One of the more dramatic moments of the story of the Golden Calf, which is the main theme of this week’s Parshah, is Moses breaking the tablets. This throwing down of destroying of G-d’s handiwork seems to be generally approved by the Torah. Indeed, according to the Rabbis, G-d Himself is represented as congratulating Moses on the act. How are we to understand this iconoclastic enthusiasm? An answer may lie in another puzzling feature of the Parshah. According to the traditional division of the text, the Golden Calf episode begins with the statement that when G-d finished instructing Moses, He gave him the tablets containing the Torah. This line would be more appropriately placed after the description of the event, before the description of the miraculous nature of the tablets, preceding Moses’ destruction of them. Indeed, according to the traditional layout, the actual sin of the Golden Calf is bracketed with statements about the tablets. This gives us a clue as to what is going on here and to what is the basis of the sin of the Golden Calf. The tablets are the physical manifestation of the word of G-d. As such they are susceptible to becoming a fetish, or even a substitute for G-d. This fear is made real by the sin of the Calf. The Jewish people, who have latched on to Moses as a semi -divine figure, in his absence create a new fetish, the Golden Calf. Moses, seeing this, is afraid that the tablets, or indeed maybe the Torah itself, will become merely another fetish to be worshipped; not a guide to serving G-d. For this reason he takes G-d’s handiwork and destroys it before their eyes. Nothing, even tablets made by G-d Himself, are sacred cows, that stand in place of G-d. This is later further emphasised by the fact that, unlike in heathen temples where the god is annually paraded, the ark with its tablets never leave the Temple. We worship G-d and nothing else, not even the Torah. For too many people today, however, ritual and tradition have become an end in themselves, losing their spiritual meaning. They have become a fetish, mindlessly followed. without serving their true purpose of bringing us closer to G-d. We should remember that every time we pray or perform a mitzvah without thinking about its meaning, we are guilty of the sin of the Golden Calf.

ALIYAH BY ALIYAH SYNOPSIS

Sidra Statistics

Parshat Ki-Tissah

·         has 139 verses ;

·         is the 9th in Exodus, 21st in the Torah

·         longest in Exodus, 9th longest in the Torah

·         has 4 pos + 5 neg = 9 mitzvot.