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Parshat KiTissa Exodus 30:11 - 34:35
The Israelite journey from
slavery to freedom can be described as a process of maturation. As slaves in
Egypt they were as children who didn’t have to make decisions and had their
daily life was set out for them. Leaving Egypt began a process of maturation,
journeying through adolescence in the wilderness and ultimately entering
adulthood as they stood to enter the Promised Land.
The Israelites were fully
dependent on Moses, their substitute parent, from whom they received a
semblance of stability. So what would happen when Moses went away? As with most
children, they were likely not pleased when Moses went away but accepted a
finite absence, one of forty days. The problem arose when the forty days passed
and the promised return did not occur. Why would Moses be late coming down from
the mountain? He had to know that the People would not do well without him.
The simplest explanation is that
Moses was not late, that a counting error occurred. In his commentary on Ex 32:4, Rashi (12th century, France) explains that before ascending, Moses told the people that he would
return at the end of forty days, within six hours from sunrise on the fortieth
day. Rashi notes that Moses
ascended in the morning, thus the first “day” of his ascent was not a complete
Jewish day as Jewish days begin in the evening. By counting the day of ascent
as the first day Moses would be expected to return a “day” earlier than he had
planned.
To complicate matters, the Talmud contains a Midrash that holds that the
Satan got in on the action and caused darkness during the day so that the
Israelites would become even more confused about timing. They end up waiting
until the next morning and then begin the construction of the Golden Calf, a
physical manifestation of a God that they could not see.
Why couldn’t they have waited
even one more day? They acted like children whose parent went away and left
them with a babysitter. Things would be okay as long as their parents returned
when promised. When that date passed, the fear of abandonment would blossom.
Aaron the babysitter was not Moses.
It’s a matter of maturity.
It’s a matter of faith. What is faith but a belief in something that cannot be
seen? The Israelites were at a stage where they could easily maintain belief in
the intangible. They believed in God when miracles were being wrought but the
force of each individual miracle quickly faded as everyday life took hold. Moses
was their lifeline to God. They understood that Moses was their tangible link
to an unknowable God. With Moses away, the link went away as well. Thus, when
Moses didn’t return exactly on schedule as promised, the People reacted as
children will – rashly.
I think the Rabbis understood
this. Otherwise why create a midrash about the Satan stepping in to further
scare and confuse the Israelites? They needed to come up with some explanation
for the drastic action of reverting to the idolatry of Egypt after all that the
Israelites had seen and experienced of God’s greatness. Extreme fear combined
with a lack of maturity provides at least some sort of explanation for one of
our ancestors’ most egregious acts of all time.
For faith to truly inform and
enhance our lives, we have to be mature enough to accept that there are things
we do not understand. That “things” exist even if we cannot always see or sense
them. Only then will we have this faith to hold on to in our most trying times.
The Israelites didn’t possess the ability to hold on to faith and to use it to
temper their responses to crisis. We do. The only question is whether or not we
choose to acknowledge it.
May we all have the ability to hold on to faith and to keep wise heads about us during this world wide health crisis.
May the Original Healer keep us all healthy, safe and at peace.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbah Arlene
