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Up and down the mountain of life

Torah Study

CANTOR JENNIFER WERBY
Ki Tisa/Exodus 30:11-34:35

• Moses takes a census of the Israelites and collects a half shekel from each person.
  
• God tells Moses to construct a water basin and to prepare anointing oil and incense for the ordination of the priests. Bezalel and Oholiab, skilled artisans, are assigned to make objects for the priests and the Tabernacle.
  
• The Israelites are instructed to keep the Shabbat as a sign of the covenant. God gives Moses the two tablets of the pact.
  
• The Israelites ask Aaron to build them a golden calf. Moses implores God not to destroy the people and then breaks the two tablets of the pact on which the Ten Commandments are written when he sees the idol. God punishes the Israelites by means of a plague.
  
• Moses goes up the mountain with a blank set of tablets for another forty days so that God will again inscribe the Ten Commandments.
  
• Moses comes down from the mountain with a radiant face.
  

Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces. ... The tablets were God's work, and the writing was God's writing, incised upon the tablets. When Joshua heard the sound of the people in its boisterousness, he said to Moses, "There is a cry of war in the camp." But he answered, "It is not the sound of the tune of triumph. ... It is the sound of song that I hear." (Exodus 32:15-18)

1. What do you think the actual tablets looked like?
   
2. What do you imagine God's "writing" looked like?
   
3. What does Moses' going up and then down the mountain signify?
   

• Singing had an important role in Jewish life. The Jewish people came to such a deep state of despair that only singing would help. Singing is a manifestation of hope. The song is a cry, and afterwards you feel free. (Miriam Harel of Lodz, cited in "Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940-45" by Gila Flam)
  

Moses' journey is similar to that of our own lives in both existential and mundane ways. The Torah teaches us that Moses went up the mountain and met there with God: He journeyed upward to a place that was wholly pure and divine. Meanwhile, the Israelites were left down on the ground, growing more and more agitated. Finally, they lost their faith and returned to familiar territory - their instinctual desire to see in front of them something they valued, namely, a golden calf. In that moment, there was no God for the Israelites. This led them to idolatry. When we are aware of the presence of God, we become holy and our choices are clear. We don't oppress other people and we spend our money carefully. We are not covetous; we are grateful for what we have. When we doubt, we become lost and eventually we are led to idolatry and to worship what we can see, namely, our diplomas, cars, houses and clothes. But if each of us strives to meet with God every day, our priorities become clear: We journey up and down that mountain of Sinai, striving to leave the faithless, chaotic bottom and to journey up to the top. We may never get there, but life itself is the journey. We are all headed to the same place in the end, and it's how we get there that matters.