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.
