And the Golden.... Calf? Oscar? Goes to.....

This week, our Torah portion is called Ki Tisa, “when you raise up,” from the opening phrase, “When you raise up the heads of the Israelites.” Although idiomatically, ki tisa refers to “when you take the census of the Israelites,” the literal meaning implies that this parashah describes a critical process of ascending to a higher point, as our story unfolds.

Previous recent portions, Yitro and Mishpatim, have told the story of receiving the Torah, and our two most recent previous portions, Terumah and Tetzaveh, have related the instructions and details of how to build the Mishkan. These are central themes in our overall Jewish story, high points indeed. However, the very name of this portion implies there are higher levels yet for us to ascend as a people.

Higher than being given the Torah, and higher than being tasked with building the Mishkan, the dwelling of the Holy?

Yes.

As our story unfolds in Ki Tisa, gathered at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the people anxiously await the return of Mo­ses, their leader and icon of strength, who is allegedly still on the mountain top and late for his promised time of return. But is he really still on the mountain, or did he perhaps die? Or perhaps he descended the other side of the mountain and abandoned these newly-freed slaves who were so dependent on Moses?

The people demand tangible security, and they want it now. Pressuring Moses’s brother Aaron, they collect gold jewelry, mold a statue, declare a festival, and begin ecstatic dancing around a unifying image — the golden calf. Moses finally returns, later than promised, and upon seeing these people worshipping the statue, it all goes south quickly. The calf is destroyed, the tablets shat­tered, and the first religious war within the community takes 3000 lives. It ends with the people resolving to to do better, and renewing their commitment to the covenant on a much higher level of consciousness than they had previously known.


Like any good story of epic proportions, Ki Tisa begins with an idyllic time, brings in tension and drama which upsets the idyllic life, and ends with a happy resolution. Truly, a storyline filled with elements of a time of perfection, then tension, drama, a great fall, estrangement, resolution, reconciliation, and finally, ascent with a greater perfect ending than the perfection of where the story began.


One wonders when Hollywood will grab this one with gusto?

Speaking of Hollywood..... it amuses me that this particular portion with its pivotal point of the golden calf episode falls on the same weekend as the giving of the golden Oscars. Interestingly enough, the Dutch equivalent of a U.S. Academy Award is.... drumroll.... a Golden Calf!

Why on earth did we construct a golden calf after the gift of freedom, a new life in a new land as a new people with a new concept of G!d? Is there a parallel we can draw between the golden calf of then and the golden Oscar of now?


At the foot of Sinai, anxiously awaiting the return of Moses, there are 2 very telling verses which explain why we made the golden calf:

"And the people saw that Moses lagged in coming down from the mountain, and the people assembled against Aaron and said to him, 'Rise up, make us gods that will go before us, for this man Moses who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.'"

All of us, from the most common person all the way up to the high priest himself, were obviously feeling fear. Afraid of the unknown, afraid we had lost our trusted leader, afraid we could not forge ourselves as a nation without Moses, afraid of this unfamiliar way to relate to an imageless G!d. Even our high priest acquiesced to the pressure, perhaps afraid that he was not the great leader his brother was, and needed to win the people's approval by assisting with the creation of the golden calf.

Fear. All of these behaviors were driven by the ego defense mechanism we call fear. Having left everything behind and placing all their faith in their leader––a now-absent Moses who could not reassure them––they felt nothing but puzzlement and fear and an urgency for some sense of comfort and normalcy.

Moses it was who had led them out of slavery. Moses it was who spoke to them of a single G!d with whom they could be in a relationship, not as slaves, but as free individuals. This was a new concept to them. They had not only been slaves on the human level, but also slaves on a religious level.

They did not understand what had happened to Moses and why he tarried so long. In their anxiety, they reached back to the comfort they had known in Egypt: a tangible deity, not an invisible one in the shadows with a leader lost somewhere on the mountaintop.

The calf won the popular vote as choice for a face of this new mystery they now called G!d. The calf was a familiar symbol of power from their time in Egypt. The faceless deity that had suddenly come into their lives and liberated them from Egypt was powerful, yes, but also remote and confus­ing and without a form, and worst of all, absent, just as their leader was, now, in their time of fear.

Throughout history, all people, it seems, want golden calves and golden Oscars. Easy answers and tangible faces. Idols and scapegoats. Awards and accolades and best of's. Even social media has pushed us into believing that tweets and instagrams and FB posts are real connections and conversations between people, and yet, there is such an invisible, shadowy, anonymity. And Oscars are nothing more than an award for having pretended to be someone else so well! It is not an award for who the actor is, but for who, and how, they have pretended to be.

Are golden calves and golden Oscars only ways to make it look as if we are having fun and doing well, dancing and feasting at the foot of the mountain with our golden awards? Are these simply distractions keeping us from feeling our inner fears? Being distracted from feeling our inner fears does not lessen or eliminate them. In fact, distractions will often fuel the fears, because only by admitting to our fears can we make the choice to let go of ego and live from the deeper level of love and hope and authenticity.

While we all might want to live on the mountaintops of glory, Ki Tisa reminds us that every ascent also requires a descent. Ki Tisa reminds us that life is not lived on the mountaintops of glory and accolades and awards, but down in the valley of reality, where our fear and ego often run amok. The golden calf was about feeling reassured that they had not been abandoned by Moses or by G!d.

Along comes Ki Tisa to remind us to stay grounded, and to remember that for every "best of", there are millions of unrecognized others who helped make that "best of" who they are today. And, that all of we "ordinary of"'s who will never win the golden awards and accolades, are in some way the "best of" just the way we are.