all of us have a little gold in our bones - maybe this is the origin of the "pintele Yid," the collective unconscious memory of having stood at the bottom of Mt. Sinai receiving Torah!

Now, here is the second story.

I was down in Florida a couple of months ago, and I was having dinner with some of the old folks in my family, my father, who is 82, his next younger sister, my Aunt Mary, my father's Aunt Hannah, who is 89, and her husband - these old folks and my sister and I were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Sarasota on Christmas eve.

Aunt Hannah, who in her youth was known as Aunt Fanny to my father, a name he has never stopped using, was asking about my sister and me and my brother and our children, and what we all did. My father proudly announced that not only did I have a grandson, making him a grosse-zaydie, but that I also studied kaballah. Now you might think that my father knows something about kaballah, and indeed he does. He knows it's part of a mystical strain of Judaism, and that a lot of people are "into" it today. Those around that table in that Chinese restaurant in Sarasota looked impressed, or skeptical, or bemused, according to each one's nature, but not too interested. I did venture one more remark, to say that my studies in kaballah were based on my deepest interest, that is, the study of Torah, and that one had to be fully grounded in Torah before kaballah could be properly understood. And again, they all were suitably impressed, or skeptical, or bemused, but no one asked me any further about my studies. These oldsters are a generation or two removed from most of you in this congregation. They tell stories about their parents who came here from the old country, and how it was in the first few years here, and depending upon who tells the stories, they are proud (my father), sentimental (Aunt Fanny), comical (my Aunt Mary). These are rational Jews. Supremely rational. My father is an engineer.

Although this older generation of Jews, my relatives, aren't very interested in Judaism, they are highly connected to their Jewishness. The subject was quickly changed, and I, I am grateful, was let off the hook. What has happened here? These Jews, these old ones in their zeal to become Americans and to forget the heartbreak of the old country are not like the Children of Israel, spending 40 years in the desert, bemoaning their wonderful times in Minsk or Pinsk, their generation has become nearly assimilated, completely rational, tries to forget their past, has chosen to do what Moses did not, to become part of a new nation, and in so doing, has abandoned a portion of their Judaism - they are bagel and lox Jews. Pastrami. Kugel. Mooshu pork and kung pao shrimp Jews.

The fourth generation was represented in Florida too, my lovely niece and her boyfriend. She brought with her a massive album of pictures from her recent trip to Machu Picchu.

She had gone Machu Picchu, up in the high mountains of Peru, for a shamanistic learning experience. She and her group of fellow seekers of various religious convictions were there for a week. There was yoga, and vegan meals, and drumming, and meditation, and prayer. The new generation of Jews - reaching out for all the world has to offer, to other ancient traditions. Incorporating them into their very now Judaism.

Now, you may think this is all very interesting, but wonder what this has to do with the rich, powerful, and complex parsha for this week, Ki Tisa.

And I think it has everything to do with it. I think the common thread is that rationality squeezes the juice from our religious practices.

My father and his generation in some part abandoned the Judaism of their fathers, especially the superstitions that passed for wisdom, as soon as they could. Although my father learned prayerbook Hebrew from his own grandfather and has been part of a minyan for many years, and despite the fact that he is Jewish to his marrow, he has very little knowledge of Judaism and has never studied Jewishly beyond his bar mitzvah. The ruah, the soul, the spirit, the breath of Judaism I think is embarrassing to him. Kaballah is from some other world than the one he lives in, from some esoteric place "out there," still, he is proud that I study. He can read Hebrew, but cannot translate it. Even so, I believe my family has inherited a great gift, because my father's family had scholars in their past, they were from Satanov, a center of Hasidism and Kaballah study.

On my mother's side, we have a rich tradition of Jewish food and whole baskets full of old wive's tales, prejudices, and conventionality, this side of the family came from the ghetto in Riga, not long removed from subsistence farming. Speaking Yiddish did not prepare the daughters of the Latvian countryside to pass learning down, and much of my mother's Jewishness consisted of preparing the holiday meals, prejudices against nonJews, and an outlook characterized by her familiar litmus test "Is it good for the Jews?" Women of her age were simply not taught they had any part in Jewish culture, tradition, or learning outside their home. Although my mother vehemently denies it, as children, my sister and I hung red felt stockings on the mantelpiece on Christmas eve, and I remember being delighted by a tiny bottle of Jergan's lotion and tickled by the silliness of an orange as stocking stuffer when we lived in California. How easy assimilation would have been, we were far away from our family back East, and we practiced the secular traditions of our neighbors, not that we are unique among Jews, or nonJews for that matter, in choosing those particular observances.

It seems that none of the joy, the awe, the depth, of the Torah of Judaism was available to us, and except for a fluke of distance, I would have followed in their footsteps, a vaguely "ethnic Jew," a bagel and lox Jew, a mooshu pork and kung pao shrimp Jew. From the age of my confirmation at 14 to my coming of age at age 40, I had abandoned all but two Jewish practice; taking my children to my parent's home for the Passover seder and living with a sense of nagging guilt every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that was not strong enough, however, to press me to attend services. My children were growing up, and I was divorced. I began to know somehow that our vague "let them choose their own religion" might not be the healthiest or most loving nurturance for my children, and that, however distorted or meaningless it might have seemed to me, they did have a heritage and I could introduce them to it. So I brought my girls, then aged 13, 10, and 5 to Oak Park Temple, where Rabbi Gerson had just arrived. I had searched out all the congregations in the western suburbs, and found that my girls' lack of religious training and non-Jewish dad would not be a handicap here. And since we lived too far away for me to just drop them off, I began to attend the Sunday morning activities here, including Rabbi Gerson's Torah study classes.

I expressed my desire to explore this way: "Judaism has lasted 3000 years. There must be more to it than a Passover seder." And, thanks to fortuitous geography, I began to learn. Ironically, part of what I learned is that there is not more to it than a Passover seder.

My daughters and niece are fairly typical of many young Jews today, searching for connections everywhere, from Machu Picchu, to drum circles in the Glaciers, to Rainbow gatherings in the deepest woods. And they might even have encountered kaballah. But they too, miss out: they do not study Torah.

We have been like the Children of Israel, always forgetting the miracles that happened just yesterday, grumbling, grumbling, what have you done for us lately, unable to fathom a unseen God, making rationality our golden calf.

And yet, and yet. We have drunk of the bitter water. We have not, as Moses did not, entirely cut off our past. We may not know exactly what we are looking for, but Ki Tisa tells us clearly, veshamru, the Israelite people shall keep the Shabbat. Part of that Shabbat for us must include study.

To use a phrase that would be familiar to my children, the golden calf is on the cusp between the literal and the mystical, the place where prayer is, the root of worship, the connection with the real and the imagined, wherein we can fashion a new creation for ourselves.

Judaism does not sculpt a calf-god we can see in the world. Judaism brings God into the world, by worship, by observing Shabbat, by study. The worship of the calf is about what we can see. The study of Torah is about who we can become, who we are, what our relationship to God, and thus to each other is, who God is in our lives.

And the story of the golden calf is a story of creation with a twist. It tells us that it isn't only God who creates a new relationship with life for us. Like Moses, we can take what we already have, and turn it into what we long for. And we have a truly life-affirming and creative way to do it, that has nothing to do with the rational. The study of Torah is rich, juicy, and fascinating. We can live our lives according to its teachings if we study. As our morning prayer says, "These are the obligations without measure, whose reward too is without measure: to honor our father and mother, to perform acts of loving kindness, to attend the house of study daily, to welcome the stranger, to visit the sick, to rejoice with the bride and groom, to console the bereaved, to pray with sincerity, to make peace when there is strife; and the study of Torah is equal to it all, because the study of Torah leads to it all."

Judy E. Gross 17 February 1995

I am the third person from my Torah study group to present a d'var on this week's Torah portion on the story of the golden calf (Exodus 32). Each of us has interpreted the story differently, and, in fact, I find that every time I read the story, I read it differently.

You know the story and may even have seen the movie -- Moses goes up Mount Sinai to receive the law from God. He is gone for forty days and nights. During his absence, the Israelites ask Aaron to make a god for them. Aaron makes a graven image, a golden calf. Because the people worship the image, God wants to destroy the people, but Moses beseeches Him to spare them. Moses then goes down, throws the stone tablets to the ground, destroys the calf, and commands the Levites to kill many of the Israelites. Moses again ascends the mountain and brings back new stone tablets of the Law.

We are left with the question, why did the Israelites, as Psalm 106 says, exchange their glory for "the likeness of an ox that eats grass" (Ps.106:20)? What does this story mean? The answer is that the story means many different things and is accessible on many different levels. And we each focus on different meanings at different times.

Sometimes when I read the story of the golden calf, I am incredulous at the Hebrews' "what have you done for me lately" attitude toward God, who, after all, just three months before brought them out of Egypt, parted the Sea of Reeds, and led them to safety with a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke. Frequently, when I read it, I am repulsed by Aaron's making a graven image, denying his actions, and not being punished. Always, I am shocked that Moses had the temerity to break the stone tablets of the Law, written by the finger of God. Usually, I am disgusted that Moses convinces God not to destroy the people by telling Him that the Egyptians would ridicule Him for bringing the people out only to destroy them -- although if I did a d'var on this same portion next year, I probably would focus on that same interaction between God and Moses deciding the Israelites' fate as a deft sketch of an enraged father and an anxious, frightened mother arguing about the appropriate punishment for a disobedient child.

This time when I read the story of the golden calf, instead of focusing on the Israelites' ingratitude toward God, I focused on what the people wanted when they asked for the golden calf. The Hebrews did not want a new god in the shape of a calf. Instead, they simply wanted to understand God. The plagues, the exodus from Egypt, the manna and quail, and the gathering at Mount Sinai were all miracles and as such are not susceptible of human understanding. When the people gathered to hear the word of God, they didn't hear the commandments; they heard only thunder, lightning, and the sound of a horn. (Ex. 20:15) Moses had to translate. They begged Moses to talk to God for them, whereupon Moses ascended Mount Sinai and stayed for forty days.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, the people are truly lost. They do not have their pillar of fire or Moses. Moses had been their intermediary with God; when he was away, they had no way of understanding this new type of God, so different from the familiar deities of the Egyptians and the neighboring tribes. They ask Aaron to make them a god to go before them to replace the pillar of fire because they do not know what had become of "that man Moses" (Ex. 32:1). Aaron thinks they want an idol, but this doesn't make sense. After all, the people ask Aaron to make the god, they supply the raw materials, and they probably watch Aaron carve the thing. Surely, they could not be so credulous to believe literally that the calf is the god that brought them out of Egypt.

I believe that what they actually want is the the safety and certainty that an idol brings. Making a graven image after all is an attempt to reduce God to something manageable, to something that can be carried around or, when no longer interesting, be put in a box out of the way. People can understand an idol. The Hebrews hoped to do the same with God -- to define and understand Him. But by definition, a definition is limiting: to define God is to limit Him. Moses argued that if God destroyed the people, the Egyptians would say that God had delivered the people for evil. Moses is warning that the Egyptians might believe mistakenly that they understood God and might imagine even that God's powers were limited geographically, that God was just another tribal deity. We should take heed of that warning.

The story of the book of the Exodus is the story of the creation of a people -- and the story of those people trying to understand and define the God Who chose them. Not only are they unable to define God, the Torah also makes it clear that people will remain distant from God. If they touch the holy mountain, they will die. They literally cannot understand God. When God talks, the people hear only thunder. When Moses breaks the tablets of the law, the people lose their only chance even to study words written by God, because apparently Moses is the scrivener of the replacement tablets. (Ex. 34:28)

Moses, too, remains at a distance from God and even from the Israelites for whom he translates. When Moses asks "show me now thy ways that I may know thee" ( Exodus 33:13), God agrees to let all His goodness pass before Moses and agrees to show Moses His back, but says "none can see my face and live" (Exodus 33:19). Even that is too much: after Moses returns from talking with God, bearing the replacement tablets, Moses's face radiates beams of light, or grew horns, according to some translations, and it doesn't matter which because he is so frightening that he must cover his face from everyone but God. (Ex. 34:30)

The Torah makes it clear another way that we cannot define God. Although graven images are explicitly forbidden, the Torah describes God in many different ways. God appears to Abraham as a man (Gen. 18:2), to Jacob as a man or an angel (Gen. 32:25), to Moses from out of a burning bush (Exodus 3:4), as a cloud standing next to Moses (Ex. 34:5), as well as goodness passing before him and as a voice. He appears to the people of Israel as pillars of fire and smoke and as thunder after descending upon Mt. Sinai in fire. (Ex. 19:18) He later approaches Elijah not out of the thunder but as a still small voice. ( I Kings 19:11) He is corporeal enough to savor the smell of smoke from sacrifices. Moses states that God is not a form but only a voice (Deut. 4:12), but he goes on to say that if the people insist on making graven images, the people will be scattered and left to "serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell." (Deut. 4:28). But even Moses, who directly speaks with God, must remain uncertain: when Moses first faces God at the burning bush, Moses asks God's name, the most basic step in defining Him, God answers only " I am that I am" (Ex. 3:14).

Yes, some of this is metaphor, some of it reworked Egyptian and Sumerian mythology, and some, no doubt, is a sign of the process of people's idea of God changing over time from an anthropomorphic image to something more ethereal. But if that were the only point, it would have been easy for one of the redactors of the Torah to edit out more primitive theories or images of God to present a final, consistent idea of God. Rather than being contradictions or historical development, to me, the point is that God is not one image or even just one voice. He is experienced differently by each person, but God is not limited by that experience. According to the Book of Exodus, He is "the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," (Ex. 3:6) each of whom had a different relationship with God. No-one, including Moses or Aaron, can define God. As Job discovered, God requires belief, not understanding.

So, is it wrong to try to understand God? I believe that rather than seeking to understand God in a general sense, each of us must try to determine our relationship to God as individuals and as Jews, including those actions necessary to fulfill our obligations to God. But we cannot put God in a box and say, or believe, that we have defined, limited, and contained God. We cannot change a golden calf into a god, and more importantly, we cannot change God into a golden calf.

D'Var Torah - Sh'mos (Exodus) 32:1-30
Mark Burger, Oak Park Temple, March 12, 1993

Having grown up in a liberal tradition, I have gone through three phases so far, a variation of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages of Man". As a child, I generally accepted things as they were. As a teenager (and post-teenager), I rebelled. I rebelled for good reasons, for bad reasons, and for no reasons at all.

I think I'm somewhat over the rebellion stage, at least the rebellion-for-its-own-sake stage. Maybe that makes me an adult. Assuming I'm an adult, I have gone through trial, error, and experiuence, tried to know what to acccept, where to challenge, when to be skeptical and how to be optimistic. All this, while keeping in view of my sins, my limitations and my mortality.

What brought all this on was my recent viewing of that classic movie "The Ten Commandments", with Charlton Heston and company. I can use this movie as an emotional barometer in life, since I've watched it almost every year of my memory.

As a child, I watched the movie with awe, accepting everything at face value, and cheered the triumph of good over evil, Yul Brynner and Edward G. Robinson. As a rebel, I hooted and jerred at the movie. I derided Charlton Heston's woodenness, Edward G. Robinson's biblical gangster drawl, and the general pomposity of it all. I cynically cheered on the Egyptions, and thought the whole thing, like Torah itself, was fiction. I was snide about the movie, but I almost always watched it when it was on the tube.

Now, older and with children of my own to watch "The Ten Commandments" with me, I hae a markedly different perspective. Yes, the movie is very stagy, the acting wooden and contrived, but that was how Torah and other surviving documents described life in ancient Egypt and Canaan. I gained new appreciation of the dialogues between the women over motherhood, marriage, love, and what pains in the neck their men were. The women acted better in the movie, as well as in Torah. The movie was faithful to the spirit of what was happening, if you gloss over the Hollywood license of things like combining the Golden Calf with Koray and Dathan's Rebellion, which occurs in the Book of Leviticus.

Oh yes, the Golden Calf, the theme of this Torah portion. Like my life and the life of many other folks I suspect, my feelings of the movie, like the people of Israel, went through three phases. After some childlike stubbornness, they were childlike in their acceptance of Moses, rebellious when things didn't go well, and as adults, well, they may not have gotten their sense of judgement very deeply set, but they knew they forever left their childhood behind.

All the "actors" paid prices. The Israelites had blood shed, were threatened with obliteration by God, and suffered prolonged wandering. When Moses averted the destruction of his people by passionately ordering the death of the most offensive sinners, he may have angered God, contributing to what kept him out of Canaan. Even God, it may be said, paid a price of sorts, in the eyes of people. While God may very well have known what was going to occur, it was revealed to us the two-way nature of the Covenant, that God must have people to love Him, or, as Moses reminded Adonai in this portion, what would the other nations, the neighbors, think, if God wiped out His cherished people. Even God is limited because of our human perspective. For He cannot really make us better. That we must do ourselves, while passing in three phases from childhood, to rebellion, to, perhaps, understanding. Amen.