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D'var Torah: Ki Tisa

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Torah reading: Exodus 30:11-34:35
Haftarah: 1 Kings 18:20-39.

And so now we come to the story of the Golden Calf. The Israelites, impatient and worried that Moses has vanished forever on Mount Sinai, tell Aaron to make them "gods that will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him."

Aaron (surprisingly, for Moses' right-hand man) doesn't put up much or, really, any resistance. He tells all the people to bring their gold jewelry, then takes it and makes it into a golden calf -- and the people are delighted. "These are your gods, O Israel, that brought you up out of Egypt." A festival is declared, and the people spend the next day making sacrifices to the idol, followed by a riotous night of feasting, drinking, and "indulging in revelry" (which I'm assuming refers to sexual activity.)

Needless to say, when Moses comes down the mountain and sees this, he is furious. He smashes the tablets of the Law which God has made, grinds the idol to powder and makes the Israelites drink it. Then he calls the faithful to his side; the Levites rally around him, and a mass slaughter of the idolaters begins. "And that day about three thousand of the people died."

The next day Moses goes back up the mountain to plead before God for the people of Israel, as he did the previous day when God had told him what was happening in the Israelite camp. "Please forgive their sin --" he begs -- "but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written." God tells Moses he punishes those who have sinned against him, nobody else. Moses is to continue to lead the people to the Promised Land -- but God strikes them with a plague first in punishment for their sin of idolatry.


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