Ki Tissa

Shemot 30:11-34:35

The Reconstruction of a Relationship

Jenny R. Labendz, 5764

Read Chapter 32 and 33 of Shemot - the sin of the golden calf. At each stage, think about how each party must be feeling with regard to the other parties. Focus primarily on God's attitude (be imaginative) towards the people, and the people's attitude towards God.

At the beginning of Shemot 33, towards the end of Parashat Ki Tissa, Hashem tells Mosheh, and Mosheh in turn tells Benei Yisrael, the long-term consequence of the sin of the golden calf, which is the topic of the previous chapter. Already Mosheh has burnt up the golden calf and made the people drink the ashes, there has been a massacre of some 3,000 Israelites at the hands of the Levites among them, and God has sent a plague on the people. But now God speaks and it appears that the real punishment comes only in chapter 33.

Verse 1:

Already we can sense the anger and estrangement Hashem feels from the people as Hashem says to Mosheh that it is he - Mosheh - that brought them out of Egypt, even as it was Hashem who promised them the land of Israel.

Verse 2-3a:

But still, Hashem is not calling off the whole deal. This people will continue towards its destiny, with Hashem fighting away its enemies and bringing it to a glorious land. But here comes the painful result of the golden calf.

Verse 3b:  

How that line must have stung.

Verse 3c:

I wonder whom this line hurt more, Hashem speaking it, or the people hearing it. Hashem has worked so hard for them, Hashem's children, and now they have turned their backs. Hashem cannot bear to be with them intimately anymore. There is a midrash in the Pesikta deRav Kahana (16:9; ed. Mandelbaum, p. 277) that when the Temple was destroyed and God said,"נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי" -"Take comfort, take comfort my people," (Is. 40:1), what God was really saying was, "נַחֲמוּנִי נַחֲמוּנִי עַמִּי" - "Comfort me, comfort me, my people." Even as God is carrying out punishment, it is really God Who needs to be comforted. Betrayal, lies, distrust - God's anger is certainly well-founded.

By the same token, when Benei Yisrael hear the news that God will cease to be in their midst, they mourn (v. 4):

They have made a mistake, and by now they surely know it. Their God is going to apart from them; their divine escort will no longer be present as their long journey continues. According to the Talmud, the crowns that were placed on the heads of each and every Israelite when they said, "נעשה ונשמע" - "we will do and we will hear!" were taken away by hordes of angels at this time (Shabbat 88a).

When I read these lines in the Torah this morning they struck me as reflective of painful and angry separation between God and Israel, a relationship no longer suffused with love, caring, and protection. But then I looked at the Netziv's perspective. He writes as follows:

The Netziv's description of these lines of the Torah is very different from what I wrote above. In fact, this is not a moment of estrangement, but one of a closeness that brings their relationship to greater heights than ever before.

Looking carefully at what the Netziv describes as God's message to people, we see something spectacular. The people have just betrayed God. There was anger, to be sure. The Netziv recognizes that but, I assume referring to the drinking of the ashes, the massacre, and the plague, notes that God and Israel have already dealt with the raw pain of it all. Now we are in a new chapter, literally. God now calmly reflects on what has happened, and thinks about why. After all, it wasn't all in God's head, as it were; there WAS an actual relationship and there has to be some sort of reasonable explanation for the betrayal. It was not mere malice.

Indeed, God finds in reflecting that there was something God did not understand until just now: these people really are quite stiff-necked. They can't seem to help it. But they are already in relationship with God. In fact, had they not already been in relationship, perhaps God would not have been motivated even to reflect carefully about what had caused the rebellion, nor perhaps would it have been so apparent. Only in a close relationship can one really see and understand the flaws in another. (And wouldn't it be a tragedy if as soon as we became close with another person and they were then able to perceive our faults, they just left us? Wouldn't it be a tragedy if we turned our backs on the people we had finally become close enough with to see their faults?) And when God realizes what the problem is, God responds appropriately. It is not a punishment; it is a protection. God realizes that the people are limited and simply have trouble behaving when God is around, so God will just have to adjust God's relationship with them; God cannot be around so much. They will be all right; the journey will continue, and they will continue to be in relationship, but one much more suited to the limitations of each party. God needs a certain type of behavior and will of necessity judge the people when they misbehave. And the people are limited in their capacity to behave.

The moment of greatest distance, the sin of the golden calf, thus allows for the space of great closeness-a place where God can look at us and see our faults, accept us nonetheless, and reconstruct our relationship such that it will be more functional. This is all done out of love and protection, and a feeling of commitment to the relationship. This strikes me as such an obvious model for how we are to relate to our own relationships with other people that I barely need write it. After the initial anger and hurt when we are wronged by the people around us, we would do well to think: Was this wrongdoing actually a reflection of a limitation that can be tended to if only the relationship were slightly reconstructed? Or, have we learned what is fair to expect of this particular person, and what is not? It should be even easier for us than it must have been for God. Each and every one of us, unlike Hashem, has such a serious collection of limitations that we ought to hope others will accept us anyway and enter into and maintain relationships with us despite them.

May all of our mistakes and wrongdoings lead primarily to better understandings of ourselves and others, and to deepening and more appropriately constructing our relationships.