Ki-Tisa
http://etzion.org.il/vbm/english/archive/salt-shemot/21-17kitisa.htm
The Torah in Parashat Ki-Tisa tells the famous story of
chet
ha-eigel – the sin of the golden calf – which began when the
people approached Aharon and asked that he make for them an idol, “because this
man, Moshe…we do not know what happened to him” (32:1).
The
Midrash Ha-gadol makes a comment on this verse which can
perhaps shed light on
Benei Yisrael’s precise concern that precipitated the sin of the calf: “They said:
Perhaps the Almighty kept him [Moshe] near Him for consultation, or perhaps the
destructive angels conspired against him and killed him.” According to the
Midrash
Ha-gadol,
Benei Yisrael envisioned two opposite scenarios: either God decided that Moshe belonged
permanently in the heavens, or his venture to the heavens ended in calamity, as
the heavenly hosts felt threatened by his intrusion and eliminated him.
Worded differently,
Benei Yisrael claimed that it was impossible for Moshe to spend forty days in the heavens
and then return to earth to lead them.
He was either human or divine; he could not be both. If he was human, then he could not
possibly survive among the angels; and if he was divine, then he could not
possibly return to lead a nation of ordinary men and women.
The
Midrash Ha-gadol’s comments are likely based upon a careful
reading of the people’s remark: “ki zeh
Moshe ha-ish…” – “for this man, Moshe…” Their concern was that “the man”
Moshe was gone. Even if Moshe
remained alive, by that point, they feared, he was no longer a “man”; after
spending so much time in the heavens, he could not possibly still be accessible
to them or able to relate to them.
And thus they concluded that he was either dead or angelic. Either way, they needed someone or
something to take his place.
The people’s mistake was denying the synthesis and integration between
heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical.
The Midrash (Devarim Rabba) famously describes Moshe, the “ish
ha-Elokim” (Devarim 33:1), as “a man from the middle down, and
God from the middle up.” Moshe
embodied the fusion between the physical and spiritual, demonstrating how a
mortal, physical being can rise to great spiritual heights.
Benei Yisrael, it seems, were not prepared to recognize this potential, and thus
concluded that Moshe was either a man who was killed trying to reach the
heavens, or an angel who could never return to earth. And they therefore created a deity
which they could worship through unrestrained festivity and indulgence (“va-yakumu le-tzacheik” – 32:6).
They wanted a religious system that did not require “ascending to the
heavens,” which allowed them to follow their instincts and impulses without the
need for Godliness, for discipline and restraint.
Denying the possibility of fusing the physical and the spiritual, they
sought a way to religiously sanction wanton indulgence.
This perspective on
cheit ha-eigel is beautifully expressed in the famous Midrashic description of the script
of the commandments “flying” off the stone tablets when Moshe beheld the worship
of the calf (see sources cited by
Torah
Sheleima to 32:19).
The Midrash tells that once the divinely-engraved letters left the stones, they
became too heavy for Moshe to hold, and they fell to the ground. The
luchot represent what Torah life is – a physical existence (“stone”) bearing a
spiritual imprint (“letters”). If we
deny the possibility of this existence, and we send the “letters” back to the
heavens, then the “luchot” collapse. Torah life is
sustained by this fundamental recognition that we can rise to become an “ish Elokim,” physical creatures endowed with a heavenly
quality.
Benei Yisrael were, quite obviously, mistaken. Moshe was neither killed nor forced
to remain in the heavens. Human
beings are, indeed, capable of “ascending to the heavens” and then returning, of
fusing our physical realities with loftier, spiritual meaning.
