This is it; this is the week that gravity kicks in.
The past four weeks, we kept on getting more mitzvot, bringing us closer to G-d and giving us greater spiritual heights to reach. This week, the whole project collapses under its own weight, and we are left with a smoking pile of dashed hopes, broken dreams and ground-up golden calf.
One of the biggest challenges in reading the Torah is that we already know what is going to happen. When someone reads the Torah for the first time, is it a shock when the Children of Israel rebel and create a statue of gold to be their god, or does the plot line demand that the fall occur? I’ve always had a hard time writing about this week’s parsha because its lessons seem so obvious.
This year, I was struck by the opening paragraph of this week’s parsha. For the last two weeks, the Torah has described the design and materials used to create the Mishkan, the traveling temple that was at the center of the camp of the Children of Israel. At the beginning, it makes clear that all of the contributions were given by people of their own free will and generous hearts. This week, all of the sudden there is the commandment to count the Israelites by having every single man contribute a half shekel (seven grams) of silver. The Torah tells us that this silver is used for the work of the Mishkan, and the Talmud adds that this contribution was used to create the foundation for the inner sanctuary. The Torah is quite insistent that all men bring the exact same contribution, no exceptions.
One of the more curious but less emphasized aspects of the sin of the golden calf is how limited its reach was. The whole incident took less than a day and the Torah reports that only 3,000 people were found guilty and punished for the sin and its associated excesses. As there was no social or mass media, there is a good chance that the whole thing was over long before most of the Children of Israel even heard about it. Why then did the whole nation suffer for all time from what was after all a minor incident that happened at the edges of society?
This is why our parsha starts out with the account of the half shekel that each and every man must contribute. Every action taken by one of the Children of Israel will come to be representative of all of the Children of Israel and thus have an effect on the whole nation. The Torah points out that the foundations of our society are created collectively through the actions of each individual, and so the errant deeds of just a few people one time in the desert leave their imprint on each of us to this day. No matter how much I may want to disown a few intolerant ultra-orthodox, or a handful of extremist leftist protestors, I need to acknowledge all of them as my brothers, and I am my brother’s keeper.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Yehoshua Ellis grew up in Overland Park and attended HBHA, was an Eagle Scout with Troop 61, and helped restart AZA Chapter #2. He currently is a rabbi in the Jewish Community of Warsaw, Poland, and Chief Rabbi of Katowice, Poland. He can be reached at .
