KI TISSA
Ki Tissa ((30:11-34) is the parsha of the Golden Calf and the second set of tablets. The parsha starts with a poll tax of everyone over 20, then talks about the laver or wash basin near the altar of sacrifice and gives instructions for making anointing oil and the incense to be burned on the incense altar. Chapter 32 is the story of the Golden Calf, culminating in the slaughter by the Levites of those who were not for YHVH (32:28). Moses returns up the mountain. He seeks to make atonement for the sin of the people, persuades YHVH to lead the people (in a fit of pique YHVH has said he will not lead them because “If I were to go in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you. (33:5) and to get a new set of tablets. However, before he goes up the mountain again, he asks YHVH to show him YHVH’s glory (33:18) and YHVH responds that YHVH will show Moses the divine back, but not the face “because a human will not see me and live” (33:20). Moses then returns up the mountain and comes back with the second set of tablets. This second set of tablets does not have the same content as the first, which I discuss below.
I will discuss four themes.
Sacred Power and the difference between the sacred and the profane
The Golden Calf and the relationship with the indigenous people of Canaan whom we are to displace
The difference in the two sets of tablets
The idea of vision fasts in Judaism.
Sacred power and the difference between the sacred and the profane is a theme that runs throughout the parsha. For the wash basin, “When they [the priests] enter the Tent of Meeting they shall wash with water, that they may not die.” (30:20). That is sacred power is powerful in a way that just having regular dirty hands and being scolded by your mom is not. YHVH gives the ingredients for the “sacred anointing oil” (30:25) and commands that it be used on the Tent of Meeting, the Ark, the table and all its utensils, the lampstand, the incense altar, the altar for burnt offerings and all its utensils and the wash basin. As in the altar last parsha, “Thus you shall consecrate them so that they may be most holy; whatever touches them shall be consecrated.” (30:30). YHVH continues “It is sacred, to be held sacred by you. Whoever compounds its like, or puts any of it on a layman, shall be cut off from his kin.” (30:33) (I know the language is sexist and assumes male activity only). The same language is used for the incense (30:37-8) and also for working on Shabbat (31:14). This is setting forth a clear distinction between what is sacred and what is not.
There are at least three more examples of sacred power and the separation from the profane in this parsha. “Now Moses would take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp, at some distance from the camp. It was called the Tent of Meeting, and whoever sought YHVH would go out to the Tent of Meeting that was outside the camp.” (33:7). So a separation from everyday life of the camp. The second example is YHVH’s rejection of Moses’ desire to see his face “because a human will not see me and live” (33:20). The third example is when Moses descends from the mountain with the second set of tablets. “Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with YHVH. Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant, and they shrank from coming hear him.” (34:29-30). Here Moses is touched by the sacred, and it scares the Israelites who are living their ordinary lives.
The separation of the sacred from the profane and the power of the sacred are common phenomena in religion, but the separation is problematic. If the divine is everywhere, how can the divine be absent from what is called profane or everyday? The divine, religious thinkers want to say, is always present with us, even when we are doing the dishes.
One response is that the distinction between the sacred and the profane is only an apparent distinction, that really all experience is one, or could be one if we were really in tune with the divine. I sympathize with this argument, and yet I find it impossible to ignore the qualitative difference between everyday life and my experience of the sacred. While I might be able to experience the sacred doing the dishes or pouring tea in the famous Zen story, for most of us, radiant faces are only possible at some limited times in our lives. Maybe there are some serious masters with always radiant faces, but I haven’t ever met one.
Is the difference between the sacred and the profane real or only apparent? If you think the difference is only apparent, how do you infuse the everyday with holiness? If you think the difference is real, how do you bridge the gulf between the sacred and the profane?
The Golden calf is one of the most famous stories that is routinely taught as an example of idolatry and something that we should never, ever do. But there are problem with what we’ve been taught.
Aaron says something that is truly puzzling if the Golden Calf is simply idolatry, the worship of a different deity. He says “Tomorrow shall be a festival of YHVH” (32:5) when he sees the people’s response to the Golden Calf. And indeed, the next day “the people offered up burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well being; they sat down to eat and drink, and then rose to dance.” (32:6). A celebration. These people thought they were celebrating YHVH when they danced around the Golden Calf.
Ziony Zevit, a professor at American Jewish University, also writes, “In the northern kingdom of Israel, the calf or young bull was the icon associated with YHVH. They were found at both Dan and Bethel, two cultic sites set up by the royalty of the Northern Kingdoms. (The Religions of Ancient Israel, p.317). The Northern Kingdom of Israel was one part of the land under Jewish sovereignty when the united kingdom dissolved after Solomon. So our ancestors worshipped YHVH with the image of a golden calf, not only in the desert when Moses was up on Mount Sinai, but years later.
So why was Moses so angry at them? Why are we taught this as a story of idolatry?
Chapter 34’s condemnation of different ways of worshipping YHVH and the indigenous religious practice in Canaan gives us a powerful way to understand this story. YHVH basically says that he will give the land to the Israelites, but they have to destroy all the native religious altars, pillars and sacred posts. They are commanded not to mix with the inhabitants in any way in order to stay religiously pure, lest they be corrupted away from the true religion of YHVH only and wind up sharing their sacrifices and worship their Gods. (34:11-16).
The Golden Calf, I think, represented a worship that was aligned with Canaanite indigenous religious practice. How? The Golden Calf represented a way of worshipping YHVH in his male aspect, and that implied a female aspect of the divine. Our text wants absolutely nothing to do with the idea of a goddess, because if you have a Goddess, you will have worship of her (as indeed we see in the Hebrew Bible through all the condemnation of her worship). This undermines the idea of worshipping only YHVH. As the text tells us “you must not worship any other god, because YHVH whose name is impassioned (or jealous), is an impassioned (or jealous) God.” (34:14).
There’s also a polemical aspect here, both against the Northern Kingdom of Israel and against a long line of Kings even in the South who supported or tolerated the worship of the Goddess. We need to remember that Asherah had a prominent place in the first Temple. Further these ancestors were just as authentically Hebrew as our Judean ancestors who are the editors of our text and became the founders of Rabbinic Judaism.
Is the Golden Calf a story of idolatry as we’ve been taught, or a religious polemic? What parts of the demand to separate from the indigenous people of Canaan and the worship of YHVH along with other Gods are justified in your mind, and what parts are problematic? What kind of difference would it make if we embraced worshipping the Golden Calf?
The two sets of tablets simply aren’t the same. Here’s a chart with common parts of the two tablets in bold. I’m following Friedman in terms of how he lists the 10 things in Chapter 20, about which there is dispute.
FIRST TABLETS (Chapter 20) SECOND TABLETS (Chapter 34)
No other Gods No other Gods
No molten Gods (Idols) No molten Gods (Idols)
Don’t take YHVH’s name in Vain Festival of Unleavened Bread (Pesach)
Remember Shabbat First birth of a womb belongs to YHVH
Honor Father and Mother Remember Shabbat
No Murder Festival of Weeks (Shavuot) & Festival of ingathering (Sukkot)
No Adultery Blood of sacrifice only on unleavened bread
No Steal Passover sacrifice eaten before next day
Don’t bear false witness Bring first fruits to house of YHVH
No covet Don’t cook kid in mother’s milk
If you read the text carefully, you could actually argue with me about how I have numbered the second set, especially because I don’t include the commandment to appear before YHVH three times a year (34:23). However you describe the second set, it is clear that there are only 3 things in common between the two sets. Chapter 20 is often described as the ethical commandments because of the nature of commandments 5-10 and Chapter 34 is described as the ritual commandments because of the mandates that are ritual in nature. The second set are exclusively Jewish. With the possible exception of molten Gods in the Noahide laws, none of the second set are demands placed on anyone other than Jews. However, honoring your father and mother, no committing adultery, not murdering, stealing, bearing false witness, nor coveting are common moral precepts that are arguably applicable to all people.
Which set of ten would bring you closer to the divine? Why?
I like the second set because I think of the divine as something that has much more to do with ritual discourse than legal discourse. Ritual has the possibility of taking us out of our heads and into more direct experience. Ritual, for me, offers us a way to connect to the more than human world. Coveting, bearing false witness etc leave us in the exclusively human world. But the first set seeks to shape ethical human behavior more than the second set does. And maybe you think that the core of the religious project is to act ethically throughout your life.
Which set of ten would bring you closer to the divine? Why?
Vision fasts in Judaism happen. We have perfect proof in this parsha, where Moses returns to the top of Mount Sinai. “And he was there with YHVH 40 days and forty nights; he ate no bread and drank no water [don’t try this on your own, you’ll be dead] and he wrote down on the tablets the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.” (34:28).
I’ve written more extensively about the possibility of vision fasts in Judaism in two blog posts. https://earthbasedjudaism.org/indigenous-jewish-practices/the-possibility-of-jewish-vision-fasts and https://earthbasedjudaism.org/indigenous-jewish-practices/jewish-vision-fasts-part-2-curriculum. Besides Moses, we have a famous example of Elijah undertaking a vision fast, (I Kings Chapter 19), Jesus undergoing a fast recounted as the opening of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke and the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, p. 22). I know that Jesus might be viewed by some as a problematic example, but Jesus lived and died as a Jew.
Vision fasts don’t happen routinely as initiation rituals as they do or did in other societies. We also have no ethnography. Thus, we know almost nothing about how to prepare for the vision fasts or what the practitioners did during the fasts. In the blogs, I offer a whole series of ideas for preparation and practice that are drawn from our indigenous practices. These include fasting, taking a soul accounting, reciting or writing psalms, working with a Jewish medicine wheel, writing an ethical will for your descendants, experiencing the brokenness of the cosmos and seeking to repair the divine and the world (tikkun olam). It is absolutely possible for us to reclaim this practice and make it available for those who seek it out, not just for people as spiritually elevated as Moses, Elijah, Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov.
Here's what I would ask of people if I were guiding such a vision fast. Before they came, I’d ask them “Why are you doing this now? What do you hope to gain from it? What would success look like? What would failure look like? What strengths and weaknesses do you bring?
To be sure, our fasters’ actual experience will materially differ from what they write. Further, I don’t believe that it is actually possible to fail. It certainly is possible to sit there and not have a vision, but that is highly informative if (AND ONLY IF) the guides can frame this as a function of not being ready for visions. I came away with no vision and no direction from my first vision fast—and that was totally because I had more preparation work to do before I could be granted a vision.
Would you be interested in doing a vision fast? Under what circumstances? What would you hope to gain from this truly intense experience? Do you think you are ready?
QUESTIONS
Is the difference between the sacred and the profane real or only apparent? If you think the difference is only apparent, how do you infuse the everyday with holiness? If you think the difference is real, how do you bridge the gulf between the sacred and the profane?
Is the Golden Calf a story of idolatry as we’ve been taught, or a religious polemic? What parts of the demand to separate from the indigenous people of Canaan and the worship of YHVH along with other Gods are justified in your mind, and what parts are problematic? What kind of difference would it make if we embraced worshipping the Golden Calf?
Which set of ten would bring you closer to the divine? Why?
Would you be interested in doing a vision fast? Under what circumstances? What would you hope to gain from this truly intense experience? Do you think you are ready?
Ancient shrine in Israel with Golden Calf