Summary

This week’s parasha, Ki Tissa (Exodus 30:11 – 34:35) concludes the descriptions of the design for the Tabernacle, its accoutrements, and instructions for its investiture and the ordination of the priests who were to be its attendants. Bezalel and Oholiab, skilled craftsmen, are chosen to carry out the complex construction. God then completes the instruction to Moses and gives him the two tablets of stone inscribed with “the finger of God.”

Moses is then informed of Israel’s ‘great sin’, the building and worship of the golden calf. Moses rejects God’s response, to substitute the people with a new, obedient lot and wins God’s approval by being blessed with a full revelation of the divine attributes that will be granted to mortals. However, Moses’ anger leads him to smash the tablets of stone. Dealing with punishment on human rather than Divine terms, Moses then returns up the mountain to receive the second set of tablets. The terms of the ‘New Covenant’ provides greater emphasis to cultic issues than the largely ethical ones of the original Decalogue.

Commentary by Rabbi Aaron Goldstein, Outreach Director of Liberal Judaism

I am incredibly fortunate at the moment to be celebrating the Jewish year with a good number of different Communities, be they formal or informal, around the UK. The celebration is expressed through our Liberal Jewish lens that balances the ritual with the ethical mitzvot (commandments) at each moment in our annual cycle. I come into contact with many different ways that Jews, and all those who enter our Communities strive to achieve that balance in their lives.

Some of our greatest thinkers, Saadiah Gaon and Moses Maimonides amongst others, have formally recognised the distinction between the ritual and ethical mitzvot. They all come from the same entity but can be categorised distinctively. Liberal Judaism in particular provides emphasis on the ethical informed by the ritual mitzvot.

What does this mean? It means that for each moment of the year, one might mark it in a variety of ways, both ritual and ethical. Yesterday was the Festival of Purim. It is traditionally marked by hearing a public reading of Megillat Esther (a scroll of the book of Esther). It is usually encompassed in great frivolities and party-making. That is the ritual! However, the ethical has sadly been lost along the way to a greater rather than lesser extent. That is the idea of shlach manot, sending out of gifts to the poor.

So how does the ritual inform the ethical? One reading (typified by the Hasidic Master, The Gerer Rebbe, often known as the Sefat Emet – the Language of Truth, after his major work) of the events at the Sea of Reeds through to this moment in time, was that God had hoped that the People would accept God and an ethical way of living without the need for the human trappings of ritual. At Sinai, the People displayed their truly mortal beings. They required physical reminders of God and the way that God hoped that they would relate with each other and their environment. That is why God then gives the instructions for a physical Sanctuary and its furnishings together with a full set of rituals to go along with it. They are to be a constant reminder that to walk in God’s ways means to act as a force for good in the world, not just in one’s heart or mind.

As we continue with the hussle and bussle of our lives, let the frivolity of Purim, ritual of hearing the story and the partying that goes with it, act as a reminder of the ethical message, of shlach manot, sending out gifts to the poor. Let our hearts and minds informed and opened to the possibilities to be a force for good in the world.

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