Parsha Vayakhel

Community

The word for community we use nowadays is the Kahal. It is used as general word in the Torah to gather people together. It can apply to individuals, families, elders, tribes and peoples. Sometimes it is for a specific event, like providing water miraculously. Sometimes it is to gather everyone to stand firm for a cause. Here in the context…

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Parsha Ki Tisah

Golden Calf

Why did the Children of Israel make the Golden calf? They had after all supposedly seen the miracles in Egypt, the miracles in the desert, the Sinai revelation, why would they possibly think a piece of metal that they had seen being made, could have done it all? Was it that they urged Aaron to make a Golden Calf just…

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Parsha Ki Tisah

Horns of Skin

This week we read about the Golden Calf and then Moses going back up the mountain to receive the second copy of the Ten Commandments, carved into stone. This is the third quite separate narrative in the Torah that describes the process of the revelation of Torah. Uniquely here, after the second period of forty days and nights that Moses…

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Parsha Ki Tisah

Drinking the idol

When Moses returned to the camp and saw the golden calf, he was furious that they had so misunderstood the nature of an unseen God. That was supposed to be their great contribution to civilization, that the energy of the universe, the power of God did not need physical symbols or images for representation. The ideas should have been enough.…

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Parsha Ki Tisah

Seeing God

Moses now must re-establish a relationship with God that he feels had been broken. We can understand God’s anger with the Israelites but why with Moses? Yet Moses clearly needs personal reassurance as well as for the people in general. So he asked God to “show me your glory.” God replied, “no human can actually see God.” But he put…

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Parsha Ki Tisah

Divine Qualities

After the debacle of the Golden Calf Moses fears that God will reject the Israelites altogether. Indeed that is precisely what God says to him “I have seen this people to be stiff necked. Leave me to my anger with them. I will destroy them and make you a great nation” (32.9). Moses then appeals to God with the argument…

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