Parachat Ki Tissa
Ki Tissa begins with the final details about the Sanctuary, including a collection of money from the people that was to serve as a census. The parsha then moves into high drama with one of the most gripping narratives in Jewish history. The people, panicking in the absence of Moses (who is up the mountain, receiving the tablets from God), make a Golden Calf and dance before it. God tells Moses to go down. Moses does, and in his anger smashes the tablets. He censures the people, then returns to the mountain to plead with God to forgive them. Eventually God does, and Moses returns, with a second set of tablets, unaware that his face is now radiant.
The Birth of a New Freedom
Witnessing the birth of a new idea is a little like watching the birth of a galaxy through the Hubble Space Telescope. We can witness…
Between Truth and Peace
Ki Tissa tells of one of the most shocking moments of the forty years in the wilderness. Less than six weeks after the greatest revelation…
The Closeness of God
The more I study the Torah, the more conscious I become of the immense mystery of Exodus 33. This is the chapter set in the…
Can there be Compassion Without Justice?
Punishment is bad news for everyone. The offender suffers, but so do the punishers...
How Leaders Fail
As we have seen in both Vayetse and Vaera, leadership is marked by failure. It is the recovery that is the true measure of a…
Moses Annuls a Vow
Featured image © Yoram Raanan Kol Nidre, the prayer said at the beginning of Yom Kippur, is an enigma wrapped in a mystery, perhaps the…
A Stiff-Necked People
It is a moment of the very highest drama. The Israelites, a mere forty days after the greatest revelation in history, have made an idol:…
Anger: Its Uses and Abuses
Comparing two of the most famous events in the Torah, we face what seems like a glaring contradiction. In this week’s parsha, Moses on the…
The Sabbath: First Day Or Last?
In the immensely lengthy and detailed account of the making of the Tabernacle, the Torah tells the story twice: first (Ex. 25:1 – 31:17) as…
Two Types of Religious Encounter
Framing the epic events of this week’s sedra are two objects – the two sets of Tablets, the first given before, the second after, the…
Counting The Contributions
This week’s sedra begins with a strange command: When you take a census [literally, “when you lift the head”] of the Israelites to determine their…