Ki Tisa

Ki Tisa is both one of the most important and one of the most problematic parshiot in the history of parshiot. At least, in my humble opinion. We start out by getting some more overly detailed instructions on how to build the mishkan, Moshe goes up Mt. Sinai to get the commandments, people build a golden calf, Moshe comes down, breaks the tablets, then needs to go back up for new ones, more mishkan instructions. That’s the gist.

I didn’t get it. I spent all week feeling annoyed and angry at the parsha. I read it over and over again trying to figure something out. God didn’t make sense to me. Moshe kinda made sense, and the I totally was on board with the golden calf idea. Having heard the golden calf story many times prior to this (and never thinking about in any depth), I was very aware that I am supposed to feel the opposite. It made sense to me that the people felt alone and needed some replacement. It’s like a kid with absent parents trying to adopt the closest adults as replacement parent-like figures. I used to do that all the time. I still do. It’s an understandable mistake on their part. God and Moshe maybe should have understood the reality of human nature better and calmed down about the whole thing. Instead they both got angry, threatened (and followed through with) mass murder, and broke things.

My feelings were troubling (as they often are, I’m a bit of a wreck). I read some commentaries and nothing was helping. Until I read an essay in Frameworks comparing the mishkan to the calf. The essay argued that the mishkan and the calf served similar roles; a physical manifestation of something beyond normal human experience. Humans need physicality and passion and lust. Godliness doesn’t work that way so we need a lesser form that we can more readily understand. God knew this and instructed us in a way we can achieve this. When Moshe went up to Mt. Sinai they took this idea into their own hands and built the golden calf. Having a physical, base way to serve hashem is not inherently wrong; it was the way in which we went about it. God commands us; not the other way around. When God instructed us in the ways of the mishkan, he was catering to our needs. When we decided to take the idea of worship and service to God into our own hands…that’s where the problem is. God DOES understand us and does what we need. It’s when we try to impose ourselves and our views onto God that we have a problem.

I feel better about this parsha now. I don’t exactly support mass murder of well meaning (although totally misguided) people…but I’m not God. Shouldn’t impose my misguided but well-meaning views either. So, let us all learn from their mistakes.